Sedentary Herds, Circulating Disease | Notes from the Ordos Pastoral Region

But as I neared Jirimut’s home, the underpowered old car became bogged down in the sand and could not budge.

The edges of the Mu Us Desert stretch into the southeastern reaches of the S Banner pastures. Even amidst the small poplar groves planted by herders over the last decade or so, vast stretches of white ‘naked dunes’ can still be seen. In spring, the sand shifts with the wind, accumulating in drifts on the leeward side of fixed dunes, leaving inexperienced drivers at a loss. I had no choice but to call Jirimuthu for help. Eventually, the herders taught me the trick to breaking through the drifts: grip the steering wheel firmly and accelerate well in advance.

I sat upon a seemingly pristine sand dune, waiting for rescue. The sun climbed higher, scorching the earth, yet there was nowhere to seek shade—only sparse clusters of willow-herb and sand-shrub, their yellowed stems encased in fresh, pale green shoots.

Nearly an hour later, Jirimutuo arrived. Once we set off again, we had to get in and out of the car fourteen times in the final eight kilometres, all to open and close the wire fence gates.

II.

In 1983, the Inner Mongolia Party Committee convened a meeting of all Banner Committee secretaries. It was decided that, building upon existing practices, a responsibility system would be gradually implemented to allow livestock to be ‘valued and transferred to households, paid back in instalments, and privately owned and raised’.

After the ‘household livestock contracting’ system had been in place for some time, the Autonomous Region’s Grassland Management Regulations were revised and promulgated. This reformed grassland ownership, ‘contracting the right to use, manage, protect, utilise, and develop grasslands to grassroots production units or individual operators through a responsibility system, thereby integrating grassland responsibility with livestock rearing and management responsibility.’ Based on these Grassland Management Regulations, boundaries were demarcated and the right to use pastures was allocated to households or groups. Carrying capacities were determined, with livestock numbers based on the available grass; this was known as the ‘dual contracting of grassland and livestock production’.

As this dual contracting took hold, wire fences gradually began to ‘cover’ the pastures. These fences consisted of thin wire and short posts; at regular intervals, five or six strands of wire were bound side-by-side to each post. The distance between posts, the number of wire strands, and the material of the posts (whether coarse short timber or concrete) all depended on the wealth of the herder. Consequently, in the early days after the grassland contracting, the fences became a visible marker of the wealth gap between herding households.

Nowadays, barbed wire serves as the boundary for the grasslands, and the gates along rural roads—which must be constantly opened and closed—are the only means of passage between the pastures of different herding households. Throughout my time in the Ordos grasslands, I was often struck by a feeling of ‘constriction’; the rare, flat stretches of land between the dunes had been carved into fragments by dense fencing and endless rows of gates.

This ‘constriction’ inspired a local herder-poet to write ‘Forty-Four Fullnesses’:

The *caokulun* (fenced pastures) fill the wilderness, mists shroud the cities,

Debts crush the herders, gold and silver fill the pockets,

Wells litter the plains, roads cover the pastures,

Ghosts inhabit the apartment blocks, barbed wire encircles the grasslands,

Gates clutter the roads, wool clings to the *ning* shrubs;

…

Around midday, I finally reached Jirimutū’s home. Over lunch, I asked him about the current state of the livestock belonging to his neighbour and cousin, Dalai.

On a blustery spring day, amidst swirling sand and dust, Dalai called Station Master De at the K Sumu Animal Quarantine Station. One of Dalai’s sheep had grown listless, refusing food and water for an entire day. It was the peak of the busy spring disease-prevention campaign, but Station Master De managed to find time to make a house call to Dalai’s, accompanied by his colleague and veterinarian, Qinggele. Upon arriving, the two headed straight for the pen where the sick sheep was kept.

Station Master De retrieved a metal detector from the back seat of their government-issued Great Wall pickup. The device in his hand was identical to those used to scan passengers at railway stations, airports, and tube stations. Veterinarians generally use them to detect metallic objects inside cattle and sheep; however, if the ingested metal has moved through the digestive system into the deeper viscera, the detector becomes useless. Station Master De scanned the sick sheep from head to tail twice, but the device remained silent. It was a two-year-old ewe with rather short legs, lying with its head drooping on the brownish-black sandy ground, mingled with livestock manure. Having ruled out the possibility of swallowed metal, the vets suspected the condition might have been caused by the ingestion of plastic.

As the ingestion of plastic could neither be entirely ruled out nor fully confirmed, Station Master De suggested that Dalai drench the sick sheep with a bottle of castor oil. Dalai picked up a green beer bottle wedged into a gap in the sheepfold and headed towards the *baixing* (the Mongolian word for ‘house’, commonly used by locals to refer to their dwellings) to fetch the oil.

Once the castor oil had been administered, the group waited outside the fold for about half an hour. The sheep showed no sign of needing to defecate, but it did stand up, appearing to look for food. This eased the grim expressions on everyone’s faces. To be eating again meant it was more than halfway to recovery.

Dalai invited us inside for tea. After we had finished, Dalai climbed into Station Master De’s car and returned to the *sumu* with us to buy some internal anti-inflammatory medication from the veterinary pharmacy.

 

IV.

Early the next morning, I went to the animal quarantine station to meet Station Master De. His brow furrowed as soon as he took a call from Dalai. After making some quick preparations, our group headed straight for Dalai’s home. The sheep that had managed to stand and eat on its own yesterday had grown weaker. Another sheep lay beside the one with “short-leg disease”, exhibiting the same symptoms. Station Master De stepped forward, peeling back the sick sheep’s eyelid, feeling its belly, and listening to its heartbeat; his frown never lifted. The diagnosis made the day before—accidental ingestion of plastic—might have been wrong. He shifted his suspicion back to “accidental ingestion of wire”. It was likely that the swallowed wire had slid deeper, carried by the peristalsis of the digestive system and intestines, beyond the detection range of the simple metal detector.

This time, Station Master De suggested that Dalai perform an autopsy on one of the sheep to confirm the cause. Dalai hesitated. These two sick sheep were young ewes in their prime breeding age. Dalai decided to wait one more day and use some anti-inflammatory medicine to “drain” the fire (the “fire” referred to by Mongolian veterinarians is different from the concept of *shanghuo*; it is a febrile symptom), hoping for a cure from these veterinary drugs. After the consultation, we didn’t go inside for tea but left immediately by car.

On the third day, I went to look for Station Master De at a pharmacy run by Dayang—an epidemic prevention officer and veterinarian at the station—and his wife. When I arrived, I found Dalai there as well, waiting for Station Master De. I did not accompany the Station Master on his rounds that day. Upon returning to the animal quarantine station after the day’s work, I heard from Station Master De that Dalai had finally agreed to the autopsy of one of the sheep.

The results of the autopsy confirmed Station Master De’s second judgement: the sheep had swallowed wire.

As wire fragments migrate through the various compartments of a sheep’s stomach, they can scratch or even penetrate the gastric lining. Due to the honeycomb-like folds of the stomach, these fragments easily become lodged, leading to peritonitis as well as the lesion and weakening of other organs. Affected sheep often exhibit a loss of appetite, lethargy in the limbs, slow rumination, and a reduction in droppings. These symptoms spread from the initial two sheep to the entire flock, the majority of whom were pregnant ewes.

5

It is evident that wire is now ubiquitous across the grasslands. Every year, from late summer to early autumn, the repair and reconstruction of wire fences become a significant labour in pastoral life. After enduring the wind and sand of spring, the scorching sun of summer, and the rain and snow of autumn and winter, thin wires—often less than a few millimetres in diameter—weather and snap with ease. The discarded and worn-out sections of wire are then carried by the wind into every corner of the landscape.

At least until the 1950s, and subsequently through the era of the People’s Communes, the herders of S Banner practised nomadic livestock movement. Spring labour is arduous; while the weather generally trends towards warmth, bouts of cold frequently return. Moreover, following the harsh winter, the herds are in a period where their tarigud (a Mongolian term referring to the condition or fatness of the livestock) is extremely frail. A herd’s tarigud is directly linked to its taimir (Mongolian for vitality or inner strength), which in turn determines its overall viability and immunity.

This period coincides with the lean transition of the grasslands. Winter silage is nearly exhausted, and the spring pastures only return to a lush green after the timely rains of the warmer days. Ordos herders set aside a patch of ungrazed land with natural shade, not far from the winter pastures, to serve as spring grazing grounds. It is far better if the pasture is thick with early-sprouting willow scrub, white wormwood, tamarisk, *lue* grass, and sheep grass.

At this time, herders begin using the shelters on the spring pastures to move away from the pens where they spent the winter and their shiyige (Mongolian for the sandy soil mixed with manure that has been trodden hard by livestock over a long period). Furthermore, this choice makes it easier for herders to transport water from settlements to the spring pastures.

Once wire fences were erected, the radius of rotational grazing shrank, and nomadic movement was gradually replaced by a strategy of “settling without grazing”. The area of pasture contracted to each household is insufficient to support the division of distinct seasonal pastures. The higher-quality land must be reserved for the herds to put on weight during the summer and autumn.

Settlements are no longer used only in winter but have become year-round residences. Following this trend towards sedentarisation, herders have built shelters that are increasingly warm and better equipped to shield against wind and rain. Consequently, the livestock are confined to the owner’s kulun (pasture), unable to reach the more diverse vegetation found further afield.

Amidst years of drought and increasingly frequent sandstorms, the herds have left a succession of hoof-beaten tracks along the wire fences. Their unsatisfied hunger is “filled” or “supplemented” by modern synthetic feed, forage, and cultivated fodder. The sturdy iron feed troughs, filled with synthetic feed and dry forage at fixed times each day, serve as ideal hiding places for wind-blown fragments of wire.

A young veterinarian told me, “Every year, regardless of whether it is cattle or sheep, there are many cases of gastric perforation caused by wire, especially in spring.” In cattle, gastric perforation can often be cured through surgery, or prevented by placing magnets in the rumen to stop wire and other metals from “wandering” within the body. However, for the smaller sheep, the trauma of abdominal surgery to remove wire is often greater than the disease itself.

Most of the livestock in Dalai’s herd exhibited only mild traumatic symptoms. Therefore, apart from efforts to treat a few severely ill sheep, the rest were left to rely on their own taimir to survive. Fortunately, according to Jirimut, although Dalai lost a few sheep, the situation did not worsen, and they passed through the spring without further incident.

About the Author

Urijhan

A native of Tongliao, Inner Mongolia, and a PhD in Anthropology.