Sheep need a lot of looking after and one of the primary tasks is checking hooves and bottoms. Much like human fingernails and toenails, sheep’s hooves can grow and become uncomfortable. If not trimmed, infection can get in.
Dirty bottoms are a magnet for flies and the last thing you want is the blowfly laying eggs there. These eggs hatch into maggots which will eat the sheep alive. It’s called flystrike and it’s one of the reasons shearing is so important.
While we check our sheep 2 or 3 times a day, it also helps to take preventive measures and this means keeping the wool around the sheep’s bottom short and clean. It’s a process called dagging.
First step was to get the sheep together and penned up. We bring them down to the lambing shed. It means they have shelter from sun or rain or both, as often happens here. While I get busy setting up sheep hurdles, Nicole goes and fetches them. These days, they follow happily.
Once in the shed, we construct a small treatment pen. You can’t see it from the photo, but it has a sliding entrance. In practice, that’s a hurdle we can shift sideways to make an entrance.
It’s all pretty calm and most of the sheep just wander in to the treatment pen when called. A couple need bribing with some sheep nuts and one, Bluemli, takes a bit more persuading – she is very wary of pens. We leave Bluemli till last.
It all went very smoothly. I helped keep the sheep calm while Nicole lifted each leg and checked the hooves. Sheep don’t mind their front legs being lifted, but can get a bit twitchy about their back legs losing contact with the ground. I find that if I distract them with neck scratches and soft words, they usually stay pretty calm through the whole process. Each sheep has its own particular sweet spot for a scratch. Find that and it all goes smoothly.
Then it’s a quick bottom check. If the bottom is dirty, it gets a clean and trim. After that, out that sheep goes, the sliding hurdle moves across and the next sheep wanders in.
The ones already treated often hang around outside the pen seeking more tickles. That’s actually quite helpful as their proximity also has a calming effect on the sheep whose hooves are being inspected.
Bluemli, well she went from being a little wild eyed to settling, chewing the cud and then back to wild eyed when it was her turn. I grabbed a handful of sheep nuts, waved them in front of her nose and, to our astonishment, she trotted into the pen with me. Once in the pen, she was quite happy and let Nicole trim her hooves and check her bottom with no trouble at all.
Last autumn, I found a small hedgehog which we overwintered (see Hoggy Released). This can happen a lot, late litters mean they just don’t have time to put on enough weight to hibernate. Without help, they wouldn’t make it through the winter.
What’s a bit more unusual is to find one needing help in the summer. A few days ago, just as I was settling down for the evening, I got a phone call from a neighbouring farm. They had spotted a hedgehog in one of their fields and were worried about it. They had heard about us overwintering hedgehogs so we had sprung into their minds as knowledgeable.
I pulled my boots back on and set off, grumbling slightly to myself if I am to be honest. I was expecting to find nothing but as I arrived at the spot they had described, I found a tiny hedgehog just sitting there. All grumbles evaporated in an instant as I scooped it up into my hand. It must have got separated from its mother and I think it had been there for hours. It had done well to survive as the field was small and full of sheep and so it had been at risk of being accidentally trodden on. It was tiny, but fully formed. By that, I meant it had adult prickles. That was a good sign, it was likely no longer reliant on its mother’s milk.
It was so small it fit snugly into one hand as I ferried it safely back to the house. It was perfectly calm all the way, just sitting there quite happily.
On getting back, we weighed it and it was a mere 125g, tiny indeed. We also inspected it for ticks and fleas and found none, another good sign.
Now, having had Hoggy over the winter, this time we had everything we needed. I left Tiggy (which is what we named him) with Nicole and fetched the hedgehog rescue kit. I set it all up in the pantry displacing the homebrew.
That done, I prepared some food. We had a cupboard full of dogfood so no problems there. I set out about 100g of food, mixed in a little water and added some dried calcium worms.
As I was placing him in his new accommodation, I was suggesting to Nicole we might need to get a pipette and hand feed him. She started unwrapping one but before she’d finished, Tiggy had located the food and was tucking right in. That was a great sign. Once he’d eaten, we helped him find the bed all filled with fresh hay.
That night he ate just over 80g of food and put on a mighty 44g. He must have been really hungry. After, 4 nights , he now weighs 200g, so good progess indeed. He has settled in well and has begun trashing his run, typical hedgehog behaviour (they like to dig). Another good sign.
At this rate, he should be ready for release late August.
A while back I posted an update on the nesting birds we have here. One of the swallows’ nests is in our lambing shed and it was looking pretty crowded. A total of five fledglings were all vying for space. We kept an eye on it and one day Nicole found a fledging on the ground. It was fine. To be honest, it was a miracle the hens hadn’t eaten it as they spend a lot of time in that shed.
The problem we had is that there was no room in the nest. Even with just four fledglings, it was jampacked with young swallows.
Inspiration came and I went and got an egg box. It was quite simple to put a couple of egg compartments alongside the nest and into it went the fledgling.
We checked from time to time and sadly, the poor fledgling was turfed out again and didn’t make it. Nature can be cruel. However, even with four, room was at a premium and one moved in to an egg cup (see picture).
They have all fledged and flown the nest now and we sometimes watch them swooping around our house and fields. There are certainly plenty of flies for them this year.
This story is a bit late, I meant to post it last week but everything to do with shearing this year has been delayed so it’s no wonder my little blog story is too!
Each year we have our flock sheared. Our breed of sheep (Coloured Ryelands), are particularly woolly, they’re a “wool breed” which means they were bred back in the olden days, helped along by the monks of Herefordshire, to produce wool which was then used predominantly for making fine garments. Ryeland wool was shipped all over Europe and sold for high prices. Queen Victoria reputedly even had stockings made from Ryeland wool! It was very sought after and Ryeland sheep were kept very busy.
Sadly, nowadays there is very little demand for wool, least of all Ryeland wool ☹ It is a very sad fact because if you’ve ever stroked a Ryeland sheep you will see why their wool is so special. First of all, the Ryeland looks like a teddy bear, they are woolly all over, legs, tummies and faces. Their wool is very dense and springy and as it grows they start to look much tubbier than they actually are. Here is a picture of Yssi taken in early spring, she could easily be mistaken for a barrel!
Yssi looking rather barrel shaped
So back to shearing, in Scotland shearing traditionally takes place in June, about 6 weeks later than in England. This is because of the northern climate, the summer takes a bit longer to kick in up here. Sheep are shorn as soon as summer makes an entrance, it has to be “post frost” for obvious reasons, and also sheep are sheared traditionally on hot, sunny days as the wool needs to be dry before it can come off. As you can imagine, this can be a tricky to organise when you’re at the mercy of an Atlantic weather system in Bonny Scotland!
This year we contacted our shearer as we’ve always done, in May and he said he’d come in June and let us know the date nearer the time. So we carried on with life. May turned out to be one of the hottest on record and Adrian and I were tempted to bring shearing forward, but lambing still goes on in May and we didn’t want to disrupt Jim’s schedule. Shepherds have a packed calendar, particularly in the spring with lambing and shearing happening in close succession.
Now, we check on our sheep twice a day, but decided to step it up to three times in the run up to “the big still to be confirmed shearing day”. Hot weather brings out the flies, and mucky, woolly bottoms plus flies equals a potentially fatal condition; fly strike. Every few days we took some of the flock into a pen and dagged their bottoms. All the spring grass was having an effect, especially on the younger ones whose digestive systems were still “firming up” so there was plenty of dagging! We also ran our eyes over the flock and checked for any odd behaviour which might indicate a maggot problem. Even despite the dagging, maggots can be crafty and hide in nooks and crannies. A sheep who’s been “struck” by the blowfly will behave oddly, they will jump at their own shadows and try and run away from themselves. Sometimes their behaviour change is more subtle so you need to use your intuition as well. As we were soon to find out.
We also needed to check for any sheep getting stuck on their backs unable to right themselves, all that wool is very heavy after a year’s growth, and sometimes a sheep can roll over and get stuck like a beetle, unable to get up with the weight of their fleece, which can get even heavier if it gets wet. This happened to Yarr quite recently, click here to read about his pickle: So these checks were really important for the sheep’s welfare, and also for Adrian and I to be able to sleep at night, otherwise we’d worry non-stop.
May came and went and we were starting to feel run ragged, we’d added another job to our sheep tasks; mucking out the shelter. The sheep had taken to camping out in their “summer house” pretty much for most of the day. They really love their shelter, it provides shade and somewhere to get away from the flies, however on the flip side, it can get mucky very quickly. Unlike pigs, sheep do their business wherever they happen to be, so you could be going round with the pooper scooper and they’d be filling it up as fast as you’d be emptying it! We’d then sprinkle lemon scented wood shavings down which is great because the lemon scent keeps the flies away, and the shavings provide a lovely soft carpet for the sheep to relax on.
We got into the first week of June and by now texts were going back and forth between myself and Jim to get a shearing date in the diary. We would be done in between his bigger flocks, much like a small building job is fitted in around bigger building jobs. By now we’d already found Yarr stuck on his back, and two cases of flystrike. First Yssi, then Yogi. One morning I’d gone to muck out the shelter and do my checks when I noticed Yssi sitting a bit strangely, she was sitting up, almost like a dog, her bottom on the ground with her front legs straight out in front of her. I watched her get up and follow the rest of the flock out while I mucked out and she seemed fine but I thought I’d bring her into the pen anyway. I straddled her backwards and parted the wool on her backside, my heart sank, there were at least 3 or 4 clusters of tiny wriggling maggots, deep in her wool. I phoned Adrian who was in the kitchen making breakie, and asked him to bring shears, cotton wool and cider vinegar diluted in water. We don’t routinely spray our flock so had no chemicals to hand. I intended to pick the maggots out and clean her up with the vinegar solution. I would also shave her backside to give the maggots nowhere to hide.
Yogi
Yssi was a trouper, she let us do all this to her and we pretty much got rid of all the maggots. Just to be sure though we whizzed over and got some flystrike solution from the local agricultural store and gave her bottom another once over. While we were doing this, we noticed Yogi stamping her feet and looking a bit wild eyed. Oh oh, we both said, lucky we had our vet kit to hand, we brought Yogi in, lifted her tail, and sure enough there was a tiny patch of maggots there, wriggling around. They were clustered around a “problem area” on her bottom. A few weeks back I’d found a little patch of infected skin under some damp wool. I’d shaved it clean and her bottom had healed, however those blowflies had obviously found a tiny bit of skin which was still broken and decided to lay her eggs there. Great place for a fly, not so great for poor old Yogi!!
We upped our bottom patrol and started mucking out the shelter twice a day, morning and evening. The weather was still unbearably hot but now it was wet as well with summer storms and heavy downpours. Jim had intended to come twice but had to cancel due to the rain. Then he cancelled again because he slashed his arm open and had to be rushed to hospital to get stitched up. It’s a dangerous job shearing, especially when you’re tired from running from farm to farm between storm showers trying to fit everyone in.
At the end of June there was a week’s reprieve a dry spell once more and we had another date from Jim. At the allotted time of 5pm we brought the sheep down to the orchard near the house where there’s a power supply and another shelter for them to wait in until Jim arrived. We were ready and waiting. We waited, and waited, and waited.
At 7.30pm we could wait no more, I climbed a hill and texted Jim, I didn’t want to hassle him, but the sheep had been penned up a long time and needed to get out. We needed to know what time he would be coming. A reply came back, “sorry, two of the team have heat stroke, can’t come this evening”. Our hopes crashed, we were so upset, we felt sorry for Jim as he was having a hard time, but our flock desperately needed shearing, it was becoming a welfare issue. Their thick coats needed to come off, we couldn’t wait any longer!
At this point I hear you ask, why don’t you shear them yourselves? Well, that is a good question, and the answer is, we learnt to shear when we first got sheep, and we sheared our first flock (albeit only 3!) It took us a long time and the sheep came out looking rather oddly shaped! The trouble is, you need to put in lots of mileage to get good, and you need to be good to be able to shear, you can’t be “just OK”. If you’re not good, you can badly injure your sheep, or stress the animal by holding it in position for too long, they can die of stress quite easily. To cut a long story short, we don’t have enough sheep to practise on and just doing it once a year isn’t enough to get good at shearing. So having done the course and sheared our lot once, we made the decision to call in the experts.
The next day we sent out an SOS on twitter and rang everyone we knew who had sheep and got numbers of other shearers. We couldn’t afford to wait any longer, and much as we understood that we’d be done eventually, we didn’t want to wait any more. We also felt it would be better to have a small flock shearer, we love the way Jim shears, I called him Mr No Nicks, he’s a great shearer, but he’s a big flock boy, and we realised we needed someone who specialised in small flocks that could prioritise us and not fit us in around other bigger farms.
After some frantic phone calls, one or two had the same problem as Jim, they were working through backlogs due to the wet weather so couldn’t help us, we then somehow we ended up with three shearers!! Just like busses!
We settled on one recommended by smallholders in a village not far away and at long last, a new date was set, and this time, nothing went wrong, PHEW!!!
The new shearer, Guy, did a brilliant job along with his partner Dee who helped me collect the fleeces and allocate name tags to them to be later made into rugs and cushions.
We have already booked Guy for next year, we are so happy we found him and I think our flock are pretty happy too 😊
Last summer Vera developed an allergy which made her skin very itchy. See “Vera gets a touch of the Itchies”. It was worse in bright sunshine and the vet thought it might be that Vera had become photo-sensitive due to perhaps eating an umbelliferous plant. The allergy affected the bare parts of her skin so the bottom part of her legs, under her arms, her ears and around her eyes. Her skin slightly swelled up too and felt hot to the touch. Vera would feel irritated by the itchiness and rub herself against things which of course made things worse as she’d create open sores. The open sores attracted flies and we spent a lot of time making sure nothing was becoming infected.
Fortunately, as the vet predicted would probably happen, when autumn came the allergy disappeared and we heaved a sigh of relief, Vera was much happier and went about her business with a spring in her step, and we were able to relax knowing she was no longer at risk of infection or feeling depressed due to the itchiness. We suspected however that it might come back this summer and so we were keeping an eye on her.
Sure enough in early June Vera started to show the same signs as last year; seeking shade and scratching herself. Last year the vet had suggested we use Sudocrem to sooth her sore skin so we immediately started doing this, we put it on her legs, ears and around her eyes, twice a day.
The twice daily sudocrem ritual has become something we all enjoy, particularly Vera we noticed who on seeing the pot of cream now trots up looking expectant. The cream is helping her a lot and she seems to absolutely love it, she goes into a bit of a trance and makes purring noises. Sometimes she lifts her legs up so that we can get the cream right into the creases.
What a good patient she is!
We will continue to keep a close eye on her and keep applying Sudocrem until summer is over.
Most of the stories on this blog relate to the stuff we do outdoors. However, we have slowly been doing work inside the house too. Carpets have been replaced with wooden floors, bathrooms relocated, rooms decorated and so on. At the moment, the kitchen is getting a facelift with new worktops and all the units will be painted (once we can get some paint).
Our pantry is what used to be the main bathroom. It was gutted, the concrete floor taken up and a new floor relaid. Some kitchen units, a sink, a wine fridge, a beer fridge, a chest freezer and an overhead clothes hanger were all installed. What I never got around to was adding some shelves.
COVID suddenly made this an issue. We were putting our shopping into a sort of quarantine which basically meant it was left on the floor. It started to get on our nerves. I sourced some wood and shelf brackets and got to work.
We’d be storing heavy stuff on these shelves so I got heavy duty shelf brackets and used plenty of them. There’s nothing worse than a sagging shelf.
I also installed a large wine rack for storing the empty bottles. We brew most of our own wine and beer and having somewhere to keep the empty bottles is essential. They soon stack up.
Having built one shelf, it soon became apparent that a second shelf would be most useful.
More wood and shelf brackets were duly purchased. I had been worried that the first set would be in the way, but actually they proved quite useful for putting tools on.
It didn’t take too long before the second shelf was in place. Being so high up, there won’t be anything heavy going up there so I could use less shelf brackets.
We are please we now have somewhere to store our food properly. Living about an hour from the nearest supermarket, we tend to buy a month’s shopping in one go, so storage space is essential. Mind you, COVID has changed our shopping habits a bit, not by choice.
One of the things that has been a problem for us is that we don’t really have anywhere to put our garden tools and associated paraphernalia. We have flowerpots in a plastic trunk (impractical), tools dotted around various sheds (can never find anything), cloches and shelves scattered around and so on.
We decided to invest in a shed and site it where we need it; near the greenhouse. There was a concrete area here which looked promising, but turned out not to be level nor big enough. It needed a new base built. Normally, this would be relatively straightforward. Get some concrete, lay it and then build the shed on top. The problem was, with COVID, all the builders merchants were shut.
So, the shed arrived weeks before I could get my hands on concrete and slabs. Finally I managed to get some delivered from B&Q. I borrowed a cement mixer and got to work. It needed quite a lot of concrete so I was kept busy. What didn’t help was the constant attention from midgies. I had to wear a net, but the net made it hard to see into the mixer to check the concrete so I kept having to take it off. Anyway, I got there in the end and we now had a level base.
I covered this in slabs. This was mainly becase the ground to the front had a couple of large rocks at the height of the concrete. I wanted slabs to the front as they look much nicer than concrete. Easiest solution was to cover the whole base.
Next stage was to build the shed. It’s not the first shed I have built so I was relatively confident. That didn’t last long. The shed fittings had been wrapped in plastic. I had put all the shed pieces onto pallets and covered them in plastic sheeting. Yet, all the item descriptions were sodden. I had a pile of wooden pieces and no idea what was what.
What would we do without the internet? I logged into the website from which I had bought the shed and found all the packing notes as PDFs. I breathed a big sigh of relief.
Now, every now and then I have a good idea. This time, it was to write all the part numbers on each piece of wood with a black marker pen. This made locating bits so much easier.
Construction got underway. Once again I was plagued by midgies, but there you go. Luckily, I don’t react to the bites otherwise I might have ended up looking like a wrinkly spotty teenager.
It took two days to complete. The biggest challenge was at the back. Just behind the shed, the land drops steeply down to a river. It’s a long way down. It made siting a ladder a bit tricky. I had to be careful swinging a hammer in case I unbalanced myself backwards.
The next stage was to paint it. We wanted it look nice and to blend in so I had sourced some green shed paint at the same time as buying the shed. We are pleased with the results.
Final stage was to add some shelves. Now all that remains is to put all our stuff in it. Another small step in making our life a bit easier.
We are lucky to have swallows and housemartins as regular visitors. The swallows nest in various sheds and the housemartins on the house under the guttering. They are not the only birds nesting here, there are nests all over the place. We have left a lot of areas covered in scrub and brambles and these make excellent nesting areas. In the last few weeks, we have watched fledgling sparrows and blackbirds hopping around on the grass to the front of the house.
The swallows like to nest in three of our sheds. In two of them, the roofs are quite low and you could easily reach up and touch the nests. They seem quite tolerant of us humans. The nest in the picture on the right is attached to one of the strip lights in the lambing shed. We think this could be a second brood because, in other nests, the chicks have long since fledged and flown off.
We also have some enterprising wrens. They have taken to moving into unused swallow nests and making their own version of home improvements. This means packing in lots of moss and making a small tunnel for an entrance. The one in the picture to the left is the other side of the beam from the above mentioned swallow nest.
This is not the only swallow nest that has been taken over, there are also wren nests in the other sheds perched on top of old swallow nests. Well done wrens, very clever indeed.
Last year’s veggie growing didn’t go well. What with constant rain, little sun and an army of slugs and snails, we did not get much of a harvest.
This year, we were determined to do better. Nematodes took care of the slugs and snails. All plants were grown to a good size before planting out and carrots are in their own special box. This has worked quite well and the veggie patch is looking good (see right).
We have two veggie patches, one that was here already and the one in the picture to the right that we built. With all the focus on the new patch, we took our eye off the old patch and this (left) is what happened. It didn’t take long.
Now, one of the problems we have here in SW Scotland is that the growing season is a bit shorter. We have a greenhouse but it’s not very big. So, we have invested in a polytunnel which is planned to go over this weedy area.
The polytunnel has been delivered and sits awaiting action in our shed. It was time to take back control.
The original plan was to cover the area with a weed membrane. However, I saw a good idea on twitter that comes from the “no dig” school of thinking. Cardboard topped with mulch. We had plenty cardboard lying around. With COVID, we are buy much more stuff online, so plenty of boxes pass through our front door these days. We added our spin on this approach by covering the cardboard with wool. This is waste wool that can’t be used in Nicole’s rugs, so would have gone to compost anyway. I’m hoping that the damp wool will stop the cardboard blowing away.
The paths were covered in underlay from our bedroom floor. In case you’re wondering, I recently laid a new wooden floor replacing a rather old carpet.
Most of the cardboard was soggy having sat in a pile outside, so I got pretty wet carrying it over. But, bit by bit, I have reclaimed most of the patch. I ran out of cardboard before I got it all covered. This has not resulted in an online buying frenzy, but all boxes that arrive are soon snapped up and put to use.
Once the polytunnel is up, the growing areas will be covered in mulch provided by our sheep. By next year, this should provide an excellent growing area.
It’s been a while since I logged on but recently my pet human took a short video of me demonstrating my intelligence so I thought it would be a good time to tell you all about it.
You’re probably aware that us sheep are herd animals and like to do things as a group. If Seline heads off up the hill we’ll all follow her. If Sparkle gets spooked by a pheasant popping up out of a clump of sedge grass and flapping its wings, we’ll all get a bit spooked. That’s just how we are, its in our nature.
But I’m going to let you into secret, us sheep are not such simple souls as people like to think, in fact, we’re very clever! As well has having the herd instinct we also have the voice recognition instinct. Have you ever watched a group of lambs and their mums? Each mum has a special call for her lambs so each lamb knows exactly which mum to head over to for teat. (Sometimes a lamb might take liberties and sneak over to one of their aunties for teat but once they get butted away by a cross auntie they soon learn their lesson! But anyway, I digress.
Ever since I was born here at Auchenstroan, I’ve noticed our pet humans calling us using different sounds for each one of us, just like our mums. So over time we’ve learnt a whole different language, “human speak”, as well as our own “sheep speak”. And just like when we were lambs, we get a nice treat if we trot over to the humans when called, sheep nuts! 😊 😊 😊 Or, our second favourite thing, back scratches 😊 😊
In the video below you can see me demonstrating this. My pet human says my name, I hear her but can’t see her (admittedly I was quite interested in a particular blade of grass at that moment). But I couldn’t help myself, I found myself looking from left to right, and then I saw the human standing there with Witchy bleating by her side. I had a wee shake and then headed right over and got a back scratch for my efforts. Ta daa!
First step was to get the sheep together and penned up. We bring them down to the lambing shed. It means they have shelter from sun or rain or both, as often happens here. While I get busy setting up sheep hurdles, Nicole goes and fetches them. These days, they follow happily.
The ones already treated often hang around outside the pen seeking more tickles. That’s actually quite helpful as their proximity also has a calming effect on the sheep whose hooves are being inspected.
