As has often been the case, many of our family adventures have occurred in my absence. Or, in some cases, as I was walking out the door on a business trip. One of the more memorable happened when we were living in a place northeast of Winterset, IA. We were in the process of selling our house in preparation for our move to our "new" place in Earlham, IA.
We had sheep at the old place. In fact, that's where the whole sheep thing started. At that point we had no idea what we didn't know about sheep. For that matter, we really didn't know much of anything about sheep. Everything we learned was coming either from a book, by the school of hard knocks or, more accurately, the school of dead sheep.
If you talk to Lorraine or my oldest daughter Rachel, one of the more infamous sheep they'll recall from our history on the farm is #11. We bought seven Suffolk ewes, our first foray into being shepherds, in 1997. Each ewe had an ear tag with a number, including the one with #11 on her tag. That small flock would supplement the goats we already had that Rachel would show at the county fair.
Maybe Lorraine remembers more details but I sure don't. What I do remember is #11 having a prolapsed uterus (Warning-graphic description to follow). This is when the uterus turns inside out and is hanging outside the ewe. Knowing not how to deal with this the vet was called. He showed up, stuffed the uterus back into the ewe, placed a couple of stitches in a place that looked very uncomfortable to be stitched and gave her some antibiotics. Before leaving he said that "might" work.
We would later take the ewes back to the farm that we bought them from to spend some time with a ram to be bred. My older sister would later ask why we would send the sheep out for "bread." Ah, the subtleties of the English language can be distracting at time.
About five months later lambing began. I don't recall any problems with the other six ewes, but #11 became a source of angst for us in quick order. We first noticed her on her side, apparently in labor. Later checks would include include aural as well as visual feedback on her distress. And that was the beginning of a few days where the poor animal would groan as if she was in labor. If you see Rachel, she does a great imitation of #11 in labor. Just ask her.
Unfortunately, #11's groaning and moaning didn't end well. As I mentioned earlier some of our less fortunate endings occurred when I was gone or leaving. In this case our realtor was at our house as I was literally just about to leave for the airport to catch a flight. From the back patio she was looking into our nearby paddock and she exclaimed, "is there something wrong with that sheep?" With the sheep on its side, legs sticking out sideways, I was guessing that she was probably spot on with that question. Assuming the worst I walked over to the fence, peered over and confirmed my initial diagnosis. Now what? I literally had a plane to catch and nobody to dig a hole to bury this thing. We didn't even own a tractor or pickup at that point, key pieces of equipment for operating even a small, viable farm.
Keep in mind that this animal was about 150 pounds so it would take a big hole and Lorraine wasn't going to be able to drag it anywhere even if she could dig a hole. Heck, she was probably pregnant at the time since, having eight kids total, she tended to be pregnant a lot of the time. And, if she wasn't pregnant, she'd probably had a child recently. Seems to me Spencer was born in 1997 so he was either in utero or recently born. Lorraine remembers those subtle details better than I do.
But I digress... Mercifully, our local guardian angel and neighbor, Dwayne, just happened to pull into the driveway to ask about something very soon after I'd abandoned Lorraine, leaving her to deal with the carcass of this unfortunate animal. Lorraine asked Dwayne if he had any suggestions. He said that he'd be glad to take the carcass to the county landfill. All we had to do was come up with a bag of lime to put on the animal after it was dumped. Interesting that the county landfill will take a carcass if you cover it with lime, knowing full well it would be completely buried before the end of the day. Maybe the don't want vultures or crows hanging around. That would put a damper on the work environment.
I'm not sure how he did it, but Dwayne managed to load the carcass into the back of his pickup and got it to the dump for us. There were other occasions where Dwayne came to our rescue and we are forever grateful. Meanwhile, I was flying off somewhere for a meeting that, most assuredly, was far less exciting than staying home to deal with a dead sheep.
