Goodbye, Sheep
February 8th, 2015 · 2 Comments · Posted in farming
It had to happen eventually. Yesterday we killed two of our three-year-old ewes and sent them off to the butcher.
It was time to thin the herd. I realized this season, and especially after adding five more sheep–our future breeders–to the flock, that we have more animals than we can feed. We’ll be lucky to get through April with the hay on hand. The prospect of even more lambs in the spring just compounds the equation.
Something had to give.
The two we killed yesterday were among those six Friesian ewes I bought when I first moved to the farm to help with the mowing. They had flunked the mothering test at the cheese-maker’s where I found them and even then were marked for slaughter. So they had an extra two years of life on my dime. Even so, I have to admit being a bit verklempt about killing them. Who would not be? I’ve spent a good part of each day with them, moving them to fresh pasture, providing them with water, trimming their hooves, inspecting them for signs of illness, administering vaccines, and generally just celebrating life in the fields with them.
My daughter gave them names after friends of hers. The two we killed yesterday were December and Selena. December was the trouble-maker in the bunch, the wild child. She never socialized with humans. She loved to run away from us, hopping on all fours just like those goofy sheep in the cartoons. Selena was the weak link, always a step behind, occasionally limping, a woebegone look on her face. She gave birth to twins last year, but they were hopelessly immature and tiny. They died within minutes.
Three men arrived in a pickup truck to do the killing. Using a bucket of grain as bait, we lured the sheep into the pen inside the walk-in shelter. Off course, December held back and eluded us. It took all four of us to finally chase her inside the pen with the others. Once we’d pushed the other animals back out, our two targets were each dispatched with a .22-calibre rifle to the back of the head. Death was instantaneous.
As grass farming guru Joel Salatin likes to say about his pigs, these sheep had a wonderful life–grazing on pasture, exposed to the elements, free to express their sheepness–and just one bad day. Just a few bad minutes, really.
The killing crew hauled the carcasses out of the paddock and hoisted them, one at a time, onto a device attached to the back of their pickup truck. They were skinned and gutted, then driven off to the butcher for further processing. We sold one of them to our friend Rebeca, who is excited to be our first customer for mutton, which entitles her to all the offal: tongues, kidneys, hearts, liver, tripe, etc. The meat from the other ewe will be broken down, packaged and stacked in our chest freezer.
Such is the cycle of life on the livestock farm. I know some of you may be horrified, or just sad. We are sad, too. But as my wife likes to say, be grateful for the gift of grass-fed protein, and glad you’re at the top of the food chain.
You have such a smart wife, Ed!
You know it, Mary Ann