No longer wet and green, where we live is suddenly white and crisp.
Today we went to inspect the moors above our home on the untreated roads.
There is an amber alert for heavy snow overnight and cautious farmers were driving their sheep to land nearer home.
Like us they were slithering a bit but seemed pleased to be heading home.
The sheep are sheared and drenched, the lambs are all injected and sprayed for blow fly and lice, and Maa’s been done for horse fly and midgy (she tastes most peculiar) and she’s finished the paperwork (boring), so we’re off out — it must be Summer.
Keeping Cool!
Posing in the sunshine!
Walks now limited by bovine population explosion.
So we’re going to dig another pond with Alan’s new little helper…
Who is quieter and less temperamental than the old one who had to be taken away. Driven onto the lorry with much slipping, sliding, huffing and puffing of blue smoke — Alan was sad.
But the topper has broken so, while Alan mends it, Maa and I have got to cut all the thistles by hand — that’s why I’ve got to do the blog — Maa’s too stiff!.
Cheers all!
Have you ever wondered why the Welsh and the New Zealanders are so good at rugby football – its because they both keep lots of sheep. Sheep-keeping and Rugby have a great deal in common. To do either successfully you must be fearless and have absolutely no hesitation. You must be strong, agile and fast. Also you must enjoy physical contact (have I said too much?).
Sheep keeping is athletic and heroic – no more so than at lambing time which is why lady shepherds attend their daughters’ weddings with black eyes and are frequently seen rolling down hillsides in the tight embrace of a frightened ewe while extracting a lamb with a pop (like little Jack Horner, pulling the plum out of the pie) – oh, what a good boy am I!
Last week I rugby tackled a lamb. I did more than that – I proceeded to score a dramatic try with it! I resisted the temptation to throw it triumphantly into the air (sheep don’t right themselves like cats). I didn’t even bounce it on the field and I certainly didn’t try to convert it! I did what I always do and held on tight! I felt heroic and athletic as I sprayed its cord and wrote its number on its side – you can be number 10 like your mum – you can be fly-half!
Then in the glow of pride at my own agility (you know I have a bad back), I noticed it – the finger – the one that types the “P”s, the dashes and the punctuation, the one that wears the ring on my right hand – it was strangely deformed.
Mallet Finger! If you are American: Baseball Finger (how silly). I have an athlete’s injury (the orthopaedic website says so – so there!) – I have ruptured a little but very important typing tendon and Alan has splinted it (are there no limits to his talent?) Slight blueness is due to sheep marker — not insipient gangrene! I have Rugby Finger!
Our hardy Welsh Mountain Sheep aren’t really made for triplets — in ten years we’ve only had three sets. The first three were all born dead and the mother sadly also succumbed — our biggest ever lambing disaster!
We aren’t technological — we don’t scan, with less than thirty ewes it’s difficult and we don’t have the economy of scale. We know them all and if they are losing condition we just feed them more. It’s quite exciting seeing what we get — like Christmas!
The second set of triplets were born last year — I watched the first two, large, healthy lambs cavorting around in my torchlight and so retired to bed with a self-satisfied glow only to learn an important lesson in the morning — the third triplet, equally large and cleaned to a dazzling white was cold and dead on the grass.
This year we noticed the huge, strangely translucent, pink udder but this year we knew what it meant. It meant we had to watch out for a third lamb.
This year ‘Number 32’ has produced three healthy lambs, though the third didn’t breath immediately and had completely escaped his mother’s attention and would have perished like last year’s — remember sheep can usually only count up to two!
Fortunately, learning from my mistakes, I sat and watched all afternoon while the first two were meticulously cleaned and properly fed, then Bingo! Number three arrived, not breathing and with very soggy sounding lungs but nothing a traditional swing or two and some frantic chest compressions would not sort out — amazing! The swinging really does seem to shift the fluid — I had never really believed it.
Then of course I had to wait till he’d been cleaned and slowly fed, and then some more — we don’t intend to be caught out by our first quads!
You remember the sad little orphan texel-cross lamb who came to be adopted.
He put on the mantle of a much loved but non-functional welsh lamb and confirmed our friend David’s reputation (at least with one ewe) as a miracle worker.
Three days later (and considerably less smelly) his magic overcoat has been removed.
Yippee!
And his Maa is very proud.
This ewe gives no hint that she is labouring until the last few minutes. This morning she pushed out a large ram lamb just as I was feeding the others — I could see the lamb moving but by the time I got there things were not looking good — I pulled a great wadge of membranes from his throat but he did not react. I swung him and pressed rhythmically on his chest. I blew in his nose. I even gave him mouth-to-nose ventilation (I really shouldn’t do that) but he was dead.
What a waste! What a blow! Fifteen seconds earlier, half a minute perhaps and it would all have been different.
I started to take the dead lamb away and the ewe wailed — I put it down again and thought, I wished she could have a live lamb… Then I remembered!
Here she is a few hours later with her new lamb. (Can you spot the deliberate mistake!) He’s wearing a sheepskin overcoat!
Thanks to two neighbours this little orphan lamb now has a healthy young mum with lots of milk and the ewe, well, she is none the wiser. Her lamb that would not move, nor baa, nor feed, that lay in the pen unresponsive to her pawing was taken away for a moment by the big man who comes in the red truck and the next minute her lamb was right as rain — so right, he has two tails!
A little deception and the application of an old country skill and the dead lamb was skinned and the skin with all its associated love is transferred to the orphan (acquired from the other neighbour) and everyone is happy.
Pink rinse from being rubbed with placenta and mud from earlier pawing.
There is an ancient lorry trap where we live. It used to trap carts but it has never stopped. It is the reason why the old drovers took the high road — some say it is a portal to the underworld.
It’s dusk now and the ingenuity of the Welsh farmer is bought to play — he always has a few railway sleepers about his person. The tractor-pull has failed. The two-tractor-pull has failed — the chain has failed, fired like a mediaeval weapon into a field, but on this occasion no one is killed. Eventually with a little modern help from the biggest jack in the world the sleepers are inserted and the spell is broken.
What happens here repeatedly is that a right angle bend, on a 1:10 rising to 1:5 hill, arrests the vehicle. It backs down, thinking it will take the alternate route, the driver turns the wheel clockwise. “Left hand down!” I scream as I hurtle across the field (Alan has told me to do this) but it is all too late. There is a thud as the heavily loaded grain lorry slumps against the bank. Sadly, think our sheep (who have seen it all before) nothing is spilled, carts were much better!
Here he is!
Not working!
Is he a Welsh Sheepdog?
Well, sort of.
He certainly understands sheep.
He knows when they are ill.
A caring-dog for any of our lambs that are poorly.
He’s much more than that.
Intrepid mountain-dog and finder-of-the-way-home-dog.
‘Responsible-adult’-dog. Always alert, sensor-of-danger-dog.
Night-hound, watcher-of-your-back-dog.
Ratter, humane catter, licker-up-of-mess-dog.
He’s a parson’s nose disposer.
He’s not a ‘blind-dog’ but he’s a seeing-in-the-dark-dog, a hearing-for-the-relatively-deaf-dog and a sniffer-dog for the finding-something-dead-job.
But most important — he is a remembering-dog. Working with the terminally forgetful.
If the chickens have not been turned out or the cratches not filled with hay he will fix the farmer with his beady eye (see above) and throw glances at the chicken house or the cratch until the farmer says,”Oh yes, we’d better see to the chickens,” or the hay or the 101 other forgettable chores on our little farm.
Pedro
Wolf alert — Mid-Wales
Well– not quite. But it gave us quite a turn.
I was innocently photographing lambs at play when they yelled ‘Wolf!’ and hurtled towards me in panic.
Don’t panic!
I didn’t believe them but have a closer look at the photograph
Can you see it?
It is, in fact, a very well behaved cousin of wolf, the DNA is unmistakable even to a two week old lamb — they and their mothers cleared the paddock near the road in seconds — I didn’t even know they had a major evacuation plan.
They don’t like big cats either, or little ones — there is something about their shape that is hard wired into their perception of danger. It’s a shame because Midnight, one of our farm cats, likes to walk around with me.
He takes an interest in sheep
But they will not tolerate him anywhere near when they are about to have their lambs!
Clear off!
Sheep can undoubtedly tell the time. However I fear their grasp of numeracy is in doubt. Number 39 is a good mother she has raised one fine lamb each year since 2014.
Here she is again this year — ‘This is my lamb!’
’39’ and lamb — 2016
So, ’39’ whose is this?
Just born and all alone — too young to be all alone!
This year she had twins which confused her — she knew they were both hers when they bleated or came close enough to smell — the trouble was she couldn’t count so when the second one went to sleep she’d wander off and forget it.
What do you mean — where’s my other lamb?
Thus it was that in the midst of a ferocious blizzard, I was seen running across the above field with a wriggling lamb under each arm, hotly pursued by an angry ewe, trying to knock me over sideways. Anyway, the penny dropped that I wasn’t trying to abduct them when I plonked them both in a nice dry pen where mum was happy to join them and start her crash course in remedial numeracy, we’re only going up to two this year and she’s picked it up already!
But then, we all make mistakes: meet 33’s lamb!
Sleep deprivation? — or the reason I can’t back a trailer!
dianaashworth 