May arrives and so do the Nephews for the weekend

On Thursday, May, a pedigree Shetland ewe arrived. She was the one we saw last week and she has now been sheared. We put her in an isolation area with Dougal, the pet lamb. May is slightly wild and nervous of us, but she should calm down in a few weeks, we hope!!! Moving Dougal was very easy. He thinks he's a dog and so will follow Tim out of the field at his heal. Unfortunately once out of the ewe's paddock the grass is greener and he was more interested in eating the grass, so we had to push him along into the isolation paddock, where the grass is very long and plentiful. May watches him with a weary eye, but so far they are getting along.
The nephews arrived with Denise on Friday evening to be greeted by Holly and Deefa. Deefa did his usual and gave them a low growl, Holly just ran straight up to them and gave them a good sniff. After lamb burgers and a Pink Panther cartoon DVD, 2 excited boys went to bed and surprisingly were soon asleep.
Saturday the weather wasn't took good, so we decided to let the dogs and boys run in the back field. That was after a breakfast of cereal and 2 rounds of toast. They had a great time, though I don't know who had the wettest legs, the dogs or the boys!!! Thankfully the dogs and the boy's shorts dried relatively quickly with the aid of the aga.
As the local show had been cancelled, we thought we would take the boys to see the Vikings at Whitby Abbey and the model railway show in Goathland, but over dinner (at 11am) they just wanted to go home and play in their hay den and Holly and Deefa, so that's what they did. It certainly tired them out.
Sunday - the weathermen got it wrong again - has been a dry and sunny day, so the nephew's played again in their hay den and successfully tired Holly out running around the house with her rope pull. Their mum and gran arrived for lunch and they finally left mid afternoon.
It's great having them here, they love coming and they can certainly eat!!!! They are back in a months time, this time for a week!!!!
As a consequence not a lot has got done this weekend, though the doors from upstairs had all been dipped and hung.
Charlie, the Wiltshire Horn Ram, was not very well at the beginning of the week. On Monday he was scouring, so we put him in the barn, along with Cecil, gave him a shot of wormer and sprayed his nose with a homeopathic medication for scouring, we also put some of the medication into his water. Within 24 hours, he was looking a lot better and the scouring had cleared up. Then on Friday evening, the abscess on his shoulder finally burst so we were able to clean it up. Thankfully it is healing up well and Charlie is showing no ill effects. Tonight we let him and Cecil out into a small paddock near the barn to start eating grass again. What has happened to Charlie proves that we are right to put all new arrivals into isolation.
Tuesday is Tim's final day at the cafe for the summer hols and Friday sees the arrival of the vandal for a week. So we could do with some fine, dry weather for the next two weeks.
More next week.
Denise