These are the real masters of the place - the run is theirs, not
yours: you cannot bear this in mind too diligently. All considerations
of pleasantness of site must succumb to this. You must fix on such a
situation as not to cut up the run, by splitting off a little corner too
small to give the sheep free scope and room. They will fight rather shy
of your homestead, you may be certain; so the homestead must be out of
their way. You MUST, however, have water and firewood at hand, which is
a great convenience, to say nothing of the saving of labour and expense.
Therefore, if you can find a bush near a stream, make your homestead on
the lee side of it. A stream is a boundary, and your hut, if built in
such a position, will interfere with your sheep as little as possible.
The sheep will make for rising ground and hill-side to camp at night,
and generally feed with their heads up the wind, if it is not too
violent. As your mob increases, you can put an out-station on the other
side the run.
In order to prevent the sheep straying beyond your boundaries, keep ever
hovering at a distance round them, so far off that they shall not be
disturbed by your presence, and even be ignorant that you are looking at
them. Sheep cannot be too closely watched, or too much left to
themselves. You must remember they are your masters, and not you
theirs; you exist for them, not they for you. If you bear this well in
mind, you will be able to turn the tables on them effectually at
shearing-time. But if you once begin to make the sheep suit their
feeding-hours to your convenience, you may as well give up sheep-farming
at once. You will soon find the mob begin to look poor, your percentage
of lambs will fall off, and in fact you will have to pay very heavily
for saving your own trouble, as indeed would be the case in every
occupation or profession you might adopt.
Of course you will have to turn your sheep back when they approach the
boundary of your neighbour. Be ready, then, at the boundary. You have
been watching them creeping up in a large semicircle toward the
forbidden ground. As long as they are on their own run let them alone,
give them not a moment's anxiety of mind; but directly they reach the
boundary, show yourself with your dog in your most terrific aspect.
Startle them, frighten them, disturb their peace; do so again and again,
at the same spot, from the very first day. Let them always have peace
on their own run, and none anywhere off it. In a month or two you will
find the sheep begin to understand your meaning, and it will then be
very easy work to keep them within bounds. If, however, you suffer them
to have half an hour now and then on the forbidden territory, they will
be constantly making for it. The chances are that the feed is good on
or about the boundary, and they will be seduced by this to cross, and go
on and on till they are quite beyond your control.
You will have burnt a large patch of feed on the outset. Burn it in
early spring, on a day when rain appears to be at hand. It is dangerous
to burn too much at once: a large fire may run farther than you wish,
and, being no respecter of imaginary boundaries, will cross on to your
neighbour's run without compunction and without regard to his sheep, and
then heavy damages will be brought against you. Burn, however, you
must; so do it carefully. Light one strip first, and keep putting it
out by beating it with leafy branches, This will form a fireproof
boundary between you and your neighbour.
Burnt feed means contented and well-conditioned sheep. The delicately
green and juicy grass which springs up after burning is far better for
sheep than the rank and dry growth of summer after it has been withered
by the winter's frosts. Your sheep will not ramble, for if they have
plenty of burnt pasture they are contented where they are. They feed in
the morning, bunch themselves together in clusters during the heat of
the day, and feed again at night.
Moreover, on burnt pasture, no fire can come down upon you from your
neighbour so as to hurt your sheep.
The day will come when you will have no more occasion for burning, when
your run will be fully stocked, and the sheep will keep your feed so
closely cropped that it will do without it. It is certainly a
mortification to see volumes of smoke rising into the air, and to know
that all that smoke might have been wool, and might have been sold by
you for 2s. a pound in England. You will think it great waste, and
regret that you have not more sheep to eat it. However, that will come
to pass in time; and meanwhile, if you have not mouths enough upon your
run to make wool of it, you must burn it off and make smoke of it
instead. There is sure to be a good deal of rough scrub and brushwood
on the run, which is better destroyed, and which sheep would not touch;
therefore, for the ultimate value of your run, it is as well or better
that it should be fired than fed off.
The very first work to be done after your arrival will be to make a yard
for your sheep. Make this large enough to hold five or six times as
many sheep as you possess at first.
