Wow, looking back I haven’t updated about the sheep since early January. In a way not much has changed. They spend most of their time munching away, including eating any bushes and trees they can reach. However we are in the run up to some big changes.
At the start of February we took Akbar back. He served us well covering all the ewes in the first 2 cycles and, as far as we could see, none in the third cycle. We only had the orange and green raddle paint though so we mixed it to a brown, and as we didn’t get any covering in the first half of the cycle we didn’t top it up. I was quite daunted by the prospect of loading him up, but we made a makeshift race and Sam loaded him up no problem. We did the drive and unloaded him easily. It’s another one of those smallholding tasks that has worried me, it’s a short list that is pretty much built around the places we could really go wrong in animal welfare. It includes loading and transporting animals, killing our first chickens and all that follows, lambing and booking an animal in for the abattoir. We’ve now done two out of that list.
A week and half after Akbar left we had the Scanning Lady come to scan our girls. It was a couple weeks earlier than the suggested time for when Akbar went in with the girls but it was the best we could do due to her availability. She made quick work of the girls and we scanned as 1 twin (Aeryn), 2 singles (Alanna and Arya), 1 single that might have a second (Arha – the lam she was certain of was still small) and 2 empties (Anya and Aelin).
The plan when we were first thinking of getting sheep was to get 3. Then we thought maybe get more and eat those that don’t get into lamb. When we found out we had 2 empties we thought ‘great, we’ll be eating lamb (well hogget) before 2018 ‘. Then we looked at when Akbar left we got a bit worried that the Aelin and Anya might be in the very early stages of pregnancy. Unfortunately there’s no way to tell now until they go past the latest possible lambing date (5th July) and I would feel absolutely awful sending them off to slaughter only to find out they were pregnant. So we shall be keeping them and sending them off in July if they haven’t popped.
I’m feeling pretty certain that they aren’t in lamb (pregnant) though. The two of them are hopping and skipping around the field and picking fights like teenage girls. I took a little video (well it’s a bit long in places) that shows their behaviour standing out. They are starting to really butt the in-lamb girls though so we may have to separate them if they don’t calm down.
Of the girls that are pregnant, Arya is due at the start of May followed by Alanna, Arha and Aeryn all at the end of the month. I am both terrified of lambing and utterly excited. Hopefully we shall soon have some happy tales to tell and lots of pictures.
Dans
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