Lambey is still with us, she is sitting out in the sun currently. Too weak to stand (but with lambs long spindly legs I can see why they lost their balance so easily. A design fault I believe) she has been nibbling grass ‘moats’ around her and then shuffling to the next bit.
She has had scour.
And now we know what scour is really like, it’s not a case of flop bots, it’s a real case of everything out, faster than it goes in. We’ve hosed her down and left her in the sun to dry out. She will be back in later so we can keep an eye on her. It is difficult to tell what is going to happen, but we will know that we have done all we can. She seems happy outside and we hear the occasional baaaaa from outside.
Bob is still out of sorts. But it is difficult to put a finger on it still. He is lethargic, but has enjoyed the walks that he has been out on, keeping up, but still stopping to sniff at interesting sheep poo. I don’t think that it helps him seeing Lambey, who gets carried around, lush grass picked for her, sheep nuts cut in half so she can nibble them and popped in front of the fire when the sun goes down. Bob also has an ‘access all area’ card at the moment which has taken him into a variety of areas that he would normally be banned from, and I do wonder if Bob is aspiring to this as a way of life.
I’ve been on Bob bot watch (seems to be a theme running through this post) to check that he is ‘going’. I haven’t seen him go today, and whilst dogs generally think that sharing every movement with you (pun intended), they are also perfectly capable of hiding the odd one away for you to find later. So I am wondering if he is constipated. Hence the fact that Bob is now on a new diet, pasta, carrot, bacon, brussel sprouts and lastly the all important ingredient – sweetcorn (so we know which little pile has been made by Bob)
We’ll keep an eye on him and take him back to the vet if he doesn’t improve.
And poor Horrace and his horn. Horrace is a great Ram lamb, he is the father of our herdie lambs and has done us proud. He is stocky, solid built, nice tempered – and has a horn that has curled back into his eye. It has grown so it is touching the eye lid. Now, this is not an unusual occurrence, you don’t see it because the farmer gets out there with a hacksaw. Horrace’s horn got to a stage where it was going to start to annoy him, so we got the hacksaw out, Ian did the sawing, I was sort of spreadeagled over Horrace holding him down because, unsurprisingly, Horrace took offence to Ian approaching his eye with a hacksaw. It was about a two-inch tip that Ian sawed off, and about an inch and a bit wide. It bled which it shouldn’t, but Horrace is still a growing ram and I guess this meant that his horns have a bigger growing core? But anyway, he is fine and the bleeding stopped. I am not sure that we are his favorite people, however if he is still with us in the autumn (we are planing to take him to the Herdwick fair, we should plan to at least swap him so we get new blood lines, but as he gave us all rams we do not need to worry about this for this year!), when we introduce him to his ladies again I am sure that any grudge will be forgotten.
And finally today was rabbit grooming day. I don’t think I will be using Crumpets fibre as it is a bit short, however it is lovely glossy fibre, almost luminous, I’ve not seen anything like it before. I’m looking forward to our working with our animal fibre; spinning and weaving. Of course first thing is to learn how to spin…….
PS: Update from craft fare to come