SMART SHEEP

I wanted to make real Haloumi cheese, so I acquired 2 day-old East Friesan lambs, Daisy and Rosemary. All their family had botanical names, so I kept the tradition.

Snoodles was obsessed with them from day one. They in turn, loved and accepted her immediately as a potential mother and milkbar. Their udder-seeking head-butts were their sole and inadvertent retaliations to her rough games.

If lambs, without ovine mothers to teach them better, have an outstanding quality, it is their total trust. No doubt the result of their own mild natures.

Then, they never complain. When they got flystrike, which seems inevitable in Northland summers, I was distraught, but they didn't murmur, just lay down and looked sad. The treatment must have caused some distress as I tried scraping off the monstrous maggots to see how deep they'd burrowed into the tender pink skins. The powder applied to their wounds must have caused some discomfort, but not a sound - like a lamb to the slaughter and the silence of the lambs are true epithets.

And, they have no sense of revenge. Daisy loved me ever after and would come running at the sound of my voice, her lambs at her heels.

Stupid animals? Not at all!

Basil, Daisy's first ram lamb whom I gave to friends, a gentle and friendly fellow who had never been handled other than once for his injections and de-tailing, is evidence for the defence.

Three years after he'd gone to 'stud' - a prolific sire of mainly twins and some triplets - I visited his owners who were shearing.

As I was chatting to one, suddenly, a loud bleat, a ram rushing up to me, and then my hand being licked. It was Basil. He remembered me.

Truly, My sheep know My voice.