Hitcher
17th October 2012, 21:29
Apparently pets are an important part of a child’s upbringing. There’s something about the human psyche that requires us to make an emotional connection with animals and to have animals dependent on us.
Cats. Dogs. Budgies. Goldfish. Lambs.
They’re all different. A fundamental difference is that at the end of the day, a cat will know it’s a cat; a dog will figure out that it’s a dog; identity crises are unknown to goldfish. But lambs only know they’re sheep if they’re brought up and socialised with other sheep.
As kids we always had pet cats. In return for warmth, food and human kindness they repaid us with vermin, dead and alive. Sometimes they showed affection. In season, we occasionally had pet lambs.
Our parents were dairy farmers. Other than pet lambs, the only other sheep on the ranch were The Killers. These were acquired annually as a mob of scrawny hoggets and had the run of the farm. Being a dairy farm, the only sheep-proof fences were the boundaries and the fence around the house section. Their careers involved growing big and tender and ending up on our dinner plates. Yum.
They usually expired in twos. The process started by Dad standing on the back doorstep and sharpening a butcher’s knife on a steel. This was the signal to our cattle dog to go and round up The Killers and hold them in a boundary fence corner. Armed with a .22 rifle and a knife, the executioner would arrive at the corner where the sheep were being held and dispatch the two most likely.
The dog’s reward for this task was the head from one of the demised sheep. A doggie delicacy. This was the reason for his excitement when he heard a butcher’s knife being sharpened.
Pet lambs were spared this lifestyle.
Like our dairy herd replacement calves, lambs were born in the spring. They were bottle reared. On a dairy farm the cost of milk that these wee things can put away is miniscule. I know people who live in town who have had pet lambs that they’ve reared on finest blue top milk. A lamb can easily get through about 8 litres of milk a day. Do the maths.
That said, there’s something quite endearing about seeing a cute wee lamb gorging itself appreciatively on the contents of a bottle of warm milk. Their bodies shake and tails waggle appreciatively. Instinctively they bunt the bottles, as they would their mothers, to encourage the production of milk let-down hormone. One year, an overly enthusiastic lamb swallowed whole the rubber teat off the bottle. The lamb suffered no harm, but from that time on, teats were always securely fitted to the milk bottles.
Once they were strong enough to graduate from the confines of the hay barn, pet lambs grew up in the house paddock. This paddock was also the kindergarten for about 20 heifer calves, also being milk reared and destined to be replacement stock for the farm’s dairy herd. The pet lambs usually grew up thinking that they were calves. It’s due to their herd instinct going a bit squiffy. They were happy to do so and were accepted by their bovine cousins. Once rewired, a pet lamb is set for the rest of its life. Even if they are eventually introduced to flocks of sheep, they never fully recant or convert to the Ovine Faith.
Brought up with dogs, pet lambs will think they’re dogs. Sheep farming friends of Mum and Dad’s brought up their pet lambs in the house paddock where their sheepdogs lived. One year they produced an honour student. This particular lamb embraced the Dog Faith so well, it would run out at cars coming up the driveway and baaaaa at them. If the tailgate was opened, it was also capable of jumping up on the back of their Landrover where it travelled with its head around the side of the cab, the wind blowing in its ears, just like the farm dogs did.
Pet lambs also needed to have names. That was always the task for a farming family’s children. Well it was at our place at any rate.
One year we acquired two ram pet lambs. One was a Romney. He was called Linus. The other was a Dorset Horn. He was called Pig Pen. No prizes for guessing what my brother was reading at that time.
These were the first male pet lambs we’d ever had. They didn’t really socialise with the calves to the extent that our other pet lambs had. They seemed to prefer their own company.
As they grew up, Dad forgot that they were boy sheep until their testicles were too large to poke through an Elastrator rubber ring. Time passed. Sheep puberty arrived.
As is typical of sheep of his breed, Pig Pen grew horns. Quite cute at first they were. As time passed they grew into a magnificent set of spirally horns -- a bit like the set that bloke in the Icebreaker clothing ads has.
Pig Pen used to like scratching his horns on things. He endeared himself to Mum when he sharpened them on a Chilean Firebush she had growing in the house paddock and ringbarked it.
He also used to like charging things that intimidated him. Like cow troughs. He’d back away and run at these full tilt. There would be a massive thud. Unsurprising, as a cow trough full of water probably weighs about 20 tonnes. Pig Pen would stop, shake his head, snort, then back off and repeat.
The haybarn in the house paddock was clad in corrugated steel. As well as charging it, with a massive crashing noise, Pig Pen also liked to run along the walls dragging a horn along them as he went. Brrrrrrrrrrrr! At about 100 decibels. We always knew when Pig Pen was back in the house paddock. And yes, the noise could be really irritating as he never seemed to know when he’d had enough.
Linus at one stage moved in with the neighbour’s crop of swedes. He managed to socialise so well with the swedes we had a hell of a job getting him home again. I suspect that this discombobulation may have been due to a massive concussion he received from Pig Pen.
Living on nature’s finest tucker, Linus and Pig Pen grew into magnificent representatives of their respective breeds. Dad sold them as stud rams. Presumably they managed to do what was required of them in their new roles, because Dad never received any claims under the Sale of Goods Act.
Cats. Dogs. Budgies. Goldfish. Lambs.
They’re all different. A fundamental difference is that at the end of the day, a cat will know it’s a cat; a dog will figure out that it’s a dog; identity crises are unknown to goldfish. But lambs only know they’re sheep if they’re brought up and socialised with other sheep.
As kids we always had pet cats. In return for warmth, food and human kindness they repaid us with vermin, dead and alive. Sometimes they showed affection. In season, we occasionally had pet lambs.
Our parents were dairy farmers. Other than pet lambs, the only other sheep on the ranch were The Killers. These were acquired annually as a mob of scrawny hoggets and had the run of the farm. Being a dairy farm, the only sheep-proof fences were the boundaries and the fence around the house section. Their careers involved growing big and tender and ending up on our dinner plates. Yum.
They usually expired in twos. The process started by Dad standing on the back doorstep and sharpening a butcher’s knife on a steel. This was the signal to our cattle dog to go and round up The Killers and hold them in a boundary fence corner. Armed with a .22 rifle and a knife, the executioner would arrive at the corner where the sheep were being held and dispatch the two most likely.
The dog’s reward for this task was the head from one of the demised sheep. A doggie delicacy. This was the reason for his excitement when he heard a butcher’s knife being sharpened.
Pet lambs were spared this lifestyle.
Like our dairy herd replacement calves, lambs were born in the spring. They were bottle reared. On a dairy farm the cost of milk that these wee things can put away is miniscule. I know people who live in town who have had pet lambs that they’ve reared on finest blue top milk. A lamb can easily get through about 8 litres of milk a day. Do the maths.
That said, there’s something quite endearing about seeing a cute wee lamb gorging itself appreciatively on the contents of a bottle of warm milk. Their bodies shake and tails waggle appreciatively. Instinctively they bunt the bottles, as they would their mothers, to encourage the production of milk let-down hormone. One year, an overly enthusiastic lamb swallowed whole the rubber teat off the bottle. The lamb suffered no harm, but from that time on, teats were always securely fitted to the milk bottles.
Once they were strong enough to graduate from the confines of the hay barn, pet lambs grew up in the house paddock. This paddock was also the kindergarten for about 20 heifer calves, also being milk reared and destined to be replacement stock for the farm’s dairy herd. The pet lambs usually grew up thinking that they were calves. It’s due to their herd instinct going a bit squiffy. They were happy to do so and were accepted by their bovine cousins. Once rewired, a pet lamb is set for the rest of its life. Even if they are eventually introduced to flocks of sheep, they never fully recant or convert to the Ovine Faith.
Brought up with dogs, pet lambs will think they’re dogs. Sheep farming friends of Mum and Dad’s brought up their pet lambs in the house paddock where their sheepdogs lived. One year they produced an honour student. This particular lamb embraced the Dog Faith so well, it would run out at cars coming up the driveway and baaaaa at them. If the tailgate was opened, it was also capable of jumping up on the back of their Landrover where it travelled with its head around the side of the cab, the wind blowing in its ears, just like the farm dogs did.
Pet lambs also needed to have names. That was always the task for a farming family’s children. Well it was at our place at any rate.
One year we acquired two ram pet lambs. One was a Romney. He was called Linus. The other was a Dorset Horn. He was called Pig Pen. No prizes for guessing what my brother was reading at that time.
These were the first male pet lambs we’d ever had. They didn’t really socialise with the calves to the extent that our other pet lambs had. They seemed to prefer their own company.
As they grew up, Dad forgot that they were boy sheep until their testicles were too large to poke through an Elastrator rubber ring. Time passed. Sheep puberty arrived.
As is typical of sheep of his breed, Pig Pen grew horns. Quite cute at first they were. As time passed they grew into a magnificent set of spirally horns -- a bit like the set that bloke in the Icebreaker clothing ads has.
Pig Pen used to like scratching his horns on things. He endeared himself to Mum when he sharpened them on a Chilean Firebush she had growing in the house paddock and ringbarked it.
He also used to like charging things that intimidated him. Like cow troughs. He’d back away and run at these full tilt. There would be a massive thud. Unsurprising, as a cow trough full of water probably weighs about 20 tonnes. Pig Pen would stop, shake his head, snort, then back off and repeat.
The haybarn in the house paddock was clad in corrugated steel. As well as charging it, with a massive crashing noise, Pig Pen also liked to run along the walls dragging a horn along them as he went. Brrrrrrrrrrrr! At about 100 decibels. We always knew when Pig Pen was back in the house paddock. And yes, the noise could be really irritating as he never seemed to know when he’d had enough.
Linus at one stage moved in with the neighbour’s crop of swedes. He managed to socialise so well with the swedes we had a hell of a job getting him home again. I suspect that this discombobulation may have been due to a massive concussion he received from Pig Pen.
Living on nature’s finest tucker, Linus and Pig Pen grew into magnificent representatives of their respective breeds. Dad sold them as stud rams. Presumably they managed to do what was required of them in their new roles, because Dad never received any claims under the Sale of Goods Act.