November 09
Lambing Blogs: April 08* April 08 Part 2* May 08
June 08 July 08 August 08 September 08 October 08 November 08 December 08
January 09 February 09 March 09 April 09 May 09 June 09 July 09 September 09 October 09
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4th November Tups out!
After a very very busy few weeks, I got the tups out today as planned. Something was against us as what could go wrong did go wrong, with tups going lame, including the new one, right at the last minute and all kinds of problems, but with hard work and organisation the job got done just in time!
I have also been to visit my favourite hill and got a good gather of young ewes from there.
Below are some pictures, not taken by me I hasten to add, they are aerial views and taken by microlite (a very sensible way to check sheep on this kind of terrain!).
Well, you get the idea!
10th November Pretty Girls!
Here is Cloud's sister CorrieDhu Sky, and what a pretty girl she is!
And another pretty girl!
12th November Mud pack
Today I was sorting ewe lambs and choosing the final cut. The best ones are keep as flock replacements and the rest will be fattened up and sold for meat. Unfortunately we've had a lot of rain over night and the pen was a total mud bath. Ffi and Mist needed a lot of hosing off when we'd finished!
We had a small problem as someone else was using most of the handling system so we only had enough gates to pen the sheep up, none to draught them into the shedder. However Ffi and Mist worked very hard in horrible conditions and this enabled me to get the job done regardless. These ewe lambs will go away to be wintered and I won't see them much til next year (someone else will check them and I will visit them once a month or if there are any problems).
13th November Stubborn as a....hogg!
Today we were gathering hoggs to draw fat lambs. Hoggs are the bain of most people's lives and usually even more so for a contract shepherd as they will not see a dog at all unless it's mine. These have happily been eating grass for several months since they were weaned and although I gathered them in passing last week, getting them through an akward gate which goes through a wood up a steep hill is somewhat challenging. After a big battle we did win and we got them going through the gate. However, as hoggs are want to do, they started off in the wrong direction and went towards the very busy main road. I let as many through as I dared then shut the gate, turned Ffi back, directed her along the fence, over it, and she headed them before they got to the road. The most dangerous part of this exercise was her having to jump a very high fence, I hate my dogs jumping fences as it is so easy for them to be caught up or ripped on barbed wire and I never usually let them jump, prefering to pick them up. In an emergency situation there was no option since I cannot run as fast as she can, and there wasn't time to waste. She managed it fine. I got the first lot past the gate and then opened it again to get the remainder through. They were keen to go along the fence to catch up with their chums, not through the gate, but with another battle where the dogs had to keep kepping them as they broke, we finally got them all through the gate and into the farm yard. Typically, they didn't all go into the shed, some decided on a detour!
Once they were reunited with the ground, we got them into the shed.
We got a good draw and a third of them were fat. We dosed the remainder and put them onto new keep (grass).
Having run these lambs through the shedder through gates in the course of handling them, they should hopefully be slightly better behaved next time!
15th November Every Cloud...!
...Has a silver lining. Or silver coat anyway!
I had a very good training session with Cloud today. She is going very nicely at hand and calling off obediently. I am really pleased with how she is coming on. There are some more photos of her on her page.
18th November Very stupid people.
This morning I got a call from the Police and my boss to say that some of our sheep were out on the road. I drove there straight away and as I slowed to turn up the lane where there sheep are, I spotted some of them happily sitting under some trees on the wrong side of the road next to a housing estate, about half a mile from their field.
I drove up to the field and found the gates were open, someone had purposefully let the sheep out. I closed the interior gate (as most of the sheep were mercifully still in the field) and left the pen gate open.
Back down to these sheep which were oposite the turning but on a very busy road, bad bend, and junction. You name it, it couldn't have been worse. I left the van with the hazards on hopefully stopping traffic coming from one way, and I sent Mist round the sheep. They took off and nearly got down the side of the houses but she stopped them and I stood on the road watching for traffic. I couldn't help her at all as there weren't any cars to stop and if I'd left the road the cars coming wouldn't have seen any reason to stop and could have run us all over.
Unfortunately the sheep decided that the pavement and road were extremely dangerous (true!) and didn't want to leave their nice new grassy home.
They played ring a roses round the clump of bushes for a few minutes and just as some cars stopped, Mist got them to the edge of the grass and I was able to help her get them across the road and in the right direction for their field. I jumped in the van and Mist followed, but they were not on the lane. I went back to the first house on the lane and sure enough they were in the garden.
Typically the house had two entrances and a garden with a hole in the middle so again we played hide and seek round the garden and house with them determined to go the wrong way, and Mist and I determined they would go the way we wanted. Some of them went the right way, but two broke past me and we just stopped them before they went back over the road. Eventually we got the other two heading in the right way again but the first few had disappeared. I saw the two racing up a track so I got Mist back in the van and drove up the track, passing them, then got her back out and reversed back down leaving her to bring them.
Of course they went through the fence (cattle and arable land so only two strands of barbed wire). Got back onto the lane and my phone rang, the Police saying they'd had another call about the sheep up on a road nearby. At this point I was in pursuit of the two and was desperately hoping the others from the first bunch had run into the pen.... Not so!
Thankfully a member of the public stopped to say the sheep were at the top of the road and then went back up to them to chase them back towards me. I think they must have been from a farming background because they sucessfully got them into the same field as the other two we had.
I had tried and failed to get the two through the fence so instead I had Mist drive them across the field to meet up with the rest of them.
The lane with the opening on the left at the end of the hedge. The right side is the other field and not at all sheep proof (unless you are trying to get them to walk through a gap).
I took them back down to the corner of the field where I had parked the van and the fence was more open, got Ffi out as well, and with the help of another member of the public blocking the road while we got them through the fence, we got them back onto the lane. For all of two seconds as they went straight into a barley field.
Ffi and Mist got them back out of there, then we got them on course up the lane to their field. They ran straight past the open gate (of course!!!) but Ffi and Mist passed them easily on the road and turned them in.
Almost back where they belong and one very relieved shepherd. As you can see from this photo, every gate has a well maintained pedestrian gate, so there is no need for anyone to open the main field gates - which are now padlocked shut!! It was very lucky indeed that none of the sheep, my dogs, or me were injured in this incident and I am really gobsmacked as to why someone would deliberately let livestock wander.