The Victorious Lamb- poor one-eyed Walter

Poor Walter the lamb was attacked by a fox when he was only a few days old and had his left eye damaged. The skin around the eye was torn up and his tear duct was torn. His eye was so badly injured that poor Walter was blind in his left eye. He had several bites on his head and one on his side, but Walter was victorious and managed to escape the fox's clutches- probably with the help of his mother. When we saw poor Walter we had to decide whether to shoot him or try and save his life. We watched Walter for about 15 minutes to assess how he was doing. Walter was just walking around like he didn't have a care in the world and then went to his mother for a drink. We decided that he had a real fighting chance of survival and took him to the vet. Unfortunately, this decision made Walter an orphan, as he was hospitalised away from his mother for several days and because he had such a large complex wound he would not be able to be placed back into the paddock where the wound would get dirty and he may infect other sheep with the nasty bacteria that were infecting his wound. Walter moved into our house, with a lamb nappy and an eye patch.

Above is Walter's 'good side'. Below is Walter's 'bad side'.

This is Walter's injury after surgical debridement by the vet. A nasty gaping wound- you can see his eye on the very top of the wound- unfortunately it is blind and would have to be removed at a later date, according to the vet. The rest of the wound is a large tear in his face that required a little plastic surgery!

This season's lambs

Triplets! - Cerys makes up for her poor lambing record

Cerys, the fat chick of the sheep world, finally got lucky and got laid. Amazingly enough, she also got pregnant after two years of inability to produce an offspring. After a very long labour and a lot of discussion about whether we needed to call a vet or take matters into our own hands and reach for the Vaseline, Cerys gave birth to three healthy little lambs. She looks a little defeated in these photos! I guess she is thinking: "Why me? I was doing alright without this little 'life experience' "

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A couple of things we have learned from Cerys:

1) Fat sheep are not healthy sheep. Being fat reduces fertility, increases pregnancy risks, makes labour difficult and can make for big lambs- too big to be delivered naturally without risk to lamb and mother.

2) Never count a ewe out simply because she has failed to get pregnant the first time she is joined. She may need an extra year and a bit of a diet change!

3) Give a ewe who has had triplets at least a year's grace from lamb bearing to recover and rebuild condition- she probably needs two years if you are actually concerned about her welfare and not just her money making capacity.

4) Ewes who have multiple births need to have supplemental feeding to keep up with the milk demands of the lambs- these ewes lose condition very quickly.

5) The more lambs a ewe is carrying, the greater the risk of complications during labour and the higher the possibility the ewe will need assistance to lamb. Multiple lambs can get tangled up in each other during the birth.

Rosie and the Lambs

Our beautiful (now deceased) English Mastiff, Rosie, acting as a foster mother for the orphaned lambs. She was the gentlest, sweetest natured and quietest dog I have ever known!

Pinkerton versus the world

The world's bravest cat

Pinkerton the cat has been teaching the dogs to respect a cat's authority since they arrived in the house, but on this day she decided to give them a group lesson. Holly, the 4 year old German Shepherd, took off and went into the back garden as soon as she saw Pinkerton. Holly is very aware that things can get ugly when the cat gets a notion to take on the dogs.

Ivy, the German Shepherd, and Dan, the American Bulldog, are both 10 months old in these photos and have already had quite a few individual lessons from Pinkerton on how to behave around cats. This group lesson is both confusing and exciting Ivy, who does not quite know what to do. Ebony, the very unfortunate 5 month old refugee Poodle from Perth was never destined to enjoy life on a farm with three other much bigger and older dogs, but this day she was most unhappy. Now the cat was also trying to dominate her. How far down the pecking order could she actually go, she wondered?

Pinkerton is irritated that Ivy still hasn't quite learned the lesson

Dog well retreated behind the tree, Pinkerton surveys her territory and gives all the dogs the 'evil eye' to remind them of what will be waiting for them if they ever get cheeky enough to challenge her supremacy.

Pinkerton, you are my hero!

Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumper over (and broke) the (brand new) fence

Oh no, here she comes and we are in this paddock with the newly planted trees and we really shouldn't be in here eating them and trampling them into the ground. Let's get out of here before she sees us.

Hey! How did you guys get out so quickly? Wait for us. She'll flip out again if she finds us in here.

She's seen us. What do we do now?

Come on you sissy, jump the bloody thing. We aren't waiting here all day. She might have a rifle with her this time

Stuff it. I'm outta here. She'll never believe that we ran out of grass over here.

Wait for me.

 Damn it, I knew I shouldn't have eaten so many of those trees- my gut has got stuck on this thing. 

Phew. That was close. Compose yourself and act as if nothing happened. She'll never suspect a thing.

Love a (Muscovy) Duck

Once we (thought we) had mastered the art of chicken management we were keen to expand our skills to other poultry types. So we bought ten Muscovy ducks and seven Pilgrim geese from a local farmer. I will talk about the geese later. Today I would like to share with you the joys (and drawbacks) of having ducks in your life.

We got ten young Muscovies and they moved in with the chickens. We soon discovered that they were great "sitters". They would be walking along and just drop onto their bellies and sit, like their legs suddenly stopped working. At first we were worried they had some kind of leg weakness but, as we have come to learn, all Muscovies like to sit- a lot. They have heavy bodies and like to take a load off. The drakes especially are big, heavy birds which seem to find walking a huge encumbrance, and really get a waddle on just to go from A to B. They do not like to run and you can in fact cause them leg injuries if they are forced to run. This is why you must never chase them to catch them. If you want to catch a Muscovy you must trap them suddenly and unexpectedly, or round them up slowly so they do not have to run.

They were happy in their new home and grew surprisingly quickly. Two weeks later they looked like this

How to Know when your Ewe is Lambing

Ewes generally follow a similar pattern when they are about to give birth. Most of the following signs will be displayed, but possibly not all of them. 

Your ewe will remove herself from the flock a day or two before she has her lamb, standing on the periphery and generally not being very active. She may seek out a sheltered secluded spot and just hang around that area for a day or two. She may not do this, she may stay with the flock, but most often she will prefer to be away from the others.

She will still eat and drink at this time but as the labour progresses, she may stop eating and just stand or lay in the same area. She may continue to eat- I have seen both things happen. I have seen a ewe eating between contractions.

She will try to urinate frequently once the labour has begun.

Your ewe will get a certain "look " about her that you will come to recognise the more often you see it. She will look hollower in the sides, just under the spine and in front of her hips. Her tail will be elevated. She will hang her head down and look at her sides.

Cerys- the goddess of agriculture

Cerys: The first of our very own lambs born on Morilla

Above: The first four girls we bought to keep Enoch company once he was no longer able to live in suburbia with us. They were three Dohne merinos we named Iris, Belle and Maggie, and one Damara/Dorper cross we named Summer. Belle soon became known as Christopher because she looks like my nephew Christopher, although I am sure he would disagree, probabaly quite strongly! Summer came to be called Somali because she has very skinny legs and could live on a handful of oats a day. I know this is not at all politically correct and I am sure it will count as a mark against me when I stand at the Pearly Gates and are judged!

Beginners' Guide to Chickens: Part One: The strange chicken man and how we got our hens

We bought our hens off of a very strange man indeed. We arrived at his farm to collect the year old hens I had ordered over the phone. The farm was brimming with poultry, some would call "free- range" others would call "feral". There were birds of all description and breeding running around all over the place. Hens with chicks of the oddest mixed breeding, it was hard to imagine what the parentage actually was. I think I saw what could only have been a Light Sussex chicken crossed with a Muscovy duck crossed with a Cockatoo, but having studied a little biology, I knew I must be hallucinating. Again.

The alarm bells did ring, but we are no pussies and refused to pay any heed to those infernal bells. That is for the weak and the cowardly. "Let us have these hens of questionable parentage, age and health" we said, "Here, take our money". "That's right, we are those city slicker suckers from yonder ways whom you have no doubt heard about". The strange man came out of his house and we introduced ourselves. He told us he had already given our birds away to someone else who arrived earlier, and now he would have to go and catch some more. This appeared to make him a little irritated, as if we had inconvenienced him because he had given our birds to someone else. Fifteen minutes later he arrives with his hands full of hens hanging upside down by the legs and plonks them into the boxes we had bought with us to carry them home. Money exchanges hands. Deal done.

The strange man had a very usual last name, the same name as a friend of mine who has family in the south west, so I asked: "Are you related to so-and-so from such-and-such a place?" He said: "I probably have got family there", then he turned away and went inside his house. G and I didn't know what this meant, so we hung around for about 10 minutes waiting for him to come out again. He did not. We got in the car and left, without a "thank you" or a "goodbye"