The term pastoral care literally traces back to ‘the shepherd’s care’ — feeding, protecting, and guiding sheep. When Christianity adopted the metaphor of shepherding, pastoral care became metaphorically the care of people, first spiritually and then more broadly for their whole wellbeing. During a recent discussion on pastoral care for humans I realised I’ve come full circle with the term: pastoral care perfectly describes how I manage my flock: feeding, protecting and guiding my sheep. it was a lovely epiphany, not least because it is such an encompassing concept, describing the many and diverse strategies I employ to maximise the wellbeing of my flock.
When I first moved to Oatlands, I heard about a school Pastoral Care program at our local public school. I assumed it was a religious program of some sort, and as a firm believer in the separation of church and state, I felt rather disapproving. It is only recently, in conversation with the wonderful woman who was at the time chaplain for the school’s pastoral care program, that I learned the program had nothing to do with religion, but rather involved a whole of school approach to supporting students and their families, helping students to thrive in the school environment. In fact, under federal funding rules, school chaplains cannot deliver religious instruction or proselytise in public schools in Australia.
We (the lambing ewes and I) are nearing the end our six week lambing period, which, I am delighted to report, has gone far better than last year’s . Pastoral care of lambing ewes is a delicate balance of vigilance and restraint during the daily- or twice-daily, round of the small flock to see if all is well, and if not, knowing when it is worth disturbing the whole flock to intervene with a ewe in strife.
I’ve had two episodes in the last couple of weeks of lambing that tested my judgement. In the first, one ewe was clearly not quite right, still on her feet, but squatting and straining, then straightening and walking away. I decided it was a situation in which the balance leaned toward intervention, and so went up quite close to the flock. In the end, after half and hour or so of tracking her on foot, with the whole flock milling about more than I like, I gave up the effort, choosing to wait to see if the ewe manages on her own, or lies down long enough for me to catch and treat her, as I did a ewe a few days ago. A few days later, I decided to intervene after all, and she is currently in the yards, with two wethers for company, awaiting the vet to see if we can figure out what’s going on. She had her lamb, apparently, before I first found her, so the issue isn’t a dead lamb unable to emerge. We just haven’t figured out what’s causing the squatting.
The second example happened with the last ewe to lamb.
Pastoral care of the lambing ewes extends beyond the daily rounds, though. It began with trying to figure out what happened last year and how to avoid a repeat. The main losses last year resulted from an epidemic of a bacterium called ‘campylobacter’ which causes late term abortions in sheep. The solution was to vaccinate all the ewes, and as far as I know there were no cases this year. However, the other stress on the ewes last year was removing them from the social structure of the main flock. Fixing that challenge was more difficult.
Sheep are deeply social animals, and for 11 years I have allowed my sheep to remain in a single, intergenerational flock, now comprised of animals from 1 to 15 years of age. Lambs are not weaned, but stay with their mothers, uncles, grandmothers and siblings all their lives, learning how to thrive in our farm environment. For various reasons, I stopped lambing with my flock from 2020 to 2024, buying in wether (boy) lambs to replace the 30 or so sheep that die of natural causes each year. This turned out to be unsatisfactory, not only because mamas teach their babies how feed themselves in a diverse ecosystem, but also because mamas teach their babies manners. The bought lambs suffered from nutrition ignorance for the first year or so, and mannerlessness ever since, making it harder for me to manage them well.
The hiatus in lambing on my own property meant that the youngest ewes I had to put to Pip the ram last year were 5 and 6 year old ‘maiden’ ewes. Not only had they themselves not lambed, they hadn’t even had the experience of participating as observers when their mothers lambed. I compounded the problem by taking the maiden ewes out of the main flock, and sequestering them in their own paddock. It’s a good one, with lots of shelter, plant diversity, and highly nutritious lucerne. On the face of it, my pastoral care was above reproach. On the ground, though, I believe the flock did not thrive emotionally in the absence of the social support they were used to, having lived within the main flock all their lives.
I determined I would change that this year, and hatched a plan to leave the lambing ewes with the main flock for lambing, an approach which has its own risks. It’s harder to find a ewe who has wandered off from the flock to have her lamb in peace and quiet when the flock I occupying a large amount of real estate. Also, ewes with lambs move about more slowly than the whole flock, which could result in lambs getting left behind. And the whole flock doesn’t have the same need for high energy density feed as do the lactating ewes, so may lead them away from forage that would supply them with all they need to make lots (about 2 litres a day) of milk to support their lambs.
As it happens, my plan was pre-empted by a diagnosis of yet a different disease in the whole flock: ovine johnes disease or OJD, which has required me to sort through the main flock several times over the last few months. Rather than put the pregnant ewes through that stress, and also to isolate them from any OJD-positive sheep, I once again removed them to their own paddock. This time, though, I came up with a work-around, with help from my friend Claudia Benn. Claudia is a Nuffield Scholar, working on a project about ‘natural intelligence’ in livestock, and has become a valued colleague. On her family’s Queensland cattle station, she too wanted her cows to calve in the herd, but was voted down.
Together, we came up with the idea of putting some of the close relatives of the ewes/cows with them for lambing/calving. She was able to identify the mothers of the calving cows as well as their previous year’s calves, giving them three generations of social support. I put last year’s lambs (all from these ewes) and the ewes’ brothers in the lambing flock, so two generations. It meant my lambing flock swelled to 70 from 30.
The first set of twins at about 2 days old. Rocky, my pet lamb from last year, is in the foreground. He, Freddie and Zac are all part of the extended lambing flock. Freddie and Zac are brothers to the lambing ewes, who are distinguishable by the green dots on their bottoms. I planned to use those dots to help me find the ewes in the main flock when they were spread out in a big paddock. The green dots were at least very useful when I ended up having to pull the ewes out of the main flock well before lambing!
The short answer is it seems to have worked beautifully, evidenced mostly by the way the group has moved through the lambing paddocks. Last year and early in this season, the small isolated group of ewes hung together either in one limited area of the paddock or near a fence dividing them from the main flock. As soon as I added last year’s lambs and the ewes’ brothers into the mix, the whole lot began moving freely, and have done so the whole of lambing.
Individual ewes will still move a little away from the flock when they are ready to lamb, and may keep their distance for a day or two. I think the separation is to allow the lamb to firmly bond with his own mother, and not get ‘borrowed’ by a ewe who is close to lambing or who has lost her lamb. Imprinting, the process of a baby anything bonding with its mother (whether birth mother or foster mother) only takes a short time — hours at most — so my theory about staying away for a day or two is that the time is for resting up and strengthening that bond, much as human mothers do.,
In my youth, I was taught not to ‘anthropomorphise’ animals: that is, not to imbue them with human characteristics and motivations. Phooey. Working with my sheep, both as individuals and a family, has made me confident that recognising the characteristics and motivations we have in common with animals vastly improves our ability to provide effective, empathetic pastoral care.