Autumn sheep work

Sheep don't automatically know how to eat hay or the sheep food we give them as a supplement.  Every year in the autumn Farmer has to teach the hoggs (the ewe lambs) how to feed.  This involves gathering them in and putting them in to the building.  He puts a ewe or two in with them to set a good example.  It takes a few days but gradually they catch on that the lamb nuts being sprinkled in to the troughs are rather delicious and they start to tuck in.  Similarly they start eating the hay slowly too!   Occasionally we have problems with one or two of them becoming unwell from a vitamin deficiency and so Farmer has a bottle of Vitamin B1 on hand to give them which sorts them out.  

By the end of the winter the hoggs will be used to being fed and know exactly what is in the feed bag Farmer might be carrying with him.  This will stand them in good stead later on should they ever be ill and need to be brought into the shed, or if they are having twins and they need some supplementary feeding. 

Here they are tucking to the hay in the hay feeders having finished most of the nuts in the troughs! 

The Herdwicks are a flock on their own, and they always enjoy the sight of a feed bag over Farmer's shoulder.  Because they live on the in-bye fields they are fed most of the winter. 

 

Weaning calves

It is always a sad day when the calves are weaned and go off to market.  The cows holler and call for their calves, roaming around the fields looking for them after they have gone.

Before we bought our own cows our neighbour used to graze his cattle here in the summer.  When it was time for the calves to be weaned he would walk the cows back over to his farm, the calves would go from there to market in a lorry, and the cows would be put on to his own hill again.  Several times we woke in the morning the day after the calves had gone to find his cows had made their own way back to Treshnish searching for their calves.  

In these photographs the cows are calling for their calves.  It was morning and the calves had just gone. By the afternoon they had started drifting off to the other side of the hill park to graze.

The next morning Farmer walked them down towards Haunn and they went into Scoma. The bull chivalrously waited until all the cows had reached the gate before he went through himself.