Sharing your life with animals you're always learning something new, and one thing that surprised me was discovering that the boy lambs had quite definite personality differences from the girls.
After my ewes produced only ram lambs for several years in a row (just my luck!) I was used to what I thought of as 'standard' lamb behaviour. When finally a couple of little girls came along I had quite a surprise to discover how different they were from the boys... To put it briefly, those of the female variety were quite a bit less energetic and a lot more polite!
The boys spent a lot of time racketing round the fenceline in a little gang and doing risky and elaborate leaps and then pausing to look nonchalantly at the girls to see if they were watching. The girls would be sitting primly in a row being ladylike and pretending not to look and you could almost hear their thoughts. "Show offs... what's so cool about that".
The boys, eventually tiring of this, would decide it was time for a drink, and make a beeline for their mums who were sitting down chewing the cud trying to enjoy a little 'me time'. This being no good at all for drinking purposes, their irrepressible offspring would scrape vigorously on their backs with a hoof until they stood up. The ewes would often try to ignore this until it got so annoying they gave in.
On the odd occasion one held out against the onslaught, the boy would change his tactics and bounce off the ground on all four feet and land plonk right on top of the ewe. And back off again. Repeated ad infinitum until milk bar was revealed. It got instant results without fail. The girls on the other hand would never dream of doing such a thing.
It was also the boys that broke into my vege garden and created havoc for 10 minutes until I got them out again. Also one of the male variety who somehow managed to get all four hooves through the holes of a loose piece of sheep netting and pronked about the paddock in a panic like a springbok. Extracting him from that was quite a feat!
The first time I had mixed lambs I thought maybe this was coincidence, but after nearly 10 years I now have to conclude that it's not. Cheeky little rascals, the boys, but you can't help being fond of them!
