My parents had their sheep shorn once a year. As it turned out, the shearer was my high school botany teacher, Ken. A wonderful man who worked hard at teaching and shearing.
This particular shearing day, my mother had a luncheon to attend so I had come to the farm to help where I could. Mom came to the barn to check in and say hello to Ken and to tell dad and I that since the llamas were already in the shed, we should go ahead and worm them. Not a problem you would think. I didn’t think it was a problem…Until we got to the worming part.
Dad ran the sheep through a shoot, Ken would get the sheep at the end of the shoot and take it and shear it and then we would let the sheared sheep back out into the field. We finished up shearing and then got the worm medicine into the applicator. It was a wonderful tool. The spout came up and then was bent across and back down so you could almost “hook” it into the llama’s mouth to dose the medicine. We easily got Belle, got hold of her halter and dad dosed the worm medicine into her mouth. She immediately pushed it out the other side of her mouth and onto my hand and down my arm. We decided she had to have gotten some of the liquid so we let her go.
Then it was Cowboy’s turn. Cowboy was quite a mess when we got him. He hadn’t been shorn in three years, and the previous owner swore he was neutered. (Surprise! The shearer discovered that in fact he hadn’t been neutered.) No matter how hard we tried, Cowboy was always just a little bit on edge. We could feed him raisins and pet him but he never lost his slightly feral edge.
So, dad and I are in the barn. He had the worm medicine in the applicator and all we had to do was catch cowboy, cinch is halter rope around a gate so he couldn’t move his head and give him the medicine. Simple. Not. At one point dad had hold on one side of him and I had hold on the other side of him and he jumped. I fell backwards into what is usually on a barn floor. Dad tumbled forward and lost his cowboy hat. We checked that each other was okay and got back up. This time, Cowboy met my dad face to face and spit on him. It was like watching a cartoon as it slid down his face. (I was terribly satisfied by this) Next, we got Cowboy cornered in the barn and dad put up a small gate. Cowboy looked at the gate as to say, “Really? You think that will contain me?” And he jumped over the gate – as he sailed past my father’s face, Cowboy farted. I have never had such a case of schadenfreude in my life! It was completely satisfying. If I had died on the spot my life would have been complete. We finally got Cowboy wormed and let back into the field with all the shorn sheep. I’m sure we were all glad to be done with each other that day.
My Patio 