The good shepherd is not born every day. A quiet, unexcitable mental
characteristic is the utmost necessity. Nervous, excitable people become
too easily angered; they will wear themselves and the sheep out with
over-work and abuse, while the overly sentimental person becomes too
easily disheartened; others have to do his work while he stands around
telling you in a sorrowful tone how it broke his heart to see that poor
twin lamb die, during which time other lambs in his care are dying from
his neglect. He is the first to give up the ship when "everything goes
dead wrong." Most ewes, and especially two-year-olds, are very timid and
easily frightened from their lambs when left out by themselves or in
small bunches. For this and other reasons it is best to have few dogs
upon a lambing ground, especially around the dropping ewes. If any, they
should be in care of experienced men only, for whom they may head off a
bad mix or find a lamb in a hole, etc. Inexperienced men never watch
their dogs close enough, when the very best of dogs will scare many ewes
from their lambs, even though they are not very near them. So if you can
control the bunches without the aid of dogs, it will always help your
per cent to do so. Again, it will be well to remind the help that they
are on a lambing ground, where it takes much cool temper and many hard
knocks to make things go right at times. Inform them that it is not
always possible to fatten the ewes during lambing, so they will not run
the drop band, or the ewes with lambs, all over the country each day
looking for feed. True, they should be allowed to scatter and spread
over their allotted pasture; but we once heard an owner tell a "new man"
to take the sheep out on good range and allow them to "cover all the
ground possible." The next day we met this shepherd (?) about three
miles from his camp, dogging his sheep from one part of the range to
another. When asked where he was going, he answered that "the boss had
told him to let them cover all the ground possible" and that he was
doing the best he could to get over all the ground. Needless to say that
the boss is the loser when his flocks are tended in such a manner.
The lamb needs milk, and the ewe needs feed to produce it, but the lambs
also need much sleep and rest to make them grow fast. Rather have the
ewes near water and upon less feed until the lambs become at least ten
days old.