(continued from last post) At the point when I began calling her Blind Mama, she was following the flock by listening to the sound of their movement, but when they stopped to graze, she would lose them.  Hence, in order to figure out where they were she would constantly bleat.  At first several would respond to her.  I could hear them calling back to her, and hear her responding until she was once again in proximity and safety with the others.  But occasionally they would leave her alone in the pasture and come back to the barnyard for water or shade. This day, evidently, none of the flock was responding…

  I was making my way across the yard from the garden when I discerned a faint bleating floating down the hill from the pasture.  Listening for a response from the rest of the flock, I heard nothing.  Blind Mama was in trouble again.  The house had been my destination, but instead, I turned to the hillside and made my way up the rocky path to the pasture.  As I rounded the rise of the hill, on my right I could see the flock of sheep quite unconcernedly grazing in tall green prairie grass.  The sound of the bleating was coming from my left.  Poor Mama.  She was lost, totally.…

Journal Entry  for July 1990 The morning is cool – a refreshing change from the upper nineties and low one hundred degree weather of this past week.  Its  “due time” for Lucy, Reppert’s Jersey mama.  We are keeping her in our barnyard for the time being since I can keep a close watch on her while I tend our own calves.  I have been out several times to check on her and the other three,  Emma, our Jersey, and her two calves. I have taken some time to sit on the hillside to enjoy the drama of this barnyard nursery.  Lucy and Emma are contentedly tossing small piles of strewn…