For quite a while now our flock has been enthusiastically participating in a rivalry with a neighboring farm’s much larger flock of sheep. Our sheep have preened themselves on being more ‘selective’ in their company. We have only 10 sheep while the other flock has about 35. This translates into much better grazing for our gals and guy. Same basic amount of pasture, far fewer mouths to feed.
You should see our flock stream out to graze, sneering at
the jockeying for each blade of grass that the ‘other’ flock engages in. Ours
wander gently from hammock to hammock, never butting each other, never
wrestling for control of the juicier tufts of grass. “We are above all that,”
they seem to say.
But the ultimate in one upsmanship has always been the
horse stalls. You can see our sheep peering snootily out the front in the
accompanying photo. While the ‘inferior’ sheep hunker down in all the bad
weather, ours (superior by nature) sprawl out on a thick bed of hay under a tin
roof and solid wood walls. Since we have had an exceptionally bad winter, this
has been the ultimate score. We have had raging winds, torrential rains, and
low temperatures for all of July and it has carried right through to now.
So our sheep have been secure in their belief that they
are the upper class sheep and across the fence is effectively across the
railroad tracks. At least until now. Where the barn was the ultimate score, it
has been demoted to penultimate. The ‘other’ sheep have outscored us big time.
It is lambing season and our ewes have been really slow
out the gate. So far we only have two lambs. The other team has 28 lambs and
almost all of them are twins. The gleeful bleating from across the fence echoes
around the hills and our sheep have taken to hunkering down in all that vast grass
and burying their noses in the dirt. A more succinct and clear signal that they
have ceded the field cannot be found. I hope that we get a few more lambs but
there is no way to reach 28 and so far not a twin to be found. How the mighty
have fallen!
