bloody sheep

I thought that new sheep pen was more secure. Well, it’s not ‘new’, but considerably reinforced. It looked like it would effectively contain the sheep.

For the first couple of days it worked. But now there’s a pile of corn in the courtyard, and the sheep can see and smell it. And lambs, stupid as they may be, and they are incredibly stupid, have a peculiar genius for finding ways out of the pen and into things they’re not supposed to eat.

Four times in the last 20 minutes I’ve had to run outside to chase lambs back into the pen.

What perhaps does not help is that the biggest dog we have here, Niuniu, is not a sheep dog and is far too small to scare any but the newest born lambs. And it wasn’t the wee ones that were acting up, but older ones on their way out of lambhood and into sheepdom. Niuniu decided to help me chase the lambs, as she has done before (although without even a shred of skill), but one turned around and decided to fight back at this noisy little upstart. So I had to step in.

Oh yes, I am looking forward to this afternoon when Ba takes the older sheep out to graze and leaves the lambs behind. The lambs are considerably more unruly when their elders are away, and that pile of corn in the courtyard must look very inviting to a sheep.