Sheep

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Vaccination day part 2

We have just finished trimming hooves and giving booster vaccinations to the woolies. Often this is stressful as one of our sheep, scratchy is quite crazy. She has almost killed Izzy as a newborn, she has knocked me down at least twice, and has tried to get through very tiny spaces. She lives her life terrified by people. This upsets us as she never seems to be content and always in flight mode. After speaking with a couple of people who are long time shepherds and the famous Temple Grandin we had come to the conclusion to have her put down. We didn't even want to send her to the butcher on her own as we would end up with sub-standard meat, and she may have gone through the windshield on her way there. So Kate, our wonderful vet would have come over and put her out of her fear. So today we decided to vaccinate and trim her hooves anyway. JUST in case anything had changed. Well I am happy to report that Scratchy was surprisingly good to catch and to deal with. She was still terrified, but not enough to go through a wall or window, which she has tried in the past. This means Scratchy has bought herself another month of being here. Maybe she will improve yet!

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Feeding just got easier

Over the weekend we struck another pre-winter job off of the list. There is finally a hay rack in the barn. This doesn't mean that the woolies haven't been eating for the last year. No there has been a number of incarnations of feed methods. First was the hay net.This worked well but was fussy to constantly change especially when our wonderful neighbour was livestock sitting. It was fussy and awkward. Next was a strange wire, contraption that we thought would work. It was a wire sling between two pieces of wood fixed with some screws and a number of tie wraps. It worked for a while, but as the woolies pulled at it more the more it bent and just got weird. Then a hen started laying in it. This was no good for winter. So last weekend we managed to cobble together a hay rack. At first we have a really great plan. It looked great. I made the first box for it, took it into the barn and realized that I was on the completely wrong track. So I backed up and started again. Slowly the rack took form. I suppose it is based on a traditional design (is there any other) and one that already exists in the barn originally made for rabbits that is useless for sheep. The best way to show it of is to find a far nicer picture from somewhere else and let imaginations run wild. I just know that now ANYONE can take a coulkd of flakes of hay and easily feed our woolies. Next is the outside rack!

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Growing Up

It has been extremely busy around here lately. Everything is growing up. Lintilla is becoming brave and more active by the hour. We had our first cock-a-doodle-doo from the cockerel the other day and the lambs are bigger than their Mums. The garden is having the biggest change this time of year. Despite the cool weather and sporadic rain things are growing. The cucumbers are growing well and we even have some tomatoes. Many others have peas already, but ours went in late so we only have flowers. but the volunteer pumpkin has baby pumpkins and flowers on them. Even the apples are looking good. Our heritage Tennis Ball Lettuce is doing wonderfully. These little guys didn't start off too well and I didn't know what to expect. Now they are healthy and delicious! This past weekend was the final seedling planting weekend. It should have been done weeks earlier but it never became a priority. Now our sunflowers and tomato leftovers are in. The poor plants were producing flowers to try and grow and Tim just didn't have the heart to compost them. They had done so well in such poor conditions. the upside to this is that if we do get fruit we are going to save the seeds.I wonder if a new hardy tomato can be developed? It is nice to know that they are at least growing. We also managed to get some herbs in. We had bought them a couple of weekends ago but hadn't the time to plant them right away. We had really wanted to do a herb garden so it was a bit more work than five minutes. Luckily the herbs hung on and they are now happily in their herb spiral. The herbs are planted according to how dry they like it and how sunny. The chervil is on the north side lower down because this is the conditions they prefer. It isn't perfect as which herbs were bought was impulsive, not planned for a spiral. Like the rest of this place we will see what happens!