Knackered, Knackered, Knackered, and that is just me. I sit here in the warmth of the house, aching and not willing to risk sitting still for too long in case my body locks up I look back on a very successful and rewarding day.
It started with the unexpected joy of actually getting the extra hour in bed floowing the clocks reverting to GMT. So up at 0700 and out with the sheep at 0745. The ewes had been in a small paddock at the croft since having there sponges removed so it was simply a matter of trimming their feet and then sorting into the various groups for tupping. I had a pedigree cheviot tup arriving on loan around ~1000 and had to be at my neighbour's at 1400 to borrow a couple of his texels to cover my motley crew of Mules and crosses various. Other than that I had to bring in my own Jacob Tups give them an MOT and then introduce all to each other.
Foot trimming went well with a break in between to split out the six cheviot gimmer ewes to join the impressive shearling cheviot tup that arrived at 0900.
Next job, move the 21 white non-pedigree ewes into a large field at the bottom of the drive ready for my neighbour's texels later in the day. This went fairly well; with the family roped in to assist. Sarah was at the bottom of the gate to direct the ewes in to the correct field at the end of their journey, and my 4 year old son in charge of moving all of the ewes down the drive while I lay prostrate on all three of the escaped jacob ewes that had momentarily defeated my system of gates and paddocks; i.e I hadn't secured it properly. Still, all three put back and we jumped on the quad bike and drove the ewes down the drive and into the correct field.
For the Jacob ewes; although I wasn't completely sure exactly which tups would be covering which of the jacobs I knew that the first thing was to put our two-shear tup that was out of our original Dunmoor tup 'Jack' with our own seven gimmers that are out of our second tup, out of the Cavers flock, 'Tom'. So, ewes moved into their specific field for the next few weeks, with the help of the rest of the family I decided to put our three new purchases with one of our shearlings out of 'Tom' and with the other shearling, four of our older and slightly thinner ewes which we would put down at the house where we could provide extra feed and keep an eye on them. Tom would have the other seven in the strip field. So the ewes split; I walked up the tups from the strip field and trimmed their feet and librally covered them in red raddle mark to help us keep count in the coming days.
Moving the tups around with the trailer, the quad bike proved invaluable; excellent birthday present!
With all of the jacobs arranged I popped up to get the texels which with the help of a very well organised system of gates around the farm and of course a well trained sheep dog, the two texels were soon in the trailer and transferred the two miles to meets the 'girls'.
Of course it is never completely without incident so last job, round up the tup lambs that had escaped and were helping themselves to the lush grass of the croft back garden and put them well out of the was where they can't cause mayhem.
Sponging should mean a fair bit of action in the next few days but we will see. No action around the house yet but I have definately seen the cheviot tup covering three of the six and our two-shear riding across the field on the back of one of our homebred ewes.
No comments:
Post a Comment