Chore Girl

I'm chore girl for a few days, a role I enjoy sporadically. John's out of town and the sheep need to be fed. They don't care who feeds them as long as they get what they are expecting. It's nice right now because the ewes are out on pasture and don't need any additional feed. There are a few ewes still in the weaning area and they are really hungry because they are being cut back on food. Then there are three separate pens of lambs all hungry as well because they aren't on an all-you-can-eat-diet. They are being fitted for open shows and eventually the fairs. Like beauty queens they have to watch what they eat.

The task I least enjoy about choring is feeding the rams. They are in the old shed because they destroy anything and everything. The older ram has more space and has freedom to move to an outside area where the waterer is. The young ram is in a confined space and has his own water bucket that gets destroyed after a few rams of the head. What I don't like is they are not smart animals. All sheep are the same. But the rams are worse. I don't get why they try to ram me when I'm the one providing their food. All I have to do is dump a scoop of feed into a trough that hangs on the fence. But it's not that simple. The older ram smashes his head at the trough as I try to get the feed into it. Doesn't he realize that if he breaks the trough he won't get fed. No, he doesn't. Another trough hangs in disrepair to prove that. All the while I try to navigate my scoop to the trough, the other ram is slamming himself into the fence, shaking the whole shed. I quickly dump the feed into the trough as he backs up preparing to land another hit on the fencing. Needless to say, the equipment near them is battered and broken. I'm just glad to get the door shut behind me.

"Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name" (Genesis 2:19 NIV).