Sheep Shearing

Definitely not of marketable quality, a pile of white fleece from
our ewes Lily and Myfanwy. Polly's slatey grey fleece is out of shot.

Nothing if not a bit of variety in this post - shearing sheep, snatching a beehive under cover of darkness and a bit of a barney in the roosters dept. Read on.

Not bad - our 3 ewes all looking tidier and a lot cooler

The sheep shearing is the 'biggest' story from my point of view. It is an important job and one I am trying to learn to do myself but I am finding it hard and difficult work. Last year I tried to do my ewes the 'proper' (professional) way - all that upside down wrestling and sheep on its rump between your legs that you may have seen at Agricultural Shows. It is wearing on the back and, while you are not very good yet, tends to take too long - up to an hour per sheep - for all of which time the poor ewe is under a lot of stress. I finished last year helping friends Sue and Rob by shearing their ewe, 'Pink', who is trained to a head collar and stands upright, on her own feet, reasonably calmly and lets you shear her without any fuss and wrestling. Blow trying to do it the pro way, I decided. I was determined in 2016 to do all ours upright. But head collars for sheep?

The ewes sheared with a bunch of this year's lambs. Goat and
kid in the background.

Anybody that knows sheep will know that you should really collar-train them from lamb-hood. They are big, strong, heavy animals and do not take kindly to suddenly having a collar round the neck or a halter about the face. They will buck and jump and fight and thrash about, especially if they can see a way out. We were not at all sure that our plan to corral everyone into a tight space while we collared the ewe and then have Liz whispering sweet nothings in the front end while we got a collar on and tied the sheep to some solid cattle-race ironwork, would keep the ewe calm enough when I fired up the noisy, rattling shearer and plunged it into the wool at the back end.

We followed up our own sheep success
by shearing Sue and Rob's ewe, Pink
(here) and Pink's 2015 lamb, the shearling
 'Rosie' today. 

Well, in a triumph of calmness, it all went OK. Liz undoubtedly had the harder physical job, hanging onto the rope after she'd "put a turn around" the bars (as we narrow-boaters say!) and steering the sheep's body with a spare knee or hand. I started with a long 'blow' up the spine to open up the fleece and then zizzed out and down in long stripes like mowing a lawn, with the fleece falling away like a cardigan put on backwards. I finished by nipping around legs, under the belly and up the brisket and neck, and finally by shifting the collar down and doing the face.

A Guinea Fowl hurls abuse at everyone
and anyone from our "Howth Head" rock.

We took around 45 minutes for the first ewe (already much faster than 2015), and then sped up with 35 for the 2nd and 25 for the 3rd. We were covered in lanolin and sweat (plus a bit of poo!) but happy and delighted that the job was over here. I just needed to get over to Sue and Rob's today to tackle Pink again and their shearling ewe (2015 lamb from Pink), Rosie. Now I can clean the machine and put it away for another year. I am quite proud of myself and feel like I am doing OK at this shearing lark.

A second hive collected at night - still needs the straps tidying
away and the roof settling properly. 

I spoke in the last post of our friend and near-neighbour T McC coming out of bees after a sting reaction and dispersing his numerous hives. We had agreed to take one of these so we were back into the joys of trying to safely move a hive containing 20,000+ stinging beasties. Readers who were with me on 13th April 2015 (http://deefer-dawg.blogspot.ie/2015/04/reinforcements.html) will know that you have to do this at night because otherwise all the workers are out foraging and they get left behind. You need to wait till around 22:30 and they have all gone to bed.

We got 1.764 kg of lovely lean 'parma' ham off our leg. 

The hive is made up of a stack of square boxes which sit on top of each other with no lugs or fixings, so to secure the stack we use gaffer tape all around the joints (to stop the boxes hopping out of line as the car goes over bumps), then ratchet straps over the stack in both directions. The final move is to block the entrance hole with foam and secure with tape, then heft the stack gently onto a wheelbarrow and slowly trundle it to the car. It gets the softest seat in the car (passenger seat) and is lashed to the seat back. You align the hive's internal frames north-south to minimise the slapping if the car brakes - you take all the corners veeeeery gently. You arrive at your destination apiary in pitch darkness and set the hive down on its stand. You gently peel back the foam and tape from the entrance and leg it back indoors. The hive then sits for a few days to settle before you worry about tidying up the remaining tape and straps. In our case it all went well and the ladies were all out doing orientation flights next morning and then normal missions and returns by afternoon. Good luck Hive 2; we hope you will be very happy and content here. Thank you very much T McC.

The Colonel has been in the wars. His face, here, is
spattered with dried blood.

A while back we had a lovely visit from cousins Dan and Danielle during which Danielle happened to comment on the amusingly creaky 'crow' noise of one of the roosters. We wonder now whether this next story had really started way back then. We have recently kept 2 Buff Orpington roosters. One, The Colonel, we have had for three years; he is our 'alpha'. As back up we allowed one of his children to stay but explained to this lad (The Captain) that as long as he was happy to stay at 2nd-in-Command and did not fight our main man (well, at least as long as he didn't win!) he was a keeper.

The 365 Project is focusing on bio-diversity this week. Our
local crows are all of the 'hooded' variety. 

Well, possibly as a result of the Colonel's loss of manly voice, or maybe the shortage of available hens (several gone broody), the #2 rooster has broken that agreement this week and started attacking The Colonel. This culminated in Liz having to race to his rescue yesterday when The Captain had him down on the ground and was beating the bangers out of him, pecking and kicking. Bad move, Captain.

You cannot leave this kind of thing to run - these are big powerful birds and can do each other serious damage - so we took the not very nice but necessary decision to cull out the young pretender. He is now variously in the freezer as meat, in the bin as feathers and gribbly bits, in the cats as scraps from the stock pot and in a big bottle of stock. RIP Captain. The Colonel is recovering his dignity and pride and looked decidely disconbobulated for the next 24 hours, presumably wondering why his adversary was no longer pouncing on him.

R.I.P. Theo

Theo at a family wedding a while ago. 

I start this post with the saddest of news, the passing away of Liz's Father, Theo C who has been a feature of this blog for as long as it has been up here. We knew him as 'Mr SL', being the husband of Liz's Mum, Steak Lady. Regular readers will know that he had not been well for a while now and that some of Liz's missions down to Silverwood land had been to look after him as he was in and out of short stays in hospital.

Enjoying the sunshine outside here with Liz this summer.

He passed away peacefully in that hospital yesterday afternoon surrounded by all the family. He had been very much part of the bedside chat as the clan gathered and had just had his lunch. He was 88. We will all miss him - he was the best of men. Certainly to me he was the best Father in Law I can imagine wishing for and he always had a lot of time for me; generous, loving, welcoming and kind. I laugh now at my worries when 'courting' (does anyone still use that word?) Liz and knew I was going to have to meet her Father, impress him and ask his permission for Liz's hand, with me being a 'foreigner' and him known to be a passionate expert on all things Irish History; me coming to take away his kith and kin to another country. The 'perfidious Albion'? He was, instead, the best of hospitality, immediately bringing me into the family circle like that old 'cliché', "gaining a son, not losing a daughter" and his "Father of the Bride" speech was a mix of history and olde Irish (Brehon) Law around how auspicious it was to be wedding in November (the Feast of Samhain) and the old dowry set-up for the family women, that I will never forget. Love you Theo and I will miss you a lot. RIP my Friend.

Pink's ewe lamb. 

But what of things more local? Most exciting, I think, are events over at Sue and Rob's (they of the piglet-wrangling) rain soaked establishment. The ewe 'Pink', who you might recall I sheared this year as my first sheep owned by "someone else" and was true wife of the ram we borrowed to service our own ewes (the late Rambo) surprised Rob two evenings ago by popping out two tiny lambs.

Pink with both lambs.

It was lashing rain (as is normally the case) and Rob was doing his evening rounds when he heard bleating which was way too young to be the adolescent ram-lamb still hanging around with Mum. Investigating that far corner of the field , he found Pink there surrounded by afterbirth and with two lambs, on their feet, suckling away like good 'uns. That rainy cold night with the snow still melting in the field, was no place for these tiny newcomers, so the family have been rounded up and penned in a dry barn on good hay. This not without difficulty, apparently because the lambs, carried by Rob did not make the usual protest noises which bring the ewe anxiously following you across the field. They were quiet, so Mum looked like staying in the field where she could smell the afterbirth and presumably 'knew there were lambs here somewhere'. They had to park the lambs in the car-boot temporarily while they manhandled Pink over to a happy re-union. All sorted now, though. One lamb is a ewe, the other a tiny ram.

Soldier just fits in the wooden fruit bowl. 

I nearly caused Liz to choke on her coffee by announcing this birth in a text message saying that they had been born to "Rambo's wife"; which she took to mean one of OUR ewes. No Lizzie - ours are not due till Valentine's Day. That same evening Sue also got a message that the boar and sow combination I helped load for their trip to new owners in Sligo (Rodney the boar, Cassandra the sow) have now also recorded a happy event, ten tiny plump, spotty little piglets, all thriving and suckling from Mumma's 'milk bar' to a band playing.

Potato cakes with a difference - these left overs were mixed
'spud' and 'yam' mashed. 

I nipped over to S+R's place to see the new lambs and managed to coincide with the task of docking tails and attempted castration of the little ram. I had not seen this done before so I am always keen to see and try it and hopefully learn. Sheep-folk commonly use a special pliers which stretch out tiny rubber rings while you slip the tail (or scrotum) through the opening and then allow the band to pull back tight cutting off the blood supply to the body-part 'downstream'. The tail or 'tackle' then shrivels up and drops off allegedly painlessly if you do it within the first 3 days of birth.

With the spud haulms cleared and tomato plants pulled up
the chickens are let in the poly tunnel for a clear up. It is the
driest place in the garden currently so dust baths are the order
of the day. 

We had no problem with the tails but hit problems with the ram's 'bits'. The tiny testes (sorry if you're having your tea) do not stay helpfully down in the 'sac' while you apply the band, the lamb can draw them right back up tight to his pubic bones. You try to hold them while you manipulate the pliers but then you are sure you feel them slip back out of the 'noose' and you are left banding a fold of empty scrotum. Both Sue and I had a number of attempts but ultimately failed. They may try again over the next day(s) to see if it gets easier, but my sheep 'bible' (Tim Tyne's "The Sheep Book for Smallholders") says (p106) "The elastrator can be used to castrate male lambs but you should ask yourself whether this is really necessary. Most people do not bother nowadays as the modern taste is for smaller cuts of meat - ram lambs will be slaughtered long before they become a nuisance. Entire (i.e. not castrated) lambs will produce a better confirmation carcass with more muscling and less fat". I may see how Sue gets on and then decide what to do with mine on the strength of that.

Love's young dream? Guinea cock-bird 'Apollo' is so firmly
bonded with our remaining turkey-hen that we worry about
killing the girl. 

Our other main task lately is killing the turkeys, 2 down, one of our own and a bought-in extra to go. Here we hit another 'welfare' issue. 'Left-over' Guinea cock-bird Apollo seems to have fallen deeply in love with the remaining turkey hen who is about 3 times his size. These turkeys were always going to be Christmas dinner, not 'keepers' but if I despatch this hen I will be left with a broken hearted Guinea fowl - exactly what we planned to NOT have when we got the two new Guineas hoping one of them would be male and would pair off  with widow-bird 'Min'. The answer might be to kill Apollo too but he's going to fun to catch - Guineas are way smarter than turkeys when it comes to evading me. Ah well, more on this after this weekend. I will let you know how it panned out.

Finally a funny human story. With Carolyn (of the mini-horses) currently car-less due to a dead alternator I have been doing 'taxi' off and on and this morning I was on school-run taking C and Henry (3) along to the local pre-school. Henry is normally madly in love with the young teacher and no trouble for Mum to get through the door but today he had what she describes as "a little wobble", didn't want to go in and announced that "This is the worst day of my LIFE!" Oh to be 3 again, when the worst thing that ever happened to you was having to go to school.

Myfanwy (Price)

Myfanwy Price and Dylan.

Welcome aboard Myfanwy Price, a very Welsh name for a Southdown x Hampshire ewe. She is so named because she continues our run of female members of the cast of Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood which already includes Polly (Garter) and Lily (Smalls). She comes with a young (June-born) ram lamb at foot whom we have called Dylan (as in Thomas, of course). When I last posted we were all ready and with a working trailer tow-hitch, eagerly awaiting a phone call from Mayo-Liz our 'supplier' out by Kiltimagh.

Myfanwy and Dylan check out 'Hen and Two Chicks' on the
front lawn.

As it happened, the phone call came just as we were preparing to go out shopping for new bed linen. We were expecting Sparks and his good lady for an overnight on Monday and thought it would be nice to fit out 'their' room with all new linen. We were just drinking that final coffee before departure when the phone rang. I had to look pleadingly at Liz for a change of plan; she probably saw a future of trying to keep me focused on linen shopping when there was a ewe and lamb awaiting collection. Anyway, plan B was set in motion - hitch up trailer, nip to Kiltimagh to collect sheep, drop sheep back here, leave me to commune with new sheep while Liz took off for Carrick, solo, for un-pressured bedding shopping.

Our full complement on the front lawn.

Off to Mayo then and we knew where the pair would be even as we pulled up, so we got a good look at them over the split shed-gate before Mayo-Liz and husband Ray had even appeared to welcome us and we liked what we saw. The ewe is a relative youngster (18 months), so rather slight and slim compared to our 'mumsie' 3 year old and 5 year old, but she will fit in well with our plan to roll 3-4 ewes through the flock at 2-year age intervals. That way any anxious new first time mums can get reassurance from the calm, experienced old timers as their bodies go through all those unfamiliar and potentially upsetting changes.

We're big chicks now, so we want to sit
up in the grown-ups chairs.

The new ewe here is, in fact, a one time Mum and has her first lamb already with her; him a fine sturdy chap reminding us of our own first-born, Feste who was also 3/4 Hampshire. He is not quite weaned but he is big enough to need to kneel down to get at Mum's teats and she is already a bit impatient with him and walks off after he's had only a quick suck. Our plan is to put all three ewes to the borrowed tup (Rambo) at around mid September, so the ram lamb needs to be weaned fairly soon, so that she can come back on heat by then. We do not anticipate a problem. Ideally the tup serves all three ewes quickly on arrival, so that we get a nice synchronised lambing (Feb/March) but if she's not quite ready to stand for him, he will be around for a month and will catch up with her later in the visit if she's a bit slow.

Light summer fare ? In the awful wet weather we have been
lighting the range some evenings and using up frozen
winter-warmers like this haggis, neeps and tatties.

Rambo is good and ready and will almost certainly have tupped the ewe 'Pink' whom I sheared recently and may also have had a go at one of Sue's goats to produce a 'Geep'. The goat is looking very pregnant when we last saw her but Sue tells us that Geeps are a rarity. The mother (generally the goat) may go to full term but will usually pass only still-born 'babies'. However there are American 'experts' on the internet who say that, no, they have loads of them running about as fit as fleas. We wait with eager anticipation but also disquiet - no-one wants the gentle mother to suffer or even experience the anguish of still birth.

Not the brightest place to sleep, Soldier.

So, we trundled home with our new purchases and had a quick discussion on how to introduce Myfanwy and Dylan to our 'old' 4. We can no longer drive car and trailer across the front of the house and right into the East Field due to the new gravel/rose garden and the combined rig would ground out on the slope at the end of the cattle race.  Liz came up with a cunning manouvre where we move the 4 to the East field and then let the new ones in from the lane into the top of the Primrose Path. We were not sure of the keen-ness of the newbies to follow me and my unfamiliar feed bucket, but we knew we'd have no problem with the 4.

Some first outdoor mange-tout, went in well to the Indian
(Madhur Jaffrey) meal Liz cooked for Sparks plus one. 

The new animals got an hour or two alone on the front lawn while Liz shopped and they got their bearings and shouted much baa-ing conversation to the 4, one field away. When Liz got back we distracted the new pair while I ran the old 4 on to the lawn so they could meet. That went off as smoothly as you could hope, so, come 6 pm, all 6 were run back to the East Field to spend the night, a little minor stampede after my feed bucket which was actually led by Myfanwy and Dylan. Job done. Our little flock is now complete.

Another classic depression cruises up the Western Seaboard
- no Summer sunshine for us just yet.

We will have 'produced' 4 lambs this year which meets all our needs. We have had a little rash of friends and relatives asking 'can you do one for us' but we are not inclined to go down that road. However, we have an outstanding order in with our old friend, the elusive Scarlet Pimpernel, Kenny O'C. He never replies to texts, calls or voice messages but has been known to turn up without warning with a trailer of "the sheep you wanted" and if he does, he's such a nice guy that we'd not want to let him down by saying "Ahhh, but we've gone elsewhere because we thought you weren't interested....". We may end up with 9 sheep yet, these 6 and Kenny's 2 (female) store lambs and a breeding 'yow'. Don't put the Under MIlk Wood back on the shelf just yet.

Shears, Ribs and Bee Stings

Sue's ewe, 'Pink' back in March, when the lamb was new.
Shaggy enough then, never mind in July

A big ugly weather system rattles on through and does for our warm July weather. It's a cracker - a deep 'Low' with three fronts (warm, cold and occluded) all centred on us like the three-pointed star of a Mercedes Benz logo. We get 48 hours of strong, blustery winds from all round the compass and a rake of squally showers. It's not quite enough to pin us down indoors but it definitely feels a bit un-necessary for mid July. It is all accurately forecast, though, so it does not stop the main event for this post, a bit more sheep shearing.

Amusing "half a job" shot shows how they can change
'size' when sheared.  These pics by Rob.

This was 'Pink', Sue and Rob's semi-pet ewe who got missed last year so now had 2 years worth of fleece (and dags) wrapping her up like a 4 inch pile carpet. 'Pink' because when they got her, she had a big pink spray-on flock-mark on her rump. Now she was seriously shaggy and daggy and in need of a clip. Many thanks to Sue and Rob who allowed me to practise on their precious sheep; they got a free shear but this was only my 3rd ever sheep, 4th ever try (our 'Lily' took 2 'bites') and my first try at doing someone else's animal. If you mess up your own sheep you can hide them in the back field and never post pics on Facebook, but if you mess up someone else's, it's all a bit more public. I was nervous.

Not a bad job - just the one tiny nick and no bleeding!

Pink is also trained to a head-collar so might give us a chance to shear her up the right way, standing on her own feet, which has got to be a lot less stressful for the animal than all that wrestling and up-ending them. If Rob could secure the front end and whisper sweet nothings in her ear, I could work away at the daggy end without her leppin' about. Her back end was completely obscured by the long and thick wool on each 'buttock' which joined together like 2 thick daggy, dread-locked up curtains, completely hiding the delicate bits which I must try to avoid cutting at all costs (udder and vulva) but with Rob holding her I had a hand free to part the 'curtains' and could slide the clippers in and around safely. Sorry if you're having yout tea!

I'm the sweaty one recovering here. Sue, the "client" definitely
looks like she is weighing up the job quality. She pronounced
herself very pleased and praised the result generously. 

Anyway, it all worked and I soon had her back end completely clear and was able to strike some 'blows' all up the spine and round the flanks and belly at which point we stopped as Rob was going to get sheared if he stayed where he was. Hence the amusing "half sheared" shot above which is a stage you'd never see on a "proper" shearing job. We took a breather, then Rob was able to move back and just hold head and collar, with Pink increasingly used to this idea, so I could get up her shoulders, forelegs, brisket and neck. Job done. Everyone gathered then to say nice things about the result before we moved Pink back to the field where the ram welcomed her home and she now looked smaller than her March-born ram-lamb . There is just a mountain of daggy fleece to pick up and clear away. It had been a good afternoon.

Towser ripping into a big raw beef rib. 

While we are 'on' all things Sue, she has also found a lovely beef butcher in nearby village Frenchpark. This guy apparently slaughters and butchers his own animals and hangs them for 2 weeks in between. The meat looks lovely and is cheaper than town and Supermarkets but even better, the guy cuts joints to suit the Irish customer which means well away from the bone and membranes surrounding them. His 'scraps' and bones for the dogs are therefore the meatiest we have ever seen and Sue showed us a 'trimming' that was so meaty and non-bony that you could have actually fried it for a steak for your own plate. She passed us a sheet of ribs a foot square and the dogs had (bits of) that for supper - much shlurping and ripping till the ribs were 'handed back' to us stripped "to the bone" like some dry white sun-bleached skeleton in a Western movie.

Common spotted orchid on the verge
actually ON the nearby bridge.

There are apparently around 30 species of orchid native this Island and plant spotters vie with one another to try to find them all. Even good experienced spotters only manage around ten and I am sure I've only ever seen (and definitely identified) one. That is the common spotted orchid (Dactylorhiza fuchsii) which we found, to our delight, on the local bridge; actually in the verge on the bridge structure, that mess of old leaves and bits not trodden by the passing of car tyres but on top of the tarmac. Anne (who knows more about these things) tells me I might also find the greenish white 'Lesser Butterfly Orchid' (Platanthia bifolia) on my Kiltybranks (bog) meanderings but they are off to a special known site near Sligo town tomorrow to try to spot a few more. We were up in Sligo today but only for shopping.

Ouch - don't grab a bee when you go to pull up that
flowering weed!

Meanwhile, 'note to self'. If you are weeding near the hive in the sunshine, do go careful how you grab up those fistfuls of weeds. Don't go grabbing up a bee with them or she will sting you on the thumb. I have now been stung 4 times since we had bees and while I am delighted to find I am not a 'reactor' with all that anaphylactic shock drama, I get the sharp 'stab' followed by a mild tingle on the day but then a painful swelling overnight. Not enough to stop me handling the sheep shears but not nice.