The Contraption

I had been wanting one since we started raising sheep six or seven years ago. I’d seen one at my friend Andy’s farm, where we purchased the first couple of ewes (Apple and Myrtle) and the young ram (Mac) that started our flock. It was in a separate little pen by itself, a gleaming blue contraption of steel pipes and bars, gratings, handles, and levers. The kind of thing that would capture any man’s attention.

“What’s that?” I asked as we stalked Apple through the pasture, trying to catch her and drag her into the goat tote that was strapped to my trailer. This was so early in my farming career that I didn’t even have a pick-up truck yet.

“It’s a tilting-table,” Andy said, calmly and quietly as he snuck up behind Apple. “You might want one.”

“For sure,” I said. “What’s it do?”

He didn’t answer immediately—about that time, he snapped his right arm forward and grabbed Apple’s rear leg (think of a frog catching a fly). Apple suddenly went wide-eyed and jerked a little, but it was too late. Andy had her in his grip. He picked up her hind legs and walked her like a wheel-barrow toward the trailer.

“Well,” he said, after getting Apple up the ramp and safely in to the goat tote. “You put your sheep in it, close it, and tilt it so that you can trim their hooves, give them shots, or do whatever you need to do.”

I slid the gate shut and watched Apple shake it off and take in her new surroundings. “Wow,” I said, a little wide-eyed myself.

“Makes things a lot easier.”

“I’m sure.” I had no idea.

I had always thought of sheep as docile animals, and they are, generally. They don’t want much—feed, water, other sheep, and to be left mostly alone. It’s good for them to have a basic shelter, but a simple three-sided structure with a roof is enough even in the coldest weather. Unlike goats, they don’t seem to mind the rain. They’ll happily stand outside the gate in a downpour, waiting for me to emerge from the barn with the grain bucket or a few flakes of hay. And whereas goats are like dogs and will often vie for your attention, sheep generally stand back and watch.

—–

My oldest son, Arlo, who has studied such things, tells me that pastoral poetry is never really about taking care of animals. He made that pronouncement one day while he was helping me wrestle a two-hundred-pound ram to the ground in order to trim his hooves. It was a hot day in June, and we were sweating and dirty. We had trapped half a dozen full-grown sheep and eight or ten lambs in the barn, so that we could catch them in order to trim their hooves and give them their annual vaccinations. The temperature and humidity in the barn were rapidly rising from all that nervous sheep energy and hot breath.

We were on the third or fourth hoof-trim of the day, sheep poop was ground into the knees of my khakis, and there was a brownish-green stain vaguely resembling the Nike “Just Do It” logo across the front of my t-shirt, when Arlo said, “You know, they don’t write about this part.”

“Huh?” I said. “Who? What? What are you talking about?”

“The poets. Pastoral poets. You know, like Milton.”

The first Milton that came to mind was Milton Bradley, but that wasn’t who he meant. I didn’t have long to think about it, though. The ram, Jose, did not like being on his back, and he made sure we knew about it. He snorted and kicked his hind legs wildly as I grabbed one and raised the clippers. “I don’t wonder why,” I said, jerking back, trying keep my teeth from being kicked in.

“They usually write love poems,” he said. “Or poems, you know, extolling the virtues of poetry and rural life. I don’t think any of the poets ever actually worked on a farm.”

“Hmmm,” I said, scraping out the hard, dried muck that had collected between the two halves of Mac’s left rear hoof. Sheep hooves grow from the outside—long, thick flaps that fold under and collect dirt, poop, and whatever else is on the ground—grinding and mashing it. It’s a form of alchemy, transforming elements of the dross world into the essence of something other-worldly. Or maybe it is the essence of this world. At any rate, I cut too deep, and bright red blood flowed into the mix. It’s always a little shocking to see the sudden red ooze, but it never seems to hurt the animal, and the bleeding usually stops quickly, so it’s not a problem, except for the laundry.  

—–

Trimming hooves is one of the most physically demanding jobs that I do on the farm. Usually, it’s just Vanessa and me out there, trying to wrestle them to the ground, getting their hooves up in the air. Sometimes, if I can catch one off guard, I can slowly bend down, reach underneath, grab the front and rear legs on the opposite side, and flip the poor animal onto its back before it realizes what’s happening. Once they’re on their back, most are more-or-less docile, though there is always a lot of snorting and eye-rolling, and sometimes there’s kicking and flailing.

There is a way to sit a sheep down on its rear end so that it becomes docile and easy to control. It’s an old sheep-shearers’ trick that, I believe, utilizes The Force. I’ve heard about it and even seen it performed on a YouTube video. The process involves grabbing the sheep’s snout in one hand and twisting its head around to its shoulders while applying pressure to the animal’s tail. Somehow, that magically puts a full-grown, frightened sheep on its butt and gives you temporary control of its free will. It all seems very Jedi-like to me, however, and I figure I have about as much chance of accomplishing it as I have of swamp-rat bombing the Death Star. 

That’s why I wanted a contraption.

—–

In theory, here’s how the contraption works: You get your sheep to line up, they step into the chamber one at a time, you close the gate behind them so they can’t escape, you pull a lever to close walls around them until they’re snug, you turn the table so that their hooves are pointing up at about a 45 degree angle, you drop the floor grating, and that gives you access to hooves, teats, gonads, and anything else located at the bottom of a sheep. You do your business. Then you lift and re-latch the floor, return the sheep to an upright position, loosen the walls, open the front gate to let the sheep out, close the front gate and open the rear gate, allowing admittance to let the next happy animal. Repeat. It’s all very slick, according to the ads.

The problem is cost. They start at about $1,500 and go up in price quickly.  Since we seldom have more than six or eight full-grown sheep at a time, and they need to have their hooves trimmed twice a year at most, it just didn’t seem cost effective.

Then last fall Andy called. His kids had bought him a new tilting table for his birthday, and he was wanting to sell his old one—that shiny blue tangle of bars, grates, and levers I had seen so many years ago. And the best part was the price—$150.

I picked it up in October.

—–

It sat out near the barn all winter. Older now, the bright blue had faded and there was a little surface rust, but mechanically everything was solid. All the levers worked, all the latches latched, the front and rear gates slid open and closed easily, and the two axles holding the pivot joints rotated smoothly. It was like a pair of old jeans—broken in, comfortable, maybe even stylish in a rustic, back-of-the-farm kind of way.

In May I moved the contraption into the pasture and set up a chute for the sheep to line up in. The videos and the books all suggest using portable panels that can be arranged in a long, V-shaped configuration. The panels need to be at least three feet tall, so the sheep can’t see over them, and solid, so the sheep can’t see through them. The idea is that you herd your sheep into the V, cutting off their escape and forcing them into a straight line. The only way out, they realize, is through the contraption.

Again, however, the problem was cost. All those panels would cost another grand or more. So I improvised, using old pieces of plywood, cattle panels (which are 16 foot lengths of heavy gauge fencing), and a series of blue tarps that I had laying around the barn. I propped the whole thing up with T-bars, baling twine and duct tape.  It looked great.

But the sheep were not impressed. In fact, they were downright skeptical. They kept crowding together at the other end of the pasture, as far away as possible from what must have looked to them like an approaching Death Star.

Give them a couple of days, I thought. They’ll get used to it. I can wait them out.

I was right to wait. A day or so later, they were grazing back in the area near the contraption, so I got a grain bucket, trying to lead a few of them into the wide part of the V, which was easy enough. The problem was they wouldn’t continue down the chute toward the chamber. Every time I tried to move them in that direction, they bolted. So, I built a gate across the open end of the V, using T-bars, a couple of old wooden pallets and baling twine.

The problem was they were afraid of the gates and wouldn’t go near them even for the sweetest bucket of grain. Give them a couple of days, I thought. They’ll get used to it.

Of course, they did. So, on a bright blue morning last May, I got three or four full-grown ewes, a two-hundred-pound ram, and just under half a dozen two-month old lambs trapped in a makeshift chute of wooden pallets, old tarps, T-bars, and duct tape. The remainder of the flock was out in the pasture, holding Last Rites.

I still couldn’t get any of the sheep to step into the actual contraption. They kept as far away from it as possible, practically climbing over each other to get out. The poor lambs, who didn’t even need to be there, caught the worst of it. “Baah! Baah!” they cried, and, “Maaaah! Maaah!”

Vanessa was just on the other side of the makeshift panels. She was getting worried and excited because of the lambs. I was getting frustrated and running out of options, or so I thought. Finally, I grabbed a hundred-and-fifty-pound ewe and dragged her twenty feet toward the contraption. Of course, she was in full-brake mode and punching reverse most of the way. But I wasn’t going to let her go, by God. She was going into that machine come hell or high water.

It turned out to be high water. She peed. All down my jeans.

I shoved her through the gate and slammed it shut.

The problem was that I was on the inside of the chute, and I needed to be on the outside in order to operate the contraption. So, I slipped past the pile of bleating sheep at the other end of the chute and cracked open one side of the homemade pallet-gate. When I did, one of the frantic ewes saw her chance and darted through the opening. Then they all rushed out, like water from a failing dam.

—–

I don’t remember much about trimming the hooves of the one ewe I had loaded into the chamber. It all went by so fast that all I have is a few faded snapshots, like old Polaroids, yellowing and a little ragged around the edges:

The ewe in the contraption was nearly catatonic with fear by the time I got there.

The machine worked fine, but she didn’t know where to put her legs, and it seemed like they were sticking out random slots. At one point, it looked like she had five hooves.

Vanessa yelled, “Oh my god, you’re breaking her leg!” Or maybe it was me who yelled that. It must have been Vanessa.

At another point, I yelled at Vanessa, “Go away! Just leave me alone!” and within five seconds cried, “Come back here!”

Within two more seconds, I yelled, “Please!”

I stood outside the contraption, dirty, exhausted, and scared, staring at an upside-down ewe, and soaked with sheep pee.

There must be a poem here somewhere, I thought. Or maybe not.

—–

I sold the contraption that summer. I listed it at the bottom of an ad that I ran for “Full-blooded, Registered, White-faced Dorpers.” I sold most of the eighteen sheep we had as well, keeping only two ewes, a ram, a couple of wethers and two young rams that did not sell yet, but that’s a whole other story.  I asked $150 for the contraption.

The fellow who bought it was about my age, his mid-sixties. He said he and his wife were just starting a small flock somewhere in northern Alabama. Nice people. They came by one day in late July and we loaded the machine onto his flatbed trailer. I had held it for him for over a month by then. Men kept calling to see if it was still for sale, and I could have sold it a dozen times. Some of them offered me more money than I was asking, but I already had a deal, and going back on it didn’t seem right.

The man and his wife from northern Alabama drove off, happy with their new purchase, heading for the big sheep sale that week end in Cookeville.

Good luck, I thought as their tail lights disappeared down the driveway. And I meant it.