Good Bye to Elli, Bella and Eloise

On Saturday we delivered, Elli, Bella and Eloise to their new owners, Carol and Duncan. The girls went into the trailer with no problems and when we arrived at Carol & Duncan's smallholding some 3 hours later, they were sat in the back of the trailer "totally chilled". Once the back door of the trailer was opened, they came straight out and proceeded to run around their new home, eat the grass and hay and have a general look round. When Tim closed the back of the trailer they were non too bothered and when we left, they were avidly watching the chickens fighting in the next paddock. An e-mail today from Carol says they have settled in well. Good to know.
It's also been a busy week. Scooby, the fencer arrived on Tuesday, to re-fence one of the paddocks that boarders the common land and also to create a new "sheep walk" or "race" at the top of another paddock by reclaiming 10ft of land that was overgrown by a hedge. It now means that we have 2 ways of moving the sheep to the barn, so hopefully during the winter neither race will become poached, as it did last year.
But in order that Scooby could do the fencing we had to move the "fat lambs" and the Rams. Tim put some hurdles up to split one of the paddocks in half so that the boys could share, as the fat lambs are on rather more feed than the rams at the moment. The only trouble was, Charlie (Wiltshire Horn Ram) was now next to the ewes, and he proceeded to batter "7 bells of whats it" out of a 8 inch strainer post. Drastic action was call for, so we moved the ewes into the same field as the ewe lambs that are due to go to the Rare Breeds Sale. That stopped him, but that evening we discovered that as we are in a Low Risk area for Foot and Mouth and Blue Tongue, the Rare Breeds Sale at York has been rescheduled for the 12th and 13th October, so we are going to have to split all the sheep up again.
So guess what we did this morning? We spent the morning moving sheep. The fat lambs have been moved into the paddock once occupied by the ewes, the ewes moved into the newly fenced paddock next to the common land, the lambs going to the sale are in a paddock next to the barn, which has the trailer in it ready to load them into on Friday. We also took the opportunity to give the Wiltshire Horn Ewes their finally booster of Heptovax and to put the Whiltshire Horn wether with the other fat lambs, Davina and Demelza, the 2 Masham X Sheltland ewe lambs have been put with the Wilthsire Horn lambs along with Lucy and Lotty who are now too old to breed from and Winky, who I'm afraid is meat for the freezer, as mutton, in the next month or so, she has not produced any lambs for us over the last 2 years.
We also had a fire to get rid of all of the hedge prunings from Scooby when he did the fencing as well as the lot from the hedge laying a couple of weeks ago. All that is left is a pile of ash. It was a good fire despite the sea fret and rain.
Next week will be another busy week, sorting out the relevant movement licences for the sale on Friday/Saturday, taking them to the sale and hoping we get a decent price for them. Arranging the collection of our missing Wiltshire Horen Ewe, the delivery of a Corridale Ram and the arrival of the nephews!!!! I'm sure the kids have more school holidays now than when we were at school, and talk to a farming magazine who want to do a feature on us!!!!
Results of the sale and the outcome on the magazine article next week