Sheep Traders and Others

New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 925, 3 May 1957, Page 9

Sheep Traders and Others

by

SUNDOWNER

APRIL 11

who pulls me up when I stray too far from the scientific fold, has sent me documentary and statistical proof that I should have bought the pen of Cheviot Half-breds I saw recently at Addington. Though I would have lost some wool I would have tailed more lambs and A FRIEND at Massey College,

on the Dalance have been a gainer. Of course, I like gain as much as

any man, but if profit were my only interest in sheep I would not often buy them. There is no profit in the smell of sheep, in their melancholy voices, or their dimly lit faces. I make nothing out of watching them, mustering them, counting them, or dagging them. It puts nothing in my pocket if I succeed in counting their nibbles for one whole minute, persuade one to stand while I scratch its ear, or trace resemblances in their faces to men and women I have seen or known or talked to. Most of the hours I spend with them are a dead loss if the test is material. But if pleasure is profit they make me richer every day. I like some breeds better than other breeds-Merinos, for example, better than Lincolns or Leicesters; but they all bring me something that I would not willingly surrender. I was tempted to buy the Cheviots because they held up their heads and their ears and walked on their toes. That was good enough reason for my style of farming. But if they had brought me other reasons-reasons spelt with an L., or an S. or a D.-they would, it would be humbug not to admit, have been doubly _§acceptable. There will, of course, be other sales, but there is a big D.V. between the Cheviots still to be born and my ability to bid for them. I may, like the politicians, have to give my answer in another place. * *

APRIL 14

T is a shock to be shocked by news that should not shock us; by news that should not be news, and once was not. That happened to me today when I

read that the Arabs still issue licences to slave traders. I must have known that before I read it today, and if I

did, I should not have allowed myself to forget it. But when we spend

our time with cows and sheep, speak more often to our dogs than to our neighbours, and listen to the magpies more regularly than to the radio, human abominations sometimes fade. And we should not let them fade. Living naturally should not be an escape from living artificially, but a foil to it. If we are lucky enough to escape ourselves we should behave as prisoners of war do when they break out-think constantly of those still trapped and work for their liberation. But it is not easy to remain angrily aware of facts of which we have never had first-hand knowledge. I can be sick after selling a cow to a butcher because I have affection for my cows and have been through a slaughterhouse; but the slave market of Mecca is shadowy, remote, and unreal. I have to pull myself together to see it, or believe in it, or worry about it. Yet in a recent report by the Anti-Slave Society, whose director is a former’ Chief Justice of a British colony, the price of an able-bodied slave labourer is quoted at £150, of a young girl at £400, and the number of slaves in Arabia at more than half a million. The verses we memorised at school about an Arab’s farewell to his steed were always ridiculous, but no one could be romantic enough to write such nonsense today when the Arab’s dilemma is not whether he will starve or walk, but whether he will buy a new car or another girl. Oil has made both expenditures easy. a * *

APRIL 16

\WHEN I tie Betty in the garden for half a day she usually takes an hour or more to find her mates after I liberate her. When she calls there is no answer, and her nose fails her before she has gone a hundred yards. But today, although everything seemed to be

against her-no_ recent tracks, no recent calls, and the other cows out of sight over the hillshe was back with them in five minutes. When I first freed her she stood

and cCalied, and if there was an answer I could not hear it. Then she lifted her nose and moved it slowly through a quarter circle

visibly sniffing. When this, too, seemed to fail, she called again, moved

forward & few yards and sniffed again, then started off at once in the right direction. Whether it was her ears or her nose that gave her the clue I could hot now decide, since there was no message to my own organs; but she did not stop again or hesitate. Whatever she sensed, and however she sensed it, the message to her was sufficient. In general, I think that cattle find their way about very much as we do, but with a little more assistance from their noses. Their eyes tell them less, their ears, I imagine, about as much as ours, but their noses a great deal more when conditions are favourable. I have seen Elsie, when she had a calf some weeks.old which had wandered away while she was shut in, track it as soon as she was free with her nose close to the ground and moving faster than I could walk. But with the wind against them I have seen both my cows bellowing all day for day-old calves tied only a few yards behind a laurel hedge. My own hearing is no longer good, and I therefore do not trust my failure to catch a call that may have reached them from half a mile away. But their eyes are neither so accurate, so farseeing, or so selective as my ownpartly, of course, because their brains help them. less. I am happy to have it like this-to know that if I am a more cunning beast than a cow, I am not much better equipped for finding my way through that part of the world with which we are both equally familiar. If I, with luck, can find a needle in a haystack, Elsie can detect the smell of dog or cat there long after it has ceased to say anything to me. (To be continued)