With winter upon us, we need to provide winter feed for our sheep. We buy in organic hay in large bales. This means it needs to be transported over to the feeders and the easiest way is in large bags. Fill one of those, pop it onto the trailer and whizz it across with the quad bike.
The fun starts when we come to transfer the hay from the bag into the feeders. In essence, it means dragging the bag to the feeder and then moving the hay across in clumps. The sheep are quite partial to standing on the slabs we laid and so it can get a bit crowded. It can be tricky moving them out of the way to get to the feeders. .
lambs in hay bag
For the lambs, this just takes too long. So, a few of them have decided it’s much quicker, and much more fun just to eat the hay straight from the bag. Sounds easy, but the bag is taller than they are, so it needs a little spring up on the back legs to get the front legs over the edge and firmly planted into the hay.
Sometimes, when it’s just too exciting, a whole jump takes the lamb right into the bag. Thus, “Who’s that in my bag” has become Nicole’s new mantra.
We are sad to tell you that Sarka passed away yesterday. It was peaceful and gentle, she lay happily between Nicole and myself as the vet gently helped her on her way.
Sarka came to us in 2015. She was the most flighty and fearful of the 11 sheep we had then. A change in the weather was enough to have her in a mild panic and changing fields was always fraught with a little danger. But, over time, she became something of a cuddle sheep, seeking out pats and scratches from us whenever we we were over in the fields. Whenever we went over, she would come trotting over and bury her head in close as she enjoyed neck scratches.
Sarka and Nicole
Sarka loved it here in Scotland with acres of pasture to roam and graze. She had a very strong bond with Nicole who considered themselves to be like two peas in a pod.
Last year, Sarka was diagnosed with a heart condition and given only a short time to live. However, under Nicole’s care she blossomed and seemed as healthy as she had ever been. Previously prone to runny poos, over the last year she has been totally fine in that department. Runny poos in sheep are bad news – the smell attracts the blowfly and can lead to flystrike. Indeed, Sarka was the first of our sheep to be hit with flystrike, back in 2015. We caught that early, thankfully.
As the summer was drawing to a close, Sarka seemed to be developing problems in one of her front legs. It was diagnosed as arthritis, even though she was only 6. The vet hinted there was nothing could be done, but Nicole found willow to be very helpful and indeed, after a couple of weeks on a daily intake of willow leaves, Sarka was almost walking normally.
Two weeks ago, she went totally lame in one of her back legs. We had to carry her to a shelter as heavy rain was forecast. She was pretty heavy I can tell you. Painkillers were prescribed and after a week’s treatment, she seemed to be improving insofar as she was walking almost normally again. However, there was the merest hint of a neurological issue – she seemed to be having trouble finding the hand proffering sheep nuts (her favourite).
Despite seeming to eat well and being given extra sheep nuts, Sarka remained painfully thin.
On Thursday, she looked poorly again, head down and just standing in a corner. She was given a vitamin and condition booster by the vet and another shot of painkillers by us. She seemed to perk up, but yesterday morning she seemed to have gone further downhill Later, Nicole witnessed her back legs just giving way.
We had tried everything. There was nothing else we could do.
It was important to us that Sarka did not suffer and so we made the painful decision to say goodbye.
Sarka was a lovely sheep, friendly, cuddly and loving. We shall miss her.
After a period of quite nice weather, the rains came. A couple of storms, then a period of almost relentless heavy rain. We are somewhat fortunate in that here, living in the hills, most of it runs off. But before it does that, it does tend to gather in puddles all over the place. The run off into the rivers (we have two main rivers here) can be quite spectacular. The burn above (Stroanshalloch Burn) is usually a gentle wee water flow – now it’s a roaring mass of water. And that’s the small of the two (the other one is down a steep slope and I’m too lazy (or wise) to attempt to climb down it just for a photo opportunity.
I quite enjoy watching it for short periods, much to the irritation of the dogs. They are really not that keen on stops during their walks, well human stops anyway – it’s fine for them to stop and investigate some interesting smell for a few minutes. But if I stop for a couple of minutes, I turn round to find them sitting looking at me with questioning looks on their faces.
I digress.
The sheep have the worst of it. Gate entrances become areas of liquid mud. Lots of little streams become suddenly active. Sheep are not that keen on getting their feet wet and can often be seen negotiating their way from one patch to another in a series of jumps. Yesterday, two lambs got a bit stranded in a field and didn’t want to come back to the main shelter because it was muddy – we had to lay down some stones and straw to get them back.
On the plus side, the patio (see sheep’s-patio-completed) has proved immensely popular, so much so that it is almost impossible to fill the feeders as the sheep absolutely will not move out of the way if it means putting even one foot in the surrounding mud. On top of that, the new hay we took delivery of on Friday is also proving hugely popular, so on arriving with a fresh bag, they all pile in (all 28 of them). It’s organised chaos.
Thankfully, a dry period is forecast now and hopefully the ground will dry out a bit. As I write this, I can even see it brightening a little. Next, it will be a case of creating a few more stone paths in key areas.
The field shelter we built for our sheep has proved very popular with them. They especially like it when they seek out shade. We are planning to plant some trees to provide more shady area for them in the summer, but for now the shelter works well.
However, in the winter it can get a bit wet here. And the patter of multiple sheep hooves can soon turn wet ground into mud. So, we had a conference and decided that what was needed was a patio. It was also suggested that redirecting the water from the roof away would help.
So, multiple slabs were transported. And I mean a lot. Fortunately, I had help from Matt, my brother-in-law. for most of them. To be honest, we didn’t lay a flat base, we just put them down on the ground. That said, we did ensure they sloped away from the shelter itself. The hay feeders also have slabs on both sides. We have, in the past, tried hard standing, but that just gets trampled in. Slabs are a better bet.
I also installed guttering all around the roof so as to catch all the water. I also installed a water trough and tank and an underground pipe to take all the extra water well away into the woodlands.
This means that in the worst of the weather, the sheep will be able to reach food and water without getting their feet wet. This is especially important, as it turns out, as some of our sheep are becoming senior citizens and one, poor Sarka, has developed arthritis. She’s getting supplements to help, but being able to reach food and water without having to wade through mud will be a great help to her.
Sarka went lame over the weekend appearing to lose all movement in one of her back legs (you can read more details here). She had pretty much continuous TLC from us both and, fortunately, Saturday night excepted (when we carried her and put her into shelter), the weather has been OK.
sarka having a drink
Well, on Monday morning, it was my turn to sit with her and she was eating and drinking, but not much. To be honest, she didn’t seem any better so, I phoned the vet. He felt it would be a good idea to check her out, so we booked in a visit.
The good news is that there was no sign of any injury, for example break or dislocation. It seemed like, as we had thought, she had hurt it, perhaps stumbling or falling awkwardly. So, a quick painkiller injection was administered.
That helped a lot and over the day, she improved a lot. This morning, she was up and about and Nicole was even able to lead her down to the main field shelter. She’s much better off there with hay and water on hand, shelter and plenty of hard standing.
We’ll be administering painkillers for the rest of the week (every 48 hours) and see how she does. Fingers crossed.
Aside from their lovely natures, one of the benefits of coloured ryeland sheep is that they produce amazing wool. We have been getting ours spun into yarn and Nicole sells it through her Etsy shop.
As well as the wool, Nicole is now making ponchos from our wool, super soft, lace weight knit, un-dyed, organic and non-scratchy!
If you are interested in treating yourself to one of these, please let us know via our contact page. Thanks.
Sarka has been with us for a few years now. She has always been a bit nervous but Sarka and Nicole have a very close friendship. I think she quite likes me too!
As it turns out, she has a heart condition. This means that if she gets anxious, she can get into quite a panicky state with racing heartbeats and shallow breaths. Last year, the vet’s prognosis wasn’t good. However, straight after that vet’s visit, she started to improve and has, basically, since then been quite a healthy sheep.
Sadly, recently, she she seems to have developed arthritis in one of her front legs making it a bit difficult for her to walk. The vet said nothing could be done. Nicole wasn’t having that and after some research, found that willow is a favourite of sheep and has painkiller properties. Well, we have plenty of willow here. And it worked, she became more mobile and seemed pretty happy. Just a clicking sound when she walks, but the vet assured us that was nothing to be worried about. We had to take quite a lot of willow in because the rest of the flock tucked in with gusto as well.
With autumn and the leaves dropping, we have switched to willow supplements.
Anyway, in the last couple of days she has developed a problem with one of her hind legs. We can’t tell if she’s twisted it or whether the arthritis has spread. It coincided with the rain on Thursday so she could easily have slipped.
We have been quite lucky with the weather recently, cold but bright. That is the sheeps’ favourite. However, today winter conditions arrived with a vengeance – driving heavy rain, and 50mph winds. The sort of rain that soaks through waterproofs in about 10 minutes.
On the morning inspection, Nicole found Sarka right up the hill. On the picture to the right, trace the wall up past the copse and she was up there. In fact, Sarka was about as far away from the main field shelter as she could get! Nicole took some food up; hedge stuff (which Sarka really likes), veggie garden produce, willow and haylage (also very popular).
Of course, at this point, I was reading the news on the computer. However, with Nicole being out for a while, my brain cells started to work and I thought I should go and check everything was OK. I found Nicole filling the hay feeders with hay, much to the sheeps’ delight. Sarka, however, was up the hill and so we returned to check on her.
Sarka warm and dry in pig arc while rain lashes down
To me, she seemed OK, but also a bit out of sorts. My intuition was telling me we needed to get her out of the rain. But how? We couldn’t exactly put her on the quad bike and she certainly wasn’t able to walk anywhere. Thankfully, we have a pig arc up in that field (you can’t see it in the photo, but it’s over to the right). It was a fair way from Sarka (about 50m or so) but it was downhill. On impulse, I started to lift her. Now, your average sheep weighs around 80kg so this was easier said than done. I needed Nicole’s help to get up on my feet, but I had her and set off I set as fast as I could. The ground was tricky – sedge grass, puddles, soft bits – we had to be careful.
Sarka was heavy and my arms tired quickly (I was carrying her in what I call a “dog lift”, my arms wrapped around her legs). Every few steps, I had to stop and let Nicole take the weight for a few seconds. As I neared the pig arc, I could feel Sarka starting to roll off me, but Nicole answered my panicky cries and between us, we got her into the pig arc.
Nicole had already filled it with fresh straw, so it was very warm and dry. We are so relieved and will be looking after her carefully.
After the rather long cold and wet winter, we have to say we are quite enjoying having a bit of decent summer weather. The midges can be a pain on a still summer evening, but they are a small price to pay for the fun of being able to have lunch in the garden.
All the animals seem pretty content. Having been sheared, the sheep are not at risk of overheating. Plus, they are in a field with some tress providing shade. They hate the midges though. Nothing seems to phase the cows. Their new “river” field isn’t quite ready yet, the bracken proving somewhat tenacious.
flowers front of house
That doesn’t mean we have had much time to be sitting about. Nicole has got the bee in her bonnet about sorting out the garden. She has been working hard, furiously pulling out weeds and planting flowers. The main focus has been around the front of the house and the area leading up to it.
Bit by bit, “inappropriate” planting is being replaced by sympathetic flowers and so on. Being a professional gardener, she knows what she’s doing and it’s all starting to look really good.
One of two sheep poo piles
While Nicole has been gardening away, I was dispatched to clear out the second sheep field shelter. As I mentioned before, a year’s worth of straw and poo has been compacted. Nicole’s back has been giving her trouble, so I was on my own this time. It was hard work not helped by the fact that the shelter is about 5 feet high and I’m 6 foot 1! That pretty much did for me last weekend (but one).
newly laid track
Of course, having got it out, I still had to move it to our designated dung heap. But that’s what tractors are for. I still had to load the tractor using a fork, but it was then just a wee drive and the front loader did the rest. I combined this job with laying a track. It’s our main route from the house and outbuildings to the paddock and it gets very muddy in winter. Finally, it has been dry long enough for it to have dried out properly. So it was shift a pile of hard standing (using the tractor) one way, rake it, continue over and collect a load of manure, take that back, repeat.
new flower bed – mulched
This was duly delivered to Nicole’s newly cleared flower beds.
That was Saturday.
Sunday was general maintenance, moving a water trough and repairing the roof on hay bay which had collapsed under the snow. It was baking on Sunday and I got a proper “farmer’s” tan on my arms.
It’s sometimes hard, with all these things to do, to take a moment and look around. But I did today and our fields are turning into lovely meadows. It’s what you get when you mix cows and sheep on pasture. It’s what you get farming the old fashioned way. Not to mention a bit of sun and rain of which we have had plenty.
meadow
meadow flowers
Also, there was a nice sound of buzzing, lots of bees going about their work. And they need all the help they can get these days.
Anyway, though it’s a sunny evening outside, I might just watch a bit of the football now, maybe the Spain game.
Where to start! We are finding out that owning land creates lots of work. Owning animals just adds more! We keep thinking we are getting there, but then we dream up new projects.
veggie patch complete
One example is the veggie patch already featured on this blog. It’s pretty much finished now. I added the rose arches over the gates as the final touches. No roses yet, they’ll go in in the autumn. Nicole has been busy planting it up. I keep saying I’ll help but I always seem to end up working on some other project. It’s starting to look fab with good crops of turnips, carrots, parsnips and sprouts. We’ll also have kale, courgettes and beetroot. They were sown direct and are not quite showing yet. All this planting was helped by two thunderstorms which gave everything a good soaking. More about water later.
rows of onions and salad
Nicole has also been busy moving self seeded daisies out of the other veggie patch and into the borders next to the new veggie patch. So, soon, it will be surrounded with flowers. All that planting created the room for all our onions which Nicole finished planting today. We even did a bit of a landscaping (after yesterday’s storm) but the midges soon put a stop to that.
So, what have I been up to that has stopped me from helping? Well, the weather went from wet to dry overnight, and stayed dry. This is great, except that the grass growth was slow and our field water dried up, Annoyingly, the big tank we put in last year has sprung a leak somewhere and I think I am going to have to dig a hole to find it, a big hole.
Anyway, we have two rivers that are merrily running through our patch. So I suggested we extend one of the paddocks down to include a bit of river. The cows would certainly appreciate that!
So I have been off doing that, knocking in posts and fencing it all. The fencing is now all done but there are two stone dykes that need some repair where they have fallen down. If our sheep got to those, they’d be up and over in a flash. I think the cows would probably give it a miss though. So I’ll be repairing those later in the week.
It’s also infested with bracken which is poisonous to cows and sheep. So we’ll be down dealing with that too!
Talking of cows escaping, coming back from the garage one day last week (my new car had some faults needing fixing), I realised that one of the cows was the wrong side of the fence. In fact, Bluebell had taken down a bit of fencing and we reckon she’d been out for a day or two. We headed down to round her up wondering how it would go. Highland cows are pretty stubborn at the best of time. However, she was waiting by the gate. When Nicole opened it, she wandered back in of her own accord. Miracle!
In between all that, we had the sheep sheared on Thursday last. You may remember that Nicole and I did a sheep shearing course a couple of years back. Well that and the experience of shearing three sheep made us decide this was best left to the professionals. Finding shearers for small flocks can be a problem, but this year, on a recommendation, we managed to hire a top shearer.
They arrived with a professional rig on a trailer with two shearing stations and two shearers and a third person to roll up the fleeces. Our plans of leading the ewes in one at a time from the paddock evaporated in an instant. In fact, we ended up charging around and catching and rounding them up. We only just kept up with the two shearers but, of course, we then had to collect the sheared sheep and get them back. It was borderline panic for the duration, but they are all sheared, and it was a great job too. The sheep must feel so much better in this heat.
After that, we had to inoculate the lambs. Rather than rounding them up, we caught them one at a time. Nicole gave them the injection while I held them. The girls struggled like mad doing their best to headbutt me (by flipping their heads backwards). The boys, harder to catch, seemed only to shrug with vague indifference when the needle went in. Some of the lambs were very flighty – once they know you’re after them, they can move out of the way pretty quickly. Nicole’s pretty good at sneaking up behind them and catching their legs. One managed to wriggle out and tried to run past me. I’m not quite sure how I did it but a stuck an arm out and caught him and quickly had him in a hug. Which would have been great had I not, in my moment of self satisfaction, then stepped on some sheep poo ( we were on a hillside) and slid landing flat on my back. I held onto the lamb though, who was safe on my chest. We have to do it again in four weeks, perhaps we’ll pen them up. They might be a bit heavy to carry by then.
Nicole is on top of the sheep worming. We don’t blanket worm them. Nicole collects samples and we have the vet do an analysis so we know who to worm and what to treat them with. There are a few dirty sheep bottoms out there, often a sign of worms, and one of Nicole’s less exciting jobs is keeping their rear ends shaved (it’s called dagging) so that we can avoid fly strike.
In-between all that, we have been trying to comb the cows. They haven’t had much attention of late and Bluebell is not entirely sure about being combed. This is not helped by them moulting their winter coats which creates humungous knots. They are hard to get out, but amazingly satisfying when you get one.
And if that’s not enough, some of the chickens got infested with lice. So, we had to catch them and Nicole cut all the eggs off and we treated them to kill the adult lice. Sounds easy, but catching chickens is incredibly hard! You can wait till night time and get them out the chicken house – they tend to be quieter then. Bu these days, in mid June, that would be around midnight and we are fast asleep by then.
And tomorrow it’s Monday and back to the day jobs! We’re still waiting for that elusive day off! I haven’t even had time to take pictures of our sheared sheep or new paddock, but I’ll try and get some tomorrow and add them.
Having got our veggie patch built, our thoughts turned to mulch. We have compost bins but, to be honest, by the time it has all rotted down it doesn’t go that far. Happily, our sheep provided the answer.
Last year I built them a field shelter. It is heavily used by the sheep, especially when it rains, snows or even when it’s sunny for the shade. Well, it seems to pretty much have been raining since last June and we certainly had plenty of snow over the winter. So, Brookside (as we call the field shelter) has been well used in the last year.
Now, sheep, while great, do have one or two not so pleasant habits. One of these is the tendency to poo wherever they happen to be. Even when sleeping. I sometimes wonder whether they even bother to wake up. In fact, you can tell where the sheep have slept because there is a gentle imprint in the grass and a pile of poo.
This is fine outside where sun and rain and even the dogs, who are partial to a bit of sheep poo, do their bit to dispose of it. But in Brookside, the poo tended to linger. So, Nicole dutifully lays down straw to keep things nice and clean. However, unlike with horses, we haven’t mucked out. Yet.
Time to muck it out and spread it on the new veggie patch we thought. So while I was hanging the gates, Nicole headed off and duly returned with a trailer full of mulch. We spread this. If you have ever mulched, you will know how this went – a trailer full covers a postage stamp sized area! After two loads, Nicole was starting to tell me how hard it was. I went over to help (the gates having been hung).
the poo face
Well, a year of poo, straw and trampling had built up a layer about a foot deep that was quite intent on staying exactly where it was. Also, the shelter is about 5 feet high so it was bending over work and lots of banging heads.
Not one to complain (ha ha), I got stuck in on the excavation, or mining as Nicole liked to call it. As I lobbed piles of strawey poo out through the doorway, Nicole moved it into the trailer. Then, back over we went to spread it out. We managed to cover two of our 6 veggie areas before seeking refuge in a bottle. Well, we went to the pub actually where I had fish and chips and Nicole munched her way through two helpings of lasagna.
Next day, we used the tractor instead of the trailer. We could drop the front loader much lower making it easier to load at one end. At offload end, I could set it to wheelbarrow height which also made things much easier. I don’t quite know how she did it, but Nicole mined the mulch out from Brookside faster than I could collect and spread it. By the end of the day, one of the sheds (there are two) was clear and the veggie patch covered in a thick layer. It looks great.
The only downside is that we have to do it all again in the other shed. We are already thinking up strategies for the coming season which involve a more regular mucking out. But, at least we are putting all this poo to good use. It’s quite a good feeling really. We celebrated with a take away pizza (neither us having enough energy left to cook).
