Rich came in from work today with a worried frown. 

“I have to go and get this sheep out of the field,” he said. 

“Is it dead?” I asked, dreading the answer. There have been no (unintentional) deaths on the farm since I’ve arrived. 

The sheep are getting very close to lambing now, and Rich is watching them carefully. They’re in the field close to the house, and every day they get pelleted food and haylage. It’s a delicate balance, to keep them fed so that they have enough goodness to give the unborn lambs, but not overfeed them – if you do that, the lambs grow so big inside them that it creates problems with the birth.

Pregnant sheep getting their extra rations

“It was looking pretty still when I drove by,” he said.

“Shall I help you?”

“Yes, if you can.”

Could I handle a dead sheep? Probably, I reasoned to myself. Having wellies on my feet and my rubber gardening gloves on my hands has made me able to handle a whole lot of things that I never thought I’d be able to manage. I stuffed my feet into the wellies and checked to make sure the gloves were in my pocket. 

We went up to the top shed and Rich asked me to drive the quad bike while he carried the bucket of pellets out to the sheep. I’ve just recently gotten confident enough on the bike to drive it myself. I figured I needed to learn, during the snow, when the sheep needed feeding and I had to ask Ceris to do it, because I was too scared to manage the bike on my own.  

Now I hopped on fairly confidently, started it up and backed it out of the shed. As its name implies, the quad bike is like a motorcycle with four wheels. Four-wheel drive, very sturdy and stable, runs up, over and through anything you care to name. Farmers in Wales use it to get around their fields, and it can survive the muddiest, stickiest, wettest conditions.

We pootled along to the sheep field, and Rich poured the pelleted food into the feeders, getting mashed by the hungry sheep as he did. Then we headed up to the top of the field, where we could see a still, white shape lying on the ground. I gritted my teeth.

But it was still moving! The sheep lay flat – very unhappy, clearly – but not quite dead. Her legs were moving convulsively, as if she was trying to run. 

“What do we do with her?” 

“Let’s try to get her onto the quad, and into the shed,” Rich said. He thought she had milk fever – a calcium deficiency that strikes pregnant sheep. But she had already had an injection of calcium that morning, with no result. 

On a good day, an injection of calcium will produce a truly magical effect. The sheep that is lying on the ground, panting hard and looking nearly-dead, will simply get up and walk away. 

Today was not that day. 

Together, heaving and struggling, we managed to shift the pregnant sheep up onto the back of the quad. I drove slowly while Rich walked beside me, holding onto the sheep so that she wouldn’t slip off. 

I looked down at the lolling head and the filmed eyes, and thought that we would be lucky if she survived the trip. 

Once we got to the shed we unloaded her and laid her, as gently as possible, on the ground. Rich warmed up another syringe of the calcium and injected her for the second time.

Rich injecting the sheep with calcium

 We shifted her into the shed, made her comfortable on a load of straw and tried to get her to eat something. 

No luck. 

“We’ll just have to wait now,” said Rich. “She’s one of the good new ones that we bought in the spring, too. Thirty pounds, she cost. She’s had ten pounds worth of feed. It’ll cost ten pounds to pay the man to come and dispose of her. And she’s carrying a lamb. Maybe two.”

We went back inside and scoured the livestock books, and the internet, for something else we could do, something we might have missed. Nothing.

I thought of the old farm saying, “Where there’s livestock, there’s dead stock.” A stolid, unemotional pragmatism that allows farmers to shrug and absorb the losses that inevitably come.

They’re not pets, these animals.  They represent food, and cash, and the livelihood of the farm. Although…

Rich's pet sheep, Pet

 Rich does have one old ewe, whom he actually calls Pet, who comes up to him confidingly for a scratch behind the ears. She’s allowed to rear up and put her front legs on his chest, and give Benjamin a kiss. She was a bottle-reared lamb from long ago. And though Pet is getting old now, and doesn’t seem to be carrying a lamb this year, I know that Rich is fonder of her than he would ever admit.

Will the sick sheep live through the night? We’ll just have to wait and see what the morning brings…