Callie and the Banding of the Lambs

Callie is my pet ewe. She is ten years old and has been here most of her life. She is a Clun Forest. She was a bottle baby before I got her and she has been an incredible mom to her lambs. She has nice and well built lambs and they grow large and fat.

Over the years, she has decided she is the Queen of the ewes and should be treated as Royalty. She is the Alpha ewe after Granny died. When she has her lambs, she parades them in front of me and I must pay proper homage to them. If she thinks that I am not paying enough attention to them, she will nudge the lamb to me. Usually I pick up her lambs and "oh and ah" over it and tell her who wonderful the lambs are and she puffs up with pride.

She loves to be petted and scratched and loves to have you pay attention to her. I usually do as she is my favorite ewe anyways. And she is super curious on what you may have in your hand, in case it might be a treat for her.

When I wean the lambs, she is the nanny. She is a very good nanny and will wait for all the little lambs to follow her. I don't work her since she is older and she is retired from that anyways.

On Saturday, Janet and I banded the lambs tails, gave them their Covexin 8 shot, trimmed hooves and did general visual of each lamb to make sure they were progressing well on their growth. It was a sunny day so we took break and watched the sheep eat. We let the sheep loose on the lawn and let Tess and Nan tend them.

When we decided to band them, we used Nan for a bit until she got tired and then switched to Scott. Then we used Lucy for the last half to help finish the banding and do more tending. She did quite well once she got the hang of it. It was very tough as there were about 33 lamb going every which way and ewes going the other way.

We took our time so it was a long day but we did it all. Janet was a good lamb catcher and holder while I did the honors of banding, shot, trimming, marking and check over. One lamb was about 30 pounds and quite sporty to catch. He is a son of Callie and has her attitude....

Speaking again of Callie, we decided to talk a pop break and were drinking our drinks when Callie saw us with something in our hands so she wandered up to check it out. She saw the dogs asleep at our feet and figured out they were not on duty so trotted up to see what we had.

I showed her my coke and that was a mistake as she tried to yank it out of my hands. She licked the coke off and tried to drink it. Then she grabbed Janet's drink and slurped on that. She really liked our pop drinks. We got new drinks by the way.

This is me telling Callie "This is my pop and not yours. Got it?"

Well that worked like a champ as she gave me a kiss and tried for my pop again.

"Callie, I am the boss here and this is my pop and go back to the lambs." That made no impression on her.

So what happened next was I ended up scratching Callie on her ears and neck and she just stood and gave deep sheep sighs.

We got done banding tail, shots and so forth and let the sheep wander about and then Lucy put them away. It was a wonderful day with the sun on our faces and dogs at our feet and sheep as peaceful scenic display.