The shepherd’s day begins half an hour before dawn, when he takes the sheep out to graze and roam for three hours. The pasture is shared with boars, gazelles, birds, snakes and scorpions, wild dogs, and much other wild life. The flock is divided so that only the pregnant females go out to graze – before dawn and towards dusk. The males and all of the newborns up to the age of six months remain behind in a sort of convalescent home. These sheep are fed hay, corn and a mixture of supplements.
Today, Eli and Avichai are focused on increasing the size of their herd. The fact that sheep usually give birth to twins, sometimes triplets or even quadruplets, makes this an easy goal to accomplish. The ration of rams to sheep is kept at about 1 to 30. Most of the males are separated from the herd and given a high fat diet to prepare them for the meat market. At six months, the young ram weighs between 60 to 70 kilos. Which seems to promise a good profit…unless the Israeli market becomes flooded with imported mutton from Australia. “Last year, the ship carrying the mutton developed engine trouble in the middle of the Indian Ocean,” recalls Eli. The prolonged sea voyage resulted in a loss of mutton that proved profitable to the partners.
Like most things today, sheep rearing has become a computerized process. “Every sheep has a number and we track it to keep tabs on its eating habits, weight, vaccinations and birthing schedule,” explains Eli. When the females are ready to mate, when they are about eight months old or six to eight weeks after giving birth, they join the males for a few days. Sheep that are due to give birth within ten days of each other are grouped together to follow their progress more easily. “Right now, we have a group of thirty expectant mothers,” says Eli. But even with their computerized system, there are still surprises. “Sometimes an expectant mother isn’t able to walk for a few days before the baby is born. But at other times, you can turn your back for two seconds in the field and then suddenly there’s a lamb.” When the shepherds notice the birth (which is most of the time), they try to keep the mother close to her young so that she is fully aware that she just gave birth. “Sometimes, it slips their notice,” says Eli. “If that happens, since the lambs can’t trace their mother in a herd of 300 sheep, we have to bottle feed them – every three hours including night-time feedings.” Occasionally, if a sheep has been in labor for a long time, Eli will slip on his gloves and help the baby out of the womb.
Night-time Robbery
In the Shomron, the threat of losing sheep to Arab and Bedouin thievery is very real. A set-up of eight video cameras and five sheep dogs help Eli and Avichai guard the pens from about 11:00 pm until the morning grazing. Sometimes, volunteers, motivated to help maintain a Jewish presence in this part of Israel, take over night duty. “We are always looking for volunteers who want the experience,” says Eli.
One rainy night last year, Eli called in the army: someone had opened the gate to the pens; the sheep had followed their leader and run out into the blackness. “A flock of sheep will always follow each other,” says Eli. “If one sheep strays, the others will follow blindly. It isn’t an old wives’ tale. So stealing a flock isn’t all that difficult as long as you can isolate a single sheep and get it running in the direction you want it to go.” In this case, despite the darkness and the fact the Bedouin trackers brought in by the army lost the trail because of the rain, Eli and Avichai were sure that the direction was east. “In all the other directions, there are yishuvim to cross through before reaching Arab territory,” explains Eli. Luckily, a mad race by foot through the night led Eli to the sheep. “No, I didn’t think of getting shot,” he says. “The danger is highly over-rated. Wherever you are in the Shomron, the army is only a few minutes away.”