It’s hard to know how sheep are sometimes, especially when they have a thick coat of wool. Traditionally, when the sheep are shorn (ours were shorn a couple of weeks ago), the shearer is expected to give us his or her views about how the sheep look.

They will tell us if they are too heavy or too light or if their is an infection or grow that needs medical treatment. Like most people with farm animals, we are wary of calling the Large Animal Vet. It’s $200 for just showing up, and they leave a ton of needles and medicines, because they can’t come around often to check.

Liz Willis, our shearer told us that Zelda, a Cheviot,  and Griselle, a Romney, were much too think. We didn’t see it because both had thick coats. Zelda, who is one of our oldest sheep,  has lost most of her teeth is probably having trouble grinding the hay down with her mouth.

Griselle has her teeth, but she is very old (we don’t know how old) and her ribs were sticking out, a warning sign. We aren’t sure that either on of them will be hardly enough to get through another upstate New York winter, we will decide that in November.

In the meantime we give them nutrient rich sheep grain every way.

We take stewardship of our animals seriously, and if there is any way to get both of them healthy without spending thousands of dollars we will do it. If not, we will not subject them to another winter with so much body fat gone.

Each day, we get the two into the barn.

Without Red, this was chaotic at first. All the sheep and the donkeys tried to thunder in, but we figured it out, we were able to isolate Zelda and Griselle and now the two of them come running in while the other sheep are eating some hay or looking elsewhere.

The thing about sheep is that they give up after awhile, you just have to be stubborn and keep at it. Once they get it, they are easier to handle.

So this adds to our list of chores, and we take it very seriously.

They’re figure out the drill. Red would have handled this easily, but he’s not in shape to do that any longer. As you know, Fate is many wonderful things, but being useful is not one of them.

We see marked progress in both of them in just a week. Zelda is getting a belly and Griselle’s ribs are disappearing. This graining may be a permanent part of both of their lives.