A Serious Affair: Drawing Sheep

Draw a small circle for the head, a large circle for the body and four lines for the legs – and your sketch of a sheep is already finished.

However, farmers understand the phrase “Schafe zeichnen (drawing sheep)” differently. They mark (kennzeichnen in German) their animals so that the shepherds know exactly to whom to return the animals at the end of each summer spent on the alps. This is necessary because animals belonging to different owners are usually grouped together in an alp – sometimes numbering several hundred.

Today, the animals are usually marked with ear tags. In the past, it was common practice to cut various notches into the animals' ears. In the Landschaft Davos, which encompasses most of the Landwasser Valley and a small part of the Prättigau, however, the animals' ears were still fitted with something vaguely resembling a luggage tag around 1870. This is evidenced by a collection of sheep tags displayed in the local museum Heimatmuseum Davos. These sheep tags display the owner’s name and sometimes also their address. As a side note, according to an old regional custom, the sheep marks were passed from the father to his youngest son, and in the absence of a son, the youngest daughter was given the honour.