I'm going to talk about sheep death again.  I'm working on an infographic about the finer points of hay making, but it's progressing slowly.  Until then, sheep.

Barns are huge and simple on the outside, complex and confining on the inside.  I imagine there are different barns for different farms, but my employer's barn works like this:

• The top level is a large hayloft.  There is a chute in the middle for hay which descends to the middle level
• The middle level is where the more demanding animals (carewise) are kept.  Also the shearing room and corn storage.
• The basement is open at one end for a small herd of sheep can shelter.  The rest of the pens down here are unoccupied except for a pair of evasive kittens.  

The middle level is fascinating.  The pens are divided by sheep category.  This is something I'll get into later.  For now, the important pen is for nursing mothers.  Only ewes with suckling lambs go here while all other ewes go to the basement.  Lambs who are suckling go in a different pen.

Two days ago, there was a sheep riot.  Like a prison riot, but with the lamb kind of shank, not the sharpened toothbrush kind of shank.  The older lambs got out and mixed in with the milking mothers. Once we sorted them out, we found a dead lamb.  She was either trampled or an existing condition was exacerbated by the shortage of food (that's just my guess I really have no idea).

The lambless ewe was moved downstairs.

Later that day, it was raining.  I was shoveling poop and dumping it out the back of the middle level into the pen of the basement sheep.  Sheep eat anything and will graze their poop piles for undigested corn.  As I took a breather, looking over the outside basement pen, I saw the xed out sheep.  

Blue x on her soaked back, she stood halfway up the refuse pile.  She was staring at the corner of the barn wall, a little down and to the left of the door.  I was pretty confused.  Then I realized that she was staring at the spot where her lamb had died.  So I turned around and went back into the barn for another  wheel barrow load of sodden straw.  

I'm doing the bi-annual cleaning of a pen.  In the pen are currently an ewe and her two lambs.  They are kept separate because the ewe cannot produce enough milk for twins. I told them my life concerns and they listened patiently.  The farmer said talking to the sheep is alright, the problem is once they start talking back.  

She was out there yesterday as well.  I accidentally threw a load of refuse on her and had to climb out down the pile to dig her out.  The farmer told me that once one of his farm hands did that and buried a sheep.  They didn't find her until four days later when the pile started to reek.  

So I've buried pets.  I buried a bunny we lost to a heart attack.  I lost many good fish to a black cat.  I lost a rat to cancer.  I lost her sister to a broken heart.  But I still have no idea what conclusion to draw from animal death.  

I don't know if she's still out there.  The farmer said they usually forget about their dead lamb after a few days.  So here's a picture of the puppy (Nick's dad's puppy, Molly) who keeps trying to interrupt this post to play ball.  In the movies, the dog always dies and the sheep...there isn't sheep death in movies.  This ain't the movies.