Families and solitude

At 6.30am feeding time, all the sheep and their lambs rush alongside me to get noses first into the feed troughs. It's loud, it's fast, it's physical, it's a race. Two hours later, having finished my other animal duties, I come back to check all is as it should be and the scene could not be more different. With full stomachs requiring most of their energy, all are now sitting or lying in lone parent groupings, chewing the cud companionably as if they were at a Gingerbread meeting. The lambs have given up their games of group chase and snooze next to or on top of their mothers. Siblings rest together. It's a wonderful, peaceful scene and a chance for me to check that each family group has bonded as it should and that no lamb has been abandoned or is in trouble.
In the next field the llama looks morose, and sulks, if a llama can sulk, disliking his solitary situation. In a few days all the sheep will join him and he will nose each lamb, adding them to his stock of extended family smells.