Sunday, 11 April 2010
Winter last week now we have Summer.
Last week we had snow blizzards so bad we feared we would be stuck again. Yesterday & today Summer came calling. It's been so hot.
The croft is running with water since the thaw. I've taken to putting the sheep up on the lower apportionment during the day & bringing them back at night. There's a bad frost forecast otherwise we would leave them out. It's a bit of faff but the in-by fields are sodden & soiled & the grass is not really started to come yet. There are patches of grass on the apportionment & it's cleaner but I shall have to get them 'Spotted On' as the ticks are out after the thaw & the place is running alive with them - so that's another job on the 'first thing' list.
Crow Comes Round
Crow the snooty Hebredian ewe lamb has been so aloof I feared she would starve to death over the frozen Winter but we're best pals now.
Tuesday, 23 February 2010
Glare.
Very bright day, everything looks clean but it's been a cruel winter. The temperature is plummeting so much at night that we are reaching record lows. Everything is frozen again & it's hauling water out of the burn up to the sheep time again. It would be nice to be able to have a working tap, albeit our only tap which is cold water.
The weather has taken its toll on the sheep. Just over a week ago one of last year's male lambs wasn't too good. We put him on his own in the little byre with feed & water - he could barely stand. After a few days he seemed to rally a bit & I thought he'd be okay but Jim on his evening check came back to tell me he wasn't too sure. And in the morning he was dead.
Gem my beautiful orphan Shetland was butted by the alpha sheep & died last week. I am really hacked off about that. She butted her over at the feed trough and she didn't recover. I think she twisted her bowel. It's this desperate scrabble to get all the feed & we are giving them ample. We have seperate troughs but it gets like survival of the fittest & the alpha sheep is so powerful. I'm really glad I didn't put a ram in this past season - no lambs come Spring but don't think it would be a good lambing.
Friends have lost 5 sheep. It's so cold at night & not getting above freezing most days.
In the photo of the icicles below, about 5 minutes after that was taken today a young deer fell off the cliff & landed a few feet from me. I didn't grasp what was happening & Jim couldn't see it at first. It broke it's ankle on its front leg & had blood coming from its mouth but was just stood there in shock - as were we at first. I went to get a friend with a van but they said there was no way we could help it. We couldn't leave it like that & there was not a lot I could do so we told the gamekeeper as it wasn't going to survive & it was probably going to end up stumbling all over the road causing an accident.
Why it fell off the cliff I don't know - maybe we'd disturbed it & it slid - at first with the noise I thought it was icicles breaking off. It was strange & very sad.
A mile or two further along on the way home a young wild kid goat had just dropped & its legs were curled under as happens sometimes - same with lambs sometimes. The brave thing was chasing after its Mother on its front knees. If we would have tried to catch it its Mother would have abandoned it. It was so fiesty - as they are. We watched it a while & debated what to do - there isn't a lot you can do & I hope its legs straighten before its Mother gives up on it.
All within a few miles - a deer falling off a cliff & a wee kid with curled legs.........incredible.
The wild goats have been giving birth for about a month now - they come down from up top, drop the kids & when the weather picks up they're back up the tops. They have the ability to delay foetus development & will even reabsorb it if times get really tough - but this must be one of the toughest Winters they've had in a long while. A kid that is just born appears to be able to gallop up really steep inclines & also you see them eating the jaggy gorse - how do they do that?
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