At this time of year in this part of the country, it doesn’t get dark till nearly 11pm and gets light again about 3.30am; who needs lights? We could have gone another 8 weeks before it started to become an issue.
Admittedly it probably wouldn’t have been done even in that time without the intervention of schnooklebuns, but in theory there was no requirement for her to make any of those threats in order to get the lighting finished; not for another couple of months at least.
Well Lambey is still with us and proving to be punching considerably above her weight. She’s looking so skinny at the moment as she’s had her rear end clippered back to the skin. This morning we discovered that on top of her other problems, scour (now cured) and difficulty standing, she also has been afflicted with fly strike. This is apparently when blow flies lay their eggs in the fleece of sheep and lambs and the resulting maggots start to literally eat the animal. Can be fatal.
I noticed this morning a red raw patch on her rear flanks, which closer inspection was infested with maggots. At first I thought this was just because Kate had been hugging her. We gave her a shower which seemed to get rid of most of them, but Kate found more whilst drying Lambey and decided to take her to the vet; hence clippered rear end.
At this point I think we have to assign her pet status. I don’t know what her recent vets’ fees are adding upto, but I think it might be more than her worth, particularly as she might yet choose to spite us and drop dead. As a pet it’s easier to justify the expenditure.
Elsewhere, there’ve been changes on the poultry front. The 2 hens who have been mothering 9 ducklings between them, have been paroled, and the ducklings moved into a single run. Interestingly they all seem to get on fine unlike the gruesome twosome intial meetings, but this might be because they were all moved into the run at pretty much the same time. The two hens looked a bit disturbed following their experience and there are mutterings in the garden about the invasion of the body snatchers.
Fortunately, Loofey’s newfound sartorial elegance is taking the minds of the livestock off such disturbing thoughts. Loofey has discovered Vivienne Westwood; admiteddly she’s a little behind, picking up the 1998 summer collection, but she has quite definitely picked up on the Westwood look. She’s taken to wearing her fleece of the shoulder and with some rather saucy and more than daring cutaway sections. It has been suggested that she’s mutton dressed as lamb, boom boom! I thank you!
Least she’ll save us having to shear her. On the basis of the angoras, I fear it might take us some time to shear a whole sheep. Did see on another website, someone talking about how they’d sheared their first sheep and they felt they’d done quite a good job; however when they did the sums it had taken them 8 hours. A good shearer takes about 1 1/2 mins.
We’ve had a village meeting tonight about setting up a satellite and wireless broadband network. Things are looking quite positive with a projected installation cost of £75 and monthly fee of £15-20. It’d be good to get access to braodband in our semi-remote location.
Think that sums up recent events. Back soon.