At the Ness (again)

Harald (the lamb) didnt react well to his last visit to the Ness and need treatment for a gut infection, so we left him behind this time and took Cato ( age5 ) and Ferdinand( Age2)  

As before  they were clearly delighted to be  going 

And once there, we were in the same spot, overlooking  Loch of Stenness,  with the Hills of Hoy in the distance, and the neolithic pottery-firers  in the background.

If anything there were more people at this open day than the last one, and a constant stream of visitors and groups from 11 until 4

  And as this was part of Viking Week  , it included some viking-spinning with a weighted drop spindle

And one of the first visitors  was a film crew from Estonia.  So we we talked about the sheep, and Vikings and they hopefully got some nice clips of Cato and Ferdinand,   So if you are in Estonia - let us know when the clip from the Ness of Brodgar is shown.

And here we were , between the  drystone waller recreating one of the stone strucutures in the Ness archeology,  the Viking tent and games  by Ragnhild Ljoslandand 

So a successful day , and looking forward to next year.

One down ,15 to go

the result

At about 6pm , Charlotte  ( one of the ewes ) sat down a lot . 

Then  in the uncomfortable getting ups, the membranes appeared . 

then this appeared 

 then she did this 

and then a few more pictures

15 to go

16 to come

Rather than waiting and seeing which of our sheep are pregnant, we decided this year to get them scanned.
Easy !

Round up the sheep .  Not easy as they often don't wish to be rounded.  But  a couple of days of planning and they are all together, adjacent to where the action will be.

 the man with his van, containing an ultrasound scanner, backs up and we line the sheep up

Once they are at the front of the queue,

a snatched image of the scanner. 

 Here is  is a better youtube clip of the  scan you get with sheep

and once scanned , they were lined up to receive a dose of minerals ( Orkney  is deficient ins some key minerals ).

4 of them have twins and the other 8 all have singletons .
That is potentially 16 lambs come May , if they all carry all of the foetuses to term.

Out with the new, in with the old.

So the new sheep have had their 48 hours of quarantine and been dosed and injected with stuff , so they can be let out . But its not that simple . One of the rams is being castrated by the vet  at 10am and so needs to be caught and brought inside.  And the new sheep are going into the field vacated by this ram ( and his mates)
So first step is catch  a ram , and a mate as they are social animals.

Then move the new sheep on to the field.

 Then move the ram into the shed

and let the new sheep explore  their new field

 PS its not actually as straightforward as that because the sheep don't want to move anywhere different to where they are .