Dunster Castle Sheepdog and Falconry display

weaning the lambs

The dry spell of weather that lasted through much of April, May and June has well and truly passed and with some welcome rain so the grass has started to grow again. But even with a new flush of grass, the lambs and ewes soon find themselves in competition for the same grazing, and by the middle of July they are better off separated from one another.

Weaning tends to be a slightly chaotic job. Although the gathering of the various flocks is straight forward, once in the sheep pens the  dogs push them single file through a long narrow sheep ‘race’. At the end of the race I switch a gate from one side to another putting ewes into one pen and the lambs into another. As more and more sheep pass through the race the din of bleating ewes and lambs increases, until we end up with the flock split completely in two. The ewes are easy to return to the fields as they will run in search of their lambs assuming that they will find them back in the fields from where they came. These adult sheep need little grass for the rest of the summer, so I chose the barest fields to return them to.

Lambs require a little more attention, and this year they received a worm dose, their second vaccination against clostridial disease and  a bolus containing selenium and cobalt (a bolus is a heavy solid lump about the size of the end of your little finger, which lodges in the stomach and dissolves over 5 months) Each of the lambs takes thirty seconds to treat, and this year we weaned 800 lambs!

The lambs can now have the best grass for the rest of the summer, but driving newly weaned lambs is not straight forward. It needs lots of dogs with lots of energy, so this year it was the turn of  Mist, Eddie and Fly, with a little from Fern (when she could be bothered!) Fly is really proving herself, and has absolutely boundless energy. But the lambs feel leaderless and swirl and split and break in all directions, so driving over four hundred lambs through the track in the woods was quite entertaining! It took nearly an hour to drive the lambs to their new pasture. By that time the dogs were deparate for water and rest. It’s a great reminder as to why I need to keep young dogs coming on to join the team.

For twenty four hours both ewes and lambs break the tranquility of Borough Farm, with a chorus of bleating, but the fresh grass soon proves a distraction and peace returned to the valley.

Alfie’s new best friend

If you have followed ‘Mist Sheepdog tales’ on Channel Five, you might well have spotted that Fern is far and away the grumpiest sheepdog on Borough Farm. She does what she pleases when she pleases and now that she’s almost eleven years old, she has decided that she wants to retire to the kitchen. However, Alfie has been living in the kitchen for the past month or so, and we’ve been a bit worried about the grumpiest dog on the farm joining him…… but perhaps we’ve been worrying unnecessarily.

Fern seems to have decided  that she will take on the role of ‘Great Aunt’ and spends her time playing with the young pup, allowing him to pull her tail and bite her ears!

So we’re not quite sure at the moment if Fern has really turned over a new leaf, or whether she has just decided that the only way to achieve her ambition of retirement in the kitchen, is to pretend to be a great babysitter!

fly’s first outing

Last week it was time to wean the lambs away from the ewes on Morte Point, and with Fern nearly eleven years old, it was time to give Fly her first taste of gathering the sheep on the coastal ground.

I’m always a little worried when working a young dog amongst gorse and bracken and near the cliffs for the first time. Up until now Fly has been trained and worked in fenced fields,  and would have no understanding of sheep grazing near the cliff edge. So I kept her close at hand for most of the time and didn’t let her go any where that I couldn’t see her. She did try to run through a patch of solid gorse and seemed surprised that she just bounced off! But for the most part she did pretty well, and I was particularly pleased that she was beginning to run wide through thick patches of scrub, in order to head off the sheep. It’s a long way to go before she’s up to the standard of Jake and Mist, but it was certainly another positive step on the path to becoming one of my top sheepdogs.