Shearing

so we had a phone call from neighbours - they were shearing their 70 sheep this evening .  So went to help out -  even if it was just handing round cups of tea.

First task is to construct a race to get the sheep from the pen to the shearer and  somewhere  convenient for  the helpers to  wait for things to happen

Meanwhile  the sheep need to brought inside

 and then encouraged to enter the race

and then they get sheared

and then the fleece gets sorted and rolled

An hour or so so set everything up,   70 sheep took about 40 minutes to shear .
and then another hour  when we all had something to eat together afterwards

onion eaters

It happened in 2014

And again in 2015

And its happened again this year. Now the beds have got raised sides - approx 15 inches.

And only those onions nearest the side have been got at

 So I think its the geese.


lets see how they get on with this .

And then there were 6

One of the ducks went AWOL and then later reappeared with 7 ducklings.
And they have been growing , shepherded about  by their mother, who keeps a watchful eye on them.

But over the last few days we have only seen 6 ducklings, however much we count

We assumed it had either wandered off and got lost , perhaps like this one , or it had been got by an otter because they do have a track record , or perhaps the hooded crows had taken it (but we thought they are getting a bit big for that ) . 

But we found some evidence in the field , a short distance from the Burn.

Its a duckling-sized leg. We had a look and couldn't  find any more bits of duckling. And this has been picked clean. So whatever took the duckling in the first place  left the carcass and this  scavengers - probably hooded crows - have cleaned up afterwards and dropped it in the field. 

If we loose another one in a similar way , we'll have to do something about penning them in until they are a bit bigger. 

A hen gone AWOL

One of the ducks when AWOL and reappeared with 7 ducklings 
One of the bantam  hens has gone AWOL , and was found. But she was sitting ( or trying to sit ) on 20 bantam eggs. And they are unlikely to be fertile as  we dont have a male bantam , following the sad demise of Andrew .

So we removed the bantam eggs and  replaced them with some hopefully fertile light sussex eggs. If she spotted the swap, it didnt bother her too much as she just sat on the new eggs.


If you look closely

You can see the hen

look what we found

One of the ducks went AWOL . We discovered that she had been sitting on eggs, well hidden in the undergrowth .And when one day she didnt come out as usual we went to explore and saw the duck with her chicks

 

chicks under duck

 7 Chicks in total .


 As they wouldn't find water from where they were, we decided to move them into a run until they are a bit bigger

 
 And the very well-made nest where she has been sitting  on the eggs for the last 4 weeks

  and the other ducks thought they would go and  see what was happening - hence the protection round the run

Anyone want some ducklings   ?

The egg stealer

we have been suspecting that  something has been taking eggs. We thought it might be rats  - so we set some rat traps. But still the eggs were disappearing.





We spotted  some new suspects hanging around.





And now  we have got evidence .

Trimming the Bank.

We have a small bank that is difficult to trim. So we use sheep. last year we put put two  on was successful, except when she escaped . So this year , a different approach

 Some hurdles to let them in and direct them to the correct place.

And then a mass grazing, whilst we kept an eye on them in case one decided to go exploring .

But there was too much to keep them busy .

To be repeated