Buenos dais (sp?)

I did post yesterday ?

Don't know where it has gone ?

Oh well, I was only bleating about being ill anyway, not an interesting read.

Lousy day yesterday - was supposed to be off & go to golf but woke up with some sort of lurgy which Zoe had kindly passed on. It was that flu type one where everything aches & you feel dizzy & nauseous.
Also had that really sore throat which feels like swallowing razor blades.

Not good.

Worked instead of going to golf (you know what it's like - don't want to be ill on your days off)

All was fairly peaceful despite feeling rough until I started feeding the neds.
The most blood-curdling screams started coming from the house & Zoe & Lizzie were yelling & bawling at each other.

It seems it started over Zoe dipping her fingers into Lizzie's baking & ascended from there to nuclear proportions.

At regular intervals I would be screamed at to come & sort it out.

They carried on at dinner,bitching & whining at each other & pulling faces. By then the dispute had been running for approx 3 hours & I was absolutely sick of it.

I went to my room for some peace & quiet at 8pm, did not re-emerge & went to bed & 8.30pm.

Awoke today feeling much better & had an all-round good day.

Right, time to cook tea, notice my last entry hasn't successfully posted.

Don't know what's up with Blog these last 2 days ??


Ok, back from tea.

Today was a good day, beautifully sunny again. They say it is incredibly mild this winter even by their standards but I'm not complaining.

Have only worn t-shirts since getting here.
My kind of Winter.

I was helping to put up a fence this afternoon.
Mal & Mike have to get the cattle-race & weighbridge sorted out before Monday. The govt TB tester is coming then & last time he arrived he threatened to leave saying the yard was too shabby.

We have sunk 6 new posts today to make the approach to the weighbridge longer & safer.

It doesn't sound much for an afternoon's work but to my disappointment there was no
chanical medigger to do it (who says that to me - is it you Ange ?) so the holes had to be dug by hand.

I wasn't brave/rude enough to ask if I could use the chainsaw so comforted myself with 'tamping' I basically used a very heavy iron (?) thing to smash the earth flat around the poles.

The thought of gobby rt drivers was all I needed to do a really thorough job.

During our manly labours, talk turned to sheep.

Stay with me - it's not boring - honest.

There are some 700 sheep here & they are due to lamb in about 5 or 6 weeks. Sheep routinely have twins so there could be anything up to 1400 blah-lambs.

Mike was asking if I would be able to get up & do the early morning check on them at daybreak & then have his breakfast waiting by the time he arrived ?

I assume he was joking?

I asked him what the morning check consisted of & he explained that it was a check to make sure all the sheep had lambed safely & nothing untoward had happened.

Sorry to Eric & all the other Tanners if you are reading but you will have to skip all the farming stuff that's new to me & painfully obvious to you cockies :)

Sometimes a lamb's head will come so far, then get stuck & the lamb will die. The lamb then has to be removed by hand to save the sheep. Mike went on to say that you have to check for lambs that become 'mismothered' My ears pricked up at this point.

'What happens to them ?' I asked a shade too quickly.

'Great. Are you volunteering ?' he said.

If there are any blah lambs whose mother's refuse to take them it seems I will be fostering & feeding them. Their last feed is at 11pm.

Hurrah ! Wonder how a bedroom full of lambs will grab Barley-Marley ?
How cute will that be ?

I promised Mike I would help on condition that none of my fostered weanlings would be turned into chops. He said that was a promise he couldn’t make.

Stu - while you are organising BM's flight can you get a quote for 20 sheep back to the UK ?
They can live in the field opposite you at Leith Hill - see I have worked it out.

Stop Press

Barley's passport has arrived at the vets so she should be arriving with me next weekend.
I have sounded the family out about my concerns about leaving her if I have to go somewhere that dogs are not allowed ie. hunting.

They have all (especially the kids) made encouraging noises about looking after
her on those days so I am reassured it is a good idea for her to arrive.

At the moment, Don accompanies me on my evening patrols to feed & put rugs on but as he is petrified of just about everything I am looking forward to having my brown & white shadow with me.

I have learned loads about sheep whilst being here. I was labouring under the
misapprehension that they were easy to look after.

Stick them in a field, give them a hand at lambing time & hey presto, blah-lambs.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Put them in a field, yes.
They graze neatly & tidily & crop the grass unlike horses who grasp it with their lips & tear it out by the roots. Also, unlike horses, they are not finnicky eaters & so will neatly & tidily crop everything in the field to a uniform length.

Chris sometimes puts a 'mob' (anything from a couple to a couple of hundred sheep) on the verges of his paddocks, beyond the fences to 'tidy up'

That's where they stop being easy.

They need shearing routinely. If their wool is left on for too long (woollies) the wool
which comes off is difficult to work with & of inferior quality. Argument rages about whether to shear before or after lambing.

Some say the shearing should be done before lambing & the extra feed you give to keep the sheep warm is beneficial in terms of the extra nutrients the unborn lamb receives.

Some shear afterwards & claim that the man who shears his flock prior to lambing is just doing it to make things easier during lambing (less fleece to get through)

After the lambs are born they are all 'tailed' which means having their tails removed. Some old books here show men who not only bit off lambs tails with their teeth but also castrated ram lambs in
this manner.