Having successfully negotiated this year’s lambing but worried about the Schmallenburg virus next year, my mind turned to getting the lambs ready for market throughout the summer. This involves feeding and keeping a lookout for worms, foot rot, maggots and abnormal ovine behaviour.
Even normal sheep behaviour is interesting as they are not as daft as some folk believe, and if a particular ewe learns to trust you this can work wonders in getting an entire flock to do your bidding. At feeding time the first one to see you alerts the rest, and within seconds fifty or so voices are raised in a chorus of expectation.
In our case, after weighing nuts into buckets we take them to the troughs, but it is at this point that the fun begins. Climbing a gate and walking directly to a trough is nigh on impossible as the sheep cluster around too tightly and you are likely to find yourself sprawled on the ground surrounded by enthusiastic animals eagerly munching the spilt contents of your buckets.
Being face down in mud can inspire the mind of the shepherd to develop alternative strategies such as pretending to go around a building one way but actually coming around another or throwing apples in one direction whilst sneaking up with nuts from another.
Whatever the ruse employed the canny ewes will rumble it and, short of putting feed out in a building with the doors shut, the shepherd must learn to live with a jostling crowd of excited animals around his or her knees during feeding time.
I mentioned earlier that when the first sheep to see us begins to baa that the rest immediately follow suit. Their behaviour quickly alerts an entire flock to food or danger. However, let us suppose that the first sheep to baa has misinterpreted what it has seen and is wrong. Too late, the rest will be noisily baaing in error.
I don’t know if the flock will eventually ignore the ewe that gets it wrong, but thinking readers will already have drawn a similarity between the behaviour of sheep and those people who simply repeat what they hear without giving a thought to the credibility of the source.
With this thought in mind, it is possible that we may be underrating baaing sheep. After all we actually pay people to act like them. Think, for example of how the BBC and newspapers react to tales about BSE. Foot and Mouth, Bovine TB and every report on food safety. At the first baa from a pressure group they then rush around building a cacophony of echoing sound.
This Media behaviour is predictable and in the same way as the shepherd uses his knowledge of ovine behaviour, so too those who want to manipulate the way the public think.
For example, an organisation may issue a press-release phrased so as to make it easy for a busy journalist to rewrite the story in their own words but in a way which matches what the press officer wants us to read. In fact, Public Relations (PR) is used by celebrities, pressure groups, political parties, and others precisely for that purpose.
No wonder Isaiah could say. “All we like sheep are gone astray.”
Talking of being led astray however reminds me of those militant secularists who are increasingly intolerant of those who value the faith of our ancestors. Only today I read that after complaints from the National Secular Society, Trading Standards Officers have banned leaflets from Christian groups in Nottingham and Bradford on Avon which say ‘God can heal.’
Could it be that Trading Standards are simply echoing a baa from one sheep without assessing its impact on the rest of the flock?
Secular intolerance is not however confined to Britain, but the following story from Kansas shows how the US judicial system appears to be more in touch with popular opinion.
A militant atheist appeared in court claiming discrimination on the grounds that Christians and Jews have religious holidays but that there are none for atheists. The Judge listened carefully to his lawyer before announcing, “Case dismissed!”
“But there is no holiday for him,” cried the lawyer! To which the judge replied, “your case is based on an ignorance of history because he does get a holiday.’ He continued;
Psalm 14.1, reads that the fool says in his heart there is no God, and as your client is a fool and as April 1st is all fools day, that is his holiday.”
Court adjourned !
View from the Pew 