Storm clear up

When the dogs went out the other day they were startled to find woolly monsters rustling in the bushes. We've had several small trees fall over or shed bits of themselves in the storms recently so there are branches fallen all over the farm. Recovery work is slow. Mainly because once the trees are down they pose no real danger and there is so much else to do that the simple task of clearing up gets put on the back burner. So the sheep like to assist with clearing storm trees. They particularly like to assist with the tasty ones.
Gimli and Elrond are currently in the ram yard grazing that before reseeding. In an unforseen bonus a wind gust dropped an acacia in full flower on their fence. It was an opportunity not to be missed. A lolly scramble!

They munch the further branches using teamwork. Gimli's a bit short to reach them and has to put his head through the fence whilst the leggy Elrond leans over the top. Elrond pulls the branches down to Gimli who holds them, chewing delightedly, whilst Elrond munches the higher parts.

Wilber watches, intrigued. The younger sheep invite him over, giggling. He's always cautious, but discovers the sweet acacia buds, only in flower for a few weeks now, are a culinary delight not to be missed. Gourmet grazing.

Even when they've stripped the reachable branches bare the wethers keep reaching for more, licking the bowl and scraping their plates. Elrond chews the last tasty morsels of bark off each stick, much to Wilber's amusement.

We'll throw them the rest in portions each day as we clear up too. They'll have a wonderful lunch and leave us just with a pile of sticks for kindling. Perhaps the council should employ sheep as storm debris crew?

Gentle Giant

The bachelor lads were crutched separately due mainly to the innocent young females in the rest of the flock not ready for breeding but still very attractive to rams. Putting the lot together would probably result in unwanted teenage pregnancies. The only ram here is Wilber the coloured Merino who is a gentleman but a slave to testosterone nonetheless. Gimli, the older pet, and Elrond, last year's orphan live with him for company. Gimli had been through this crutching business before and looked for an escape route.


Elrond had no idea what crutching was, who the new voices were or anything much outside his breakfast. Sometimes being blind has advantages.


Being pets, they follow us like dogs and Mr Shearer had no problem tipping them over for a quick shave. Wilberforce is a little more wild, having lived in an enormous commercial flock previously. Several months of living with sheep who think they are humans has rubbed off though, and he submitted quietly to the new haircut. He ended up with a mohawk.

It's not really his look although he has the pierced ears and tattoos to go with it. He could probably pretend to be a big, mean, wild ram but his good breeding and sweet nature mean
he is not deceptive. A little puzzled at the world perhaps, sometimes scared and often contemplative, but generally just wanting to mingle with the flock and graze. A gentle giant.

Shed for blokes

Part of the rearrangement of accommodation required for the shearer to do the crutching was moving the bachelor boys to a smaller yard. Since the ram yard is - most helpfully - inaccessible to vehicles and the only other small yard is the lamb yard, that is the one the boys got. Imaginative names for yards aside, this one has a shed for shelter rather than trees. We thought they'd miss their huge old pine tree but they've all huddled up to the shed with enthusiasm. Cold southerly winds probably helped.


Before we landed here it was a pony shed. It even has a wash bay, where Gimli is sitting nicely out of the wind, confidently expecting not to be hosed down. Wilber is standing in front of a little shed the former owners used for feed storage. It's supposedly vermin proof but we think that was a sales pitch because if you open the door you are stampeded by mice and rats. We think they can get in but not get out again.


Elrond spent the summer of his youth (one, given he is not yet a year old) in this yard and gambolled into it like meeting an old friend. He does tend to gambol everywhere but we know he likes it here because he takes advantage of the sun's winter angle and spends most of his time basking on the hay in the lamb shed, despite all the good grass in the yard. We fox-proofed the front with gates and wire but he doesn't see it as a prison. He seems to see it more as holiday home.

Soccer log

A while back a large chunk of this eucalyptus tree, which is really two eucalypts growing together, fell down. Just like that. They do that. It scattered leaves everywhere, drove bark into the soil and scared Princess witless but apart from that no lasting damage was done. So we cut it up.


SO left the bit you see sticking up to the right for a reason. It's a sheep scratching post. The sheep used to lean on it for hours rocking back and forth with blissful looks on their faces itching the parts they can't reach and he didn't see why he should deprive them of this pleasure. Anyway, we stacked the cut logs up against the tree to season. They can stay there for a year collecting spiders and snakes, shedding their bark and drying out for the fire. Except this one:


Every morning we find it by itself out in the paddock. Every day we put it back. Thinking it had just fallen from the pile I wedged it round the back. The next day it was down by the fence again.


It's possible the sheep are just rubbing against it and it rolls down the hill, but it's always the same log. A much more entertaining idea is that - this being the Bachelor Pad - they've caught the excitement of World Cup fever and are using it to play soccer. Elrond rolls it round with his nose, perhaps they just selected the roundest one for a bit of sport.

A sheep by any other name

This is Elrond, named for his long ears but also because his mother was Esmerelda and it follows our alphabetic naming system. It's about the only systematic thing about our breeding regime, but somehow Esmerelda was mated to another Border Leicester, E52 - our shearer's ram - and produced this charming chap of pure BL ancestry.

SO actually played midwife to Elrond and his twin brother as they got a bit tangled up in the race to come out, Esme had mastitis and in the resulting stress of it all she didn't feed Elrond. So we did. For nearly 3 months. We kept him with the other sheep in the big lambing shed to help him learn he is a sheep and not a human but he still doubts this some days.


He had a bit of a rough time in the beginning, not having received any natural ewe's colostrum. We tried to make it up with some wonderful replacement stuff that experienced animal nurses use for orphaned mammals of all types, but in the end it's just not the same. Elrond contracted a virus, got a fever and had a temperature of over 38C for about 4 weeks! We kept him warm on cold nights by wrapping him in an old woollen blanket cut into pieces and tied with a piece of soft black elastic. He scoured so much we changed it about 4 times a day, even after his feeds in the middle of the night.


He's seen here on one of his rare standing-up days, a bit wobbly, but trying to play nonetheless. A lot of the time he was too weak to even stand up so we called him Mr Woogly which got shortened to Woogy. He still answers to it. Some days he could even run. Slowly he got stronger.

During the heatwave of last summer we had to keep him in a yard close to the house but it had no shade so we bought him a small marquee. He did his own renovations, making holes in the walls where he thought best so it's fly excluding capabilities were ruined but it kept him cool and out of the sun.

Eventually he got big enough to be weaned off his milk replacer, the best that could be got and - quite literally - worth it's weight in gold. He kept growing. He should have been dead but nobody told him that. He loves life too much. He still bounces around on all four feet at once like a pogo-lamb. He is now eight months old and bigger than the other lambs. Must have been all that money... err... special feeding he got. Of course, proper, real sheep farms need a pet wether like the proverbial hole in the helmet, so he has to earn his keep. His job is charming visitors and small children.


He lives with our other pet wether, the dwarf Gimli (surprise, surprise) in the ram yard and Pine Paddock. Wilberforce the ram will live with them for most of the year too. Bachelor pad. When they're not eating they sit around, telling stories, playing cards.

You may wonder why he looks at things sideways like that with his characteristic head tilt. He has to because he's not actually looking. He's listening. He is almost totally blind.

He knows his way quite well around his little paddock though so it will be his own as far as we're concerned, until he doesn't need it any more.