jake’s foot

added by David on Friday July 1, 2011 at 3:55 pm

It doesn’t seem possible that Jake is getting older, but in a couple of weeks time he will have his 8th birthday. He’s still a puppy at heart, he hasn’t lost his passion for digging moles, rolling on his back (near cliff edges) or attempting to bark while carrying a blade of grass in his mouth!  However, it would be fair to say that he is contemplating his retirement. Most of my dogs slow down at his age then retire to a life under the kitchen table at about nine or ten, but Jake has made the move indoors a bit earlier than some of the others, albeit with good cause.

Over the last few months Jake has developed a limp in his front paw. Ann, one of our vets had a look at it, and could feel some arthritis in a joint on his toe. He’s now having various medication, but the toe is obviously still a little sore, so Jake is on light duties only at the moment, saving himself for rounding up the ducks at the displays.

When I said that he has moved indoors, I actually should have said that he has moved into my office. It seems to be his room of preference, and he amuses himself by sitting against the answer phone, which he manages to turn on and off, or if he’s lucky and leans on the right button, he can listen to the messages. What else would you expect from a dog who has spent his life playing the fool!!

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on trial

added by David on Friday June 24, 2011 at 1:17 pm

At three years old Fly has become my most depended upon sheepdog. Not because she is necessarily the best dog in the team, that title still belongs to Mist, but she is full of energy and running and never gives up. Fly’s biggest problem has been her excessive speed and reluctance to listen to her ‘lay down’ command when she’s working a long way away. You can  imagine how dangerous it  can be if she chases the sheep too fast when she’s working on the cliffs, so her work on the coastal ground has so far been limited to what I would describe as the ‘easy jobs’.

But over the last few weeks I’ve believed that she’s finally ready to listen to me, so I decided that it was time to test her at a sheepdog trial. Sheepdogs frequently behave differently when taken to work in a new environment, and when you add in a long car journey, and the excitement of watching the other dogs at work it’s not surprising that the most commonly used excuse for a badly behaved dog at a trial is ’she never does that at home!’

So when our turn came to compete I walked onto the field with some trepidation. We started well, with Fly running 500 yards to the other end of the field to collect the sheep as fast as the wind. Unfortunately, she also returned the sheep to me at break-neck speed!  I spent the next five minutes bellowing ‘lay down’ as Fly decided that the art of sheepdog trialling was to get everything done as quickly s possible. We eventually walked off the course together with Fly appearing to grin from ear to ear, she’d really enjoyed her little outing. I, on the other hand had to face the fellow competitors. There were plenty of little laughs and comments about Fly’s speed, but the most telling comment of all came from a friend of mine ‘What do you call that dog? asked Roderick with a rye smile as I put her back in the Land rover. ‘Fly’ I replied  ’Funny’ he said ‘I could have sworn her name was ‘Lay Down!!’

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young farmers shearing evening

added by David on Wednesday June 8, 2011 at 5:30 pm

For the past year I’ve been involved with relaunching Braunton Young Farmers. The original club folded back in 90’s, but now there’s a new generation of 10 to 26 year olds keen to get involved, and over the past 12 months the club has been gaining momentum. Last Summer was full of shows and games,  in the winter we held stock judging competitions (over 30 members turned out to judge lambs in a freezing barn one January evening). But for the last couple of weeks the onus has been on sheep shearing. So one evening we hosted the shearing at Borough farm. The enthusiasm was amazing with 27 members turning up, 24 of whom had never shorn a sheep before!  Fortunately we had 5 experienced shearers on hand to help, and between 6 and 10 pm 40 sheep parted company with their wool, and left the shed looking quite neat and tidy considering the number of novice shearers.

But above all it was great to see so many of the local youngsters getting stuck in and learning a new skill, one which is notoriously difficult to master. The Young Farmers movement is nation wide, if you would like to find out more, this link takes you to the National Young Farmers web-site.

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no sooner is lambing over….

added by David on Wednesday May 18, 2011 at 4:31 pm

No sooner is the lambing season over than it is time to gather the flock in. In fact by the beginning of May the oldest lambs are six weeks old, and some are approaching 20 kg in weight. At this age they are beginning to nibble at the grass, and are consequently vulnerable to picking up worms from the grass and sometimes also a parasite called coccidiosis. So I gather the lambs back to the sheep pens to ‘drench’  them as a preventative. While they are in the pens they also have their first vaccination to prevent the clostridial group of diseases.

The first gather of the year is always the most difficult. The ewe are trying to protect their lambs and the lambs are convinced that they will find their mothers in the field from  which they have just been gathered. In addition the lambs have little respect for the dogs and will constantly try to run past them, so as you can imagine chaos rules!

It makes a tough few days for the dogs, Ernie and Fern are too old to be more than the minimal assistance, and Jake too is feeling his years. So that leaves Mist and Fly to do the hard work, and this year it was Fly doing the lions share of the work. Her stamina is amazing, chasing and turning each lamb as it breaks. When we finally pen the sheep back at the farm, she’s still full of energy for the pen work, and later on to return the various flocks to their fields.

I’ve finished treating all of the 650 lambs at Borough farm, with just Morte Point left to treat, and as soon as they are finished we’ll be ready to start shearing!

Fly in pursuit of  a breaking lamb

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colin gets the vote!

added by David on Monday May 9, 2011 at 10:18 pm

When choosing a sheepdog puppy, I like look for the cleverest, bravest most adventurous puppy in the litter, so I’m still don’t know how I’ve been talked into keeping Colin! Of all of the pups in Fly’s recent liter Colin was undoubtedly the odd one out, which was how he came to be given such a silly name. But the rest of the family thought he was great and he soon became their favorite pup. Colin for his part was milking that attention for all it was worth. I suspect that he spotted that his litter-mates were fast disappearing to new homes, so playing the loveable fool would increase his chances of being able to stay put.

So once again I’ve been out voted in the house and yesterday my own favoured dog pup ‘Bud’ went off to a new home, leaving the soppiest, daftest looking (and cuddliest) collie pup in the litter, Colin, to carry the responsibility of being the next ‘great thing’ in the pack.

Well actually that’s not quite true, I wasn’t entirely out voted, as I was allowed to keep Zola as well. She’s not at all cuddly, or particularly cute, but she has already started chasing the chickens and eyeing the sheep…… Now that’s what I call a lovable pup!!

This is Colin!  

 

 

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the end of lambing

added by David on Monday May 2, 2011 at 10:23 pm

I often say that the best lambs of the year are the first and the last, the rest just seem to disappear into a complete blur. It’s been a pretty good lambing season this year, mainly because of the amazing weather. Our first lambs were born in the last week in March, these lambs are now six weeks old and have hardly felt rain on their backs!  Lamb numbers have been quite good too. We’ll never produce as many lambs from our Romney ewes as you can from other breeds of sheep, but as much of the farm is of  poor grazing, I still believe that we are best off aiming to produce an average of one and a half lambs from each ewe. It’s not just the weather that makes for a  good lambing, the flock was in excellent condition this year, which meant that they lambed with plenty of milk and produced good sized lambs.

So all in all it’s been a good year and has set us on course for a successful 2011. But when you are a farmer you always need something to worry (moan) about and at the moment it’s the lack of rain. It has hardly rained at Borough Farm since February and the ponds are already dry. So we are either in for the worst drought ever, or else (and more likely) it’s going to start raining and not stop all summer! So we’d better make the most of  this dry weather while it lasts.

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new homes for Fly’s pups

added by David on Sunday April 24, 2011 at 11:01 pm

It only seems a minute ago that I wrote about the arrival of Fly’s pups. It was in fact seven weeks ago, and  since then we’ve been busy with the lambing and the lambing open days. The weeks have gone by in a flash and the pups are now nine weeks old, more than old enough to move onto their new homes.

All seven were given names by my family so that we can identify them. Kate was the first to go at the beginning of  last week. She has gone to Tim, a local friend of mine. I’ve been helping Tim to train sheepdogs since he was 13. Now, 14 years later he’s rather good at it, and he visits with his dogs every week, so we’ll be seeing plenty of Kate. Fred is going to another friend Chris, a little further away. Chris had a puppy from me twelve years ago… Fern’s brother!!

Pup 3 Betty has gone to work on a farm on Exmoor, with nearly 1000 sheep, and pup 4, Buster will be going to another local sheep farmer, Richard (his wife Jo is our dogs vet, so he should be well looked after!)

That leaves 3 pups. Zola, Budd and Colin. I want to keep a couple at Borough Farm to start with, so that I have the best chance possible of keeping a really good worker. One of those to be kept will definitely be Zola, but there is much debate in our house as to whether Budd or Colin is to be the second. Budd looks a lot like his father ( a good thing I think) but Colin is the soppiest, cuddliest, sweetest looking pup of the litter. So the rest of the family have decided that he must be the one to keep!

I’ll let you know what has been decided in a couple of weeks!

here’s Zola and Budd

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lambing again

added by David on Friday April 1, 2011 at 11:00 pm

The lambing season is now well underway, and the barns are alive with the sounds of bleating lambs. Between the various members of the family we manage to keep watch for nearly  twenty four hours a day, although ‘keeping watch’ might not be the right term.

There is always something that needs to be done in a lambing shed. Once the ewes have given birth they are moved to a small individual pen, and the navels of the new born lambs are dressed with iodine to prevent disease. Here we check that the lambs are feeding, and that the ewe doesn’t reject one of her lambs as sometimes happens. If all is well the ewe and her lambs are marked with the same number potential breeding ewe lambs are identified, then ewe with lambs are moved in a trailer out to the fields. As the whole precess has to be repeated 700 times, you can imagine that it keeps us all busy.

And with the lambing open days starting next week, we’re also trying to get the barns ship shape. If you are planning to come along we look forward to seeing you, out first open day is April 9th and runs through to the 17th April. If you want to see a lamb born your best chance will be in the first half of the week.

This year’s first set of quads.

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breeding success?

added by David on Thursday March 10, 2011 at 11:25 pm

One of the frustrations of sheep farming is that next year is always a year away! So when you are trying to improve the breeding of the sheep progress is slow. You have to be patient to see the result of breeding decisions, and it really takes several years before you can really tell if changes made are  proving successful.

In Autumn 2009 I decided on an experiment to put a few of my Romney ewes in lamb to a Blue Faced Leicester ram. The Blue Face is a strange sheep, the breed itself is ’soft’ in the extreme, meaning that it is difficult to keep flesh on and liable to succumb to even the slightest adverse weather. But when it is crossed with other pure breeds, the resulting ewe lambs can make fine breeding sheep.

The early signs of the experiment have been encouraging, so much so that last autumn I bought some more Blue Faced rams. Over three hundred Romney ewes are now expecting Blue faced Leicester lambs. Last years lambs are now nearly a year old, I had them into the pens last week for vaccination, worming and docking (removing the wool from the back ends)  I’m really pleased with the way that they are looking with long straight backs, proud heads and well fleshed backs. In a years time these sheep will be expecting their first crop of lambs, and that will be the first indication as to whether they will be the sort of breeding ewes which we are looking for. So by 2015 I should really be able to see if the decision that I made last autumn has been a success.

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welcome arrivals

added by David on Thursday March 10, 2011 at 10:56 pm

Last week saw a long awaited event, the arrival of Fly’s first ‘proper’ litter of pups. I say proper as, you might remember that last spring Fly produced a single pup Alfie much to our surprise.

But this time it was no surprise as I’d taken Fly away to be mated back in December. The father called ‘Laddie’ belongs to a friend of mine, Derek Scrimgeour. Laddie is Jakes full brother and was English National Sheepdog champion in 2008.

So we were all delighted at the arrival of four dogs and three bitches, all with beautiful black and white markings. Fly is being a great mum, although she is already deciding that she should return to work part time.  At present they are all keeping warm in the kitchen, where they get plenty of attention from the family. They’ve all been given names Bet, Zola, Jen, Gus, Bruiser, Bud and Colin (you’d have to ask my daughter where the name Colin came from!) They’ve all got a lifetime of work ahead of them on farms in North Devon, but for the moment, we can just enjoy the very special new arrivals.

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