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).
“After lambing” we said to each other, “it will get easier”. To be honest it has been a long winter with little respite. Having livestock is a 7 day a week responsibility and we sometimes think we have taken on too much. So, after lambing we thought we’d start to scale back a bit. And most of the infrastructure is now in place, perhaps we would be less busy. Maybe we could even plan a weekend away.
veggie patch before
And then we looked at the garden. And then we looked at the veggie patch. We had inherited a reasonable sized veggie patch which was now a bit weed infested. Nicole, last year, had covered another area with some membrane to kill the weeds. We’d taken that up and done some mulching. But it all looked a bit, well sad to be honest.
We could border it with sleepers, one of us suggested. Sounds like a plan. I did a small plan on paper and soon after, 36 sleepers were duly delivered. We had to sell some farm machinery to pay for them. Well, we had already decided making hay was to stressful so the hay bob went. And we’d never used the post stomper or fertiliser spreader so they went too.
One fine Saturday morning, I headed down with the tractor to start moving them. I could get two into the front loader. Now, I don’t know if any of you have ever tried to move a railway sleeper. They weigh nearly 100Kg! By the end of the day, I’d managed to move 12 of which a grand total of 4 had found their final resting place. Talking of resting places, at this point I was to be found lying on the grass, knackered.
On the Sunday, I managed to get 5 more in position. This is not a job for one person I concluded.
As luck would have it, I bumped into our neighbour Jake a couple of days later. He’s mid 20s, strong and self employed. So I hired him for a couple of days.
And that was one of my better decisions because, in two days we had it all laid including the concrete slabs making up the path. And I even had the strength to lift a beer afterwards.
In the meantime, Nicole had completely weeded the existing patch including ripping out carpets laid as weed barriers that had rotted and failed to stop any weeds.
We are delighted with the results. Just have to fence it off to keep chickens, rabbits and dogs out and then we can start planting. The fence posts are in but a delivery company let us down and pret
ended two attempted deliveries of the chicken wire we’d ordered. They’d never been anywhere near us – don’t you just hate that? (DX in case you’re wondering).
Oh, and never, ever, buy a Gardman rose arch. Made that mistake – it’s in the bin and that’s two hours of my life I won’t get back. Now we have two bought solid steel arches to frame the two gateways into the veggie area. More photos when they arrived.
Around this time last year, Mrs Mills (one of our hens) disappeared for a while and we suspected she might have fallen foul of a predator. However, she’d just gone broody and nested under a bush. She produced 13 chickens and raised them to maturity. Very impressive.
Well, this year, one of those thirteen decided to follow suit. She wasn’t able to disappear as we have, by and large, hen proofed their run. It’s not actually hen proof as a neighbouring hen regularly pops in for some extra food. But we’ve done enough to make it too much trouble to leave.
So, anyway, Pepper chose to go broody in one of the hen houses. We found this out when trying to collect eggs. The other hens also found out and stopped laying in that house. Broody hens are best avoided!
We’re quite pleased to get the odd broody hen as it means we have young hens coming in and there’s no need to merge them, they are part of the flock from the moment they’re born. Mind you, we don’t really need too many more hens as we are struggling to keep up with the eggs as it is.
Anyway, how many eggs we wondered? We left her in peace and even when she popped out for the odd snack, we didn’t look so as not to disturb her.
Finally, a couple of days ago, we heard the “cheep cheep” of a chick. They’d hatched. They? Well, one chick was wandering around. It turns out she sat on two eggs one of which sadly didn’t make it.
So, we have one little chick out exploring the run with her mum. And she has certainly picked a period of fine weather to join us.
I think it is fair to say that neither of us were really looking forward to lambing this year. The previous two years had proven tough. Given our ewes’ propensity for lambing at awkward times, we were planning 2 hourly checks with all the sleepless nights those would entail.
That said, we had worked hard to get the facilities right, so at least there would be no half mile walks in the middle of the night to check up on them.
Yalena Yassoo and Ursi
So, 11 ewes were led into the lambing paddock about 4 days before the first was due. They settled in really quickly. The first sign of anything happening was a prolapse. That was the first of those we’d had and so out came the vet. Later in the day, it seemed to come out again. We called the vet but they were all out so the lady on the phone tried to talk us through what to do. At first they asked if we could push it back in, but that wasn’t possible. It didn’t look good so out came the vet again. Only it wasn’t a prolapse this time but a placenta that shouldn’t have been there.
All in all, the vet wasn’t happy and called for a caesarian. Nicole and the vet led Ursi, the ewe, into the shed while I was dispatched to fetch buckets of hot water. One thing I will never forget is the smile on the vet’s face when we turned the light on and she saw our facilities. Our sheep are also very tame and so easy to handle. I swear the vet smiled all the way through the operation. As Nicole was holding Ursi, I was handed two rather large wet ewe lambs and quickly gave them a rub down and made sure they were breathing before we put them under Ursi’s nose.
What is truly amazing is how fast Ursi recovered, up and about almost straight away. The painkillers helped, but even so, it was remarkable.
Lambing was underway.
Vi Yara and Yana
Now, we had four what we called special cases. These were all ewes that had lost their lambs in previous years for one reason or another. The second to lamb was one of those, Vi. Last year, her lamb died in the womb so she too had experienced a Caesarian but had had no lamb to show for it. This time, her first lamb was a malpresentation, head and one leg in the right place, but the other one tucked back. They can’t be delivered like that and we hadn’t dealt with one of these before, so out came the vet. It was a long wait (half an hour felt like eternity), but he arrived and delivered another two healthy ewe lambs. We were happy but Vi was ecstatic. She still is! There are few things to equal the look an a ewe’s face when she has new lambs.
Witchy and Yogi
Witchy followed soon after. This was her first time but she too had a malpresentation, a breach (when they try to come out backwards). This was even more complicated so out came the vet. Not only was it a breach, but it was quite a large lamb. After a struggle, she got him out and handed him over to me for a quick dry and to get him breathing. He didn’t respond that quickly, but eventually he seemed OK. While that was going on, out popped another little ewe lamb – our first ever brown lamb. Sadly, the ram lamb just suddenly faded away and there was nothing we could do. Our first casualty, not an easy thing to deal with.
So, three lambings and already four visits from the vet. Yikes.
The next was somewhat surreal. I had been up at 4am and there was nothing happening. At 6am, I saw a ewe with lambs out in the paddock. What was surreal was that all the mums and lambs were penned up in the shed at night. My first thought was to wonder how they had got out. But it was Vera. For the second year running, she had popped out her two lambs with the minimum of fuss. She had even dried the first off completely. So, I woke up Nicole and we moved Vera into a pen with her two young boys.
lamb first steps
One of the things I should mention is that we have learned how to give the lambs a really good start. Nicole has become an expert in drying them off with a fan heater and getting them latched on to the teats. Once dry and warm, they have enough energy to look for the teat. It only takes a few hours for them to learn where it is and become experts.
So, one poor we lamb aside, things were going OK – not a single sign of watery mouth disease yet.
And then began the wait.
During tupping, we had marked the tups stomachs with yellow paint. When the ewes were marked, we made a note of the date. Gestation is usually 150 days give or take. But 4 of the would be mums passed their dates. And another day went by. And another. Then Bluemli popped out yet another massive single ram lamb (as she did two years ago) capably helped by Nicole. We called him Yumbo!
lambs newly born
And another went by, in fact, 10 days went by with no sign of the 4 ewes getting any closer. Quite stressful, let me tell you! Then, finally, Peaches (another of our special cases – lost both two years ago) popped out a little boy and girl followed quickly by Sparkle (another special case having lost one to a breach and one to watery mouth two years ago) popped out two healthy girls.
We’d managed 5 deliveries on our own. The end was in sight.
Now, we had only had the tups in for two weeks so we knew there had to be a time limit. We reached that day with three ewes still enjoying the lambing paddock lifestyle. Sheep nuts and haylage on demand, comfortable quarters and a little grass if they felt like it (it was just beginning to grow).
That day passed. Surely something had to happen soon.
lambs making themselves comfortable
Luckily, next day, Sky went into labour. It was a difficult delivery and she was so tight we called in a vet to help. She delivered a health boy and girl. Next day, it was Star’s turn and she popped out two healthy boys aided by Nicole.
That left just Selene. Now, aside from a raddle mark, Selene was showing no sign of pregnancy. We had booked in the vet for a routine visit to help with castrating the males and we asked her to give us a second opinion. Selene was not in lamb. Phew, we were all done with 18 healthy lambs.
Talking of vets, we were lucky this year. We had to call a vet out for one of the cows and then she came up to see the lambs and spotted that one of them was not quite right – no bottom! Not uncommon in lambs but we’d missed it. A quick op and the lamb (Ysabel) was transformed into a little bundle of play. On the routine visit I mentioned above, we had spotted that 3 lambs had turned in eyelids. It’s tricky thing to deal with as it requires an injection into the eyelid, but they all recovered really quickly.
And now they are all out in the field with lots of space to play and lots of fresh grass for the mums. Play time is around 7 and we nip up to watch them bounding about hopping and skipping. It’s what it’s all about really.
The calendar tells us spring is here though so far, the odd glimmer aside, the weather has remained pretty wintry. However, winter or spring, the date for our ewes to lamb fast approaches. The first is due April 10th, but could easily be early.
Sheep in lambing paddock
So, on Good Friday, we moved them. This was a well planned operation. First, we separated them at the gate between two fields. We had to separate the pregnant ewes from those not expecting, namely last year’s lambs and a couple of adults with problems precluding them from giving birth. That went quite well, though the use of sheep nuts to tempt them through the narrowly open gate was almost too much for the lambs who, being small, quick and agile, almost got past Nicole the gatekeeper.
Then it was a leisurely walk across the field, led by Nicole, while I ran on ahead to open the gates. Across the field, down a steep slope, through a carefully cut hole in the fence, past the pond and into the lambing paddock. The slope had been a bit of a worry because some of these ewes are massive and have quite short legs. We had b=visions of them rolling down. Thankfully, they negotiated it with no trouble at all. In no time, the first 7 were into the lambing paddock. However, the 4 lagging behind got it all wrong, missing the hole in the fence and gathering down the slope way below the entrance.
Nicole zipped over and led them through.
Now, a lot of thought has gone into this lambing paddock. It has been months of work creating and building it, fencing, removing about 100m of chicken netting, removing masses of brambles, building and equipping the lambing shed. We wanted a big shed with electricity and also access to grass. This was the moment of truth – would the sheep like it.
Vi relaxing in lamb paddock
Well, they love it. A large, spacious and airy shed with fresh water and food just outside. New views, grass that hasn’t seen a ruminant in years. A hedge to browse. Trees for a good head scratch. What’s not to like?
And new creatures (hens) to observe. The hens and sheep are sharing this area.
After a quick look round, it was time to stretch out in the afternoon sun. Yes, afternoon sun! Mind you, the north wind was fair chilly but that’s not a problem when you have a thick woolly coat.
And now, it’s regular checks, ramping up to 3 hourly next week. Ah, sleepless nights in store. The good news is that the rams were only with the ewes for 2 weeks, so it should, things hopefully going well, all be over by the end of April. And then we’ll be posting piccies of lambs gamboling in the spring sunshine.
The last time I mentioned the sunshine and how welcome it was, within days the “Beast from the East” arrived bringing yet more snow and freezing conditions. In a way, we were fortunate. Living in the West, we were on the tail end of it so we only had a couple of inches of snow. Nothing like January. However, it did blow into some interesting drifts meaning only our landrovers could get in or out for a few days.
The downside was that, just as the animals were starting to find fresh grass, it all disappeared and we spent last Sunday panic buying haylage. And, given the winter we’ve had, winter feed is scarce.
Anyway, today, the sun returned. After yesterday’s heavy rain, it was a bit muddy again, but that didn’t seem to matter. There’s something about a bit of spring sunshine that just makes everything a little bit easier.
Frogs and spawn
The hens are happy. Having spent much of the last few days, weeks even, sheltering from the elements, they were out and about in the sun. And there have been no more badger sightings (phew!)
From nowhere, the pond is suddenly full of frogs all croaking away and breeding like, well, like frogs. We’ve actually had to rescue a few who seemed to have given up halfway to the pond and stopped for a rest on the track. And also, there were a number of frogs contemplating crossing the hen run to get there – not a good idea!
The sheep are as happy as we have ever seen them. They love the haylage, so much so that the can’t be bothered to head off foraging now. Fair enough, eleven of them are pregnant and starting to show it. And it’s hard work waddling through mud to get to grass when there is haylage just sitting there waiting to be eaten.
Bramble free zone
But while the poor weather has slowed progress, it hasn’t stopped us. Mrs D has been ripping out brambles with a vengeance. Day after day, bag after bag. Her arms getting ripped to shreds. But what a difference. There are still some left, especially on the west side where they are invading like triffids. That land belongs to the Forestry Commission, so there’s not much we can do but snip those ones at the fence.
Texa
The cows continue to prosper. The loss of Ivor has left a gap that is hard to fill, but Texa and Bluebell seem to be handling it better than we are.
Their training continues. I call it training, but really it’s just getting them used to us. We need to be able to comb their fringes at some point and they are not keen on being handled from the neck up. They are getting cow nuts each day and I use that opportunity to stroke them all round their heads. Texa seems to be much more accepting than Bluebell.
lambing pens
And finally, our preparations for lambing are almost complete. The lambing shed is pretty much complete and we have 4 lambing pens ready and waiting. This year’s plan is to allow them to wander around the paddock in front of the house rather than keep them in the shed. To be honest, at the first hint of rain they’ll be straight in anyway.
The electrician is coming Tuesday to install a power supply so the heat lamp you can just see dangling in the corner will be fully operational.
All in all, a good day, though we are both knackered and ready for nice hot bath.
When we moved here to Auchenstroan, we thought there was not much to do. It seemed like all the fencing was in place and that it was all set up for sheep. Well, a year later, we cannot believe how busy we have been. We haven’t helped ourselves by leaping into taking on new animals, namely pigs and cows. But on top of that, there was no water system for the fields, no decent lambing facilities, no pig facilities and no cow facilities. What there was, was lots of brambles. Lots!
On top of that, it seems to have been raining since last July. Either that or snowing. To be honest, we are both a bit tired of trudging through the mud delivering feed to our various flock. The mud does its best to suck of your boots off. The snow made it hard getting up and down the hills. That said, on the plus side it’s hilly here so it does dry quickly. If it would stop raining, or snowing.
It has not been an easy start to the year. Nicole has described our losses, Ivor and the badger attack on the chickens. This time last week I was up to my knees (because I was kneeling) in mud constructing an anti badger electric fence. It was a yet another cold, damp day.
new gateway in dry stone dyke
This incessant bad weather hasn’t stopped us. For example, we have been improving the inter-connectivity of our fields. This is mainly to keep the cows out of the sheep shelters – they are too big and would probably flatten them. So, two weekends ago we were out in the snow putting a gateway into a dry stone dyke. It was a good, if tiring, weekend are we really pleased with the results.
And at last, the weather has changed – we have had a week of sunshine. A dry week. It has been freezing cold, but that’s fine, just having the sun shine has really lifted our spirits.
Also, getting to the bottom of why the aga never got very hot has been brilliant. When we dug up the concrete floor to in the utility room, we found the oil pipe buried and with a huge dent in it. Given the aga oil flow runs on gravity, that was a very useful find and has now been repaired.
Today, the sun has shone brightly and we have managed to give all the sheep their annual booster. This was despite the cows coming rushing through their new gate and over to see what we were up to. We had the sheep treatment pen next to the fence resulting in two big faces with horns attached leaning over the fence trying to get to the sheep nuts. We had to put move them out and shut the gate – they were not impressed. And an unimpressed highland cow can be quite scary, hats off to Nicole for leading them away while I attached the gate. We made it up to them later by giving them a fresh bale of haylage.
lambing shed entrance
Best of all, the lambing paddock is starting to look great. The shed is built, the fencing all done and Nicole has removed all the old chicken wire fencing and all the brambles. No mean feet. The electrician is coming this week to add power and next weekend we’ll put the lambing pens together.
I even got a moment to sit on a rock and take in some February sun. Lovely.
After losing wee Ivor we noticed the dynamics between Bluebell & Texa had shifted slightly, they were skittish and seemed uneasy, they hung around the gate where we had carried Ivor away, and spent a lot of time looking into the distance. It was heart breaking and we were sure they were pining for him as we were. However it is easy to put a human spin on things and transfer our own feelings onto animals. Yes, they must have wondered where Ivor had gone, yes there was undoubtedly a reshuffling of the pecking order, but they were also getting on with the business of scoffing haylage and generally doing what cows do. Animals tend to live in the moment, unlike us humans, so we tried to remain positive and not be upset or emotional when around them . As their “pack leaders” for want of a better word, we had to be calm and strong in their presence and carry on with our day to day care, “business as usual”. This was easier said than done, and I admit, we found it hard to follow our own advice. In fact we failed spectacularly in the days following Ivor’s death, truth be told, both of us completely lost our confidence. It’s difficult to explain, but at one very low point, we even considered selling Bluebell and Texa, so convinced were we that we weren’t cut out for it. We still somehow blamed ourselves and didn’t feel we could give them what they needed. Thankfully this low point only lasted two days, by Monday we had a plan, we would continue to keep cows, we would continue to do our best to care for them, and we would continue to yoke and crush train them as we’d planned to do a few weeks beforehand.
To do this we would need to take things up a level. We already had a good rapport with them and we were gaining their trust, they allowed us to comb them (everywhere bar their faces). We were at a good stage to take the training a step further. We thought we would use the approach we’d used with our sheep a few years ago. At this point I should say that there is a serious reason for gaining an animal’s trust, it’s not just for our benefit to be able to pat and stroke them, it’s best for the animal too should they need medical attention. There is nothing more frustrating than trying to round up a sheep for example and then restrain it, all to give it a three second injection. The whole atmosphere becomes fraught and it is pleasant for neither party. Our sheep were relatively easy to “train”, (being new to sheep at the time, we were very pleased with our efforts!) we halter trained them over the winter during our first year of keeping them and now they trot around after us like friendly dogs. We wanted to adopt the same approach with the cows, but at the same time we were aware that one thing is penning up a sheep, but it is entirely a different matter penning up a huge animal like a cow. There has to be more psychology involved, particularly with Highlands who are not only big, but have very long horns too! One thing we noticed when we first got them, was that we had to be careful when using cow nuts as rewards because they get very excited and a few times we’ve had to step away quickly to avoid them careering into us in their eagerness to get a mouthful of the cow equivalent of sweeties.
Texa doing well!
The reason we wanted to train them to use the yoke and crush was because at some point we knew we’d have to put them in there if they needed injections etc. I have to admit, I had another motive as well; the frustrated hair dresser in me was desperate to comb out their fringes which have got very straggly over the winter. We also saw the crush training as an opportunity to feed up Bluebell who was still slim after her pregnancy. So, with this in mind, we came up with a strategy. We’d put some nuts in separate buckets, one for each cow. Bluebell got a full ration, Texa got a sprinkling. We’d hide the buckets behind a wall before entering the field to avoid the excited scrum. We’d then put the girls in position, one would go into a pen, and the other would be positioned by the crush. Once in place and the atmosphere was calm, each got their bucket. As they were in separate areas there would be no fighting over buckets. The cow we were crush training got her bucket in the crush so she started to see the crush and yoke as something positive. Each day we would alternate so both cows got either penned up or led through the crush. We hoped that it would take no more than two weeks, and I am pleased to report, that we managed it! Admittedly the first time we put Bluebell through the crush she somehow ended up coming through back to front, not sure how that happened. But they seemed to enjoy the “game” and as the days went by we noticed they started waiting in anticipation, either in the pen, or by the crush, clever girls!
