Wild End baby

 

Sheep training

The access route between the two fields is rather complicated - the small fiel only exits through a narrow steep gateway into the garden, the big filed has a gate into the road some 50m down the lane from our garden gate.
So I have been planning the sheep move for some time with as many daily training sessions as possible (sometimes with a clicker, sometimes just with a feed bucket):
- come to me when called (somehow I ended up with a rather silly call, that sounds a bit like 'shoooosheeeee shipship'... it works though, even across the big field)
- eat from the bucket, then from my hand (it took the first one less than a week, the last one almost 2 months to be happy to eat from my hand)
- allow handling while eating
- follow me with the bucket
- follow me to new scary places (i.e. the garden, which turns out to be lush and yummy!)
- eat from my hand in new scary places (not suprisingly, they seem to return to a 'raw' flighty state when in new surroundings)

After all that, I just opened the garden gate and the flock happily followed me down the road and intothe new field, no problem - who needs a trailer?

The big field is alive!

And about time it was: donkeys & sheep now happily grazing together.

The field sat more or less unused for the past year, as the fencing had to be fixed/partly redone before I could seriously consider putting any animals in it. Now that this has been done (with the invaluable help of Jo & Brett, the lovely HelpX couple that stayed with me last month) the field can finally come alive.
Lots of lush green grass there too (while the small field looks pretty bare at this point.) Maybe not surprising then, that the donekys threw a proper tantrum yesterday when they couldn't go to the field because of bad weather!

Gazelles? Goats? Sheep!

I'm thrilled at the arrival of 4 gorgeous, gazelle-like Soay sheep!
It all happened somewhat accidentally - the internet is a great place for coincidental discoveries. I was, really, looking for infomation on hay (making/byuing/selling) which led me to a link of a local breeder selling Soay pet lambs, which led me to read up on this unusual breed, which made me think they'd be just perfect for here, and they'd be perfect for me, too.
I never really intended keeping any sheep, as everyone else does here anyway. But this is a wild, primitive breed, not messed about with moderns stock breeding ideas, so it's hardy and able to get on with its life without human interference. Just my kind of animal, in theory. Then we went to look at them 'for real' at a farm on Anglesey, and that did the rest for me:
I have fallen in love with these sheep!

By the way, the ram is called Elton.