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.
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