Lambs Tale

From Facebook Archives

20 September 2022 at 15.20

Another interesting session at Ouseburn Farm.

The FarmLad is off on holiday/has a bad leg (depending on who you speak to) so we were in the hands of a Nice Young Lass.

First job get the sheep out into the field.

Last week FarmLad put a lot of time, and effort, into separating the four adult ewes from the 19 mostly bottle-fed and now half grown 'lambs'.  They were sexed (purple paint for the boys yellow for the girls) and put in a separate pen.

NiceYoungLass wonders whether we should put them all out in the same field. I suggest FarmLad might not be best pleased at that, so it was just the lambs to put out.

Ferretfingers, a couple of other trainees and I went out to block off any exits between the farm and the field.

In the middle of the fairy bridge there was a woman with a collie cross off the lead.  I shouted, politely, asking her to put her dog on the lead as "there are sheep coming".  She did but the lambs arrived too soon.  Half went past into the field.  The rest turned tail and went back into the courtyard pen (much to the consternation of the ewes) where someone shut the gate on them.

So another bucket of sheep-nuts was got and a second run of lambs made, with the nuts thrown as far into the field as possible to keep them all in (much to the joy of the resident rats and pigeons).

Second job, walk the goats to their foraging area full of brambles, going the longest way possible so they get some exercise.  Robson and Jerome are not in a good mood, alternately pulling like hell or stopping dead.  At one point Ferretfingers let go of Robson's lead and he had to be cornered and caught.  And Jerome head butted me sideways when I tried to shift him.

Next mucking out the lambs' pen and putting in clean straw.

Three wheelbarrows were filled with muck and one of the trainees trundled off with it to the clamp in the field where the lambs were.

There was a loud bleating, thirteen lambs appeared in the courtyard and put themselves back into the pen.

The gormless bugger hadn't thought to shut the gate and the person on the next barrow wasn't quick enough.

So when we left at lunchtime there were: six lambs in the field bleating because they were on their own;  thirteen in the courtyard pen bleating in reply to their missing flockmates; and four ewes bleating because the lambs were upset.

McChurch  Blimey, there’s more to this farming malarkey than you think.