Pastures new

Two boy lambs left home last night for pastures new. Beano and Bomber as they are now known are off to Chesters to keep grass short for Lindsay and Hugh. Hope they provide lots of woolly jumpers over the next few years for Lindsay.

The weather has taken it's toll on the sheep over the last couple of months as the soggy wet grass gave rise to lameness and skittery bums. We are really fortunate to know some "real" shepherds who help out with diagnosis and treatment suggestions even to the point of providing pills and potions. It's then up to me to develop my handling skills in administering the treatments.

Unfortunately the ewe we call Iggy's Mum took exception to being given two black herbal capsules for a skin infection and decided to bite my thumb.....at which point I remembered once being told to make sure my thumb was in the gap IN FRONT of the molars.....NEVER put your thumb between their molars. Now I know why. The pain was excruciating.

Poor sheep you may be thinking.....black smelly capsules, anti-biotic injections, stinky gooey foot paste and blue foot spray.... what more could we do to these poor beasts. How about giving them a pair of earrings that don't match. We needed to tag the lambs before weaning them from the ewes. Lambs now need to have an electronic tag in one ear and a flock tag in the other and today we set about tagging all twenty four lambs. Yellow tag in the right ear and purple tag in the left.

After tagging we took the lambs off to another field fully expecting cries from both lambs and ewes. Strangely the ewes just settled down to enjoy the sunshine and didn't seem to miss their brood.
The lambs settled into their new abode and when we left they were quietly munching away.

New room with a view