I have never seen so much grass, it keeps growing and growing and all my ewes and lambs are hardly making an impression on it. Mustn’t complain though, as if this dry weather continues, it will impact on the grass growth. Mind you, I remember when we bought the farm, everyone commented that “Yellingham was a very grassy farm”. Thought it was a stupid thing to say at the time, but they were right.
Naturally the ewes and lambs are growing on really well and some of my ram lambs are nearly as big as their mum. The next job on the list is to vaccinate all the lambs against the millions of illnesses they can get, such as pulpy kidney, blackleg, tetanus – the list goes on. Two injections two to six weeks apart. It’s an important job and not one to leave undone as the lambs have only got immunity from their mum for a short period of time after birth.
With all the stock turned out, and lovely dry weather, it’s been a good month to really push on with training my lovely red and white Border Collie Ralph. He’s now two and really starting to show signs of being a very good dog. I have got 14 black welsh lambs which I kept from last years lambing, who are ideal for training a dog. They move well, flock tightly together and aren’t too scatty with a young dog. I take Ralph out every day without fail for about 10 minutes – I’m exhausted after that amount of time – not the sheep or Ralph!
I am working hard on getting him to remember his sides – I use the command “Come Bye” to go left and clockwise and “Away to me” to go out to the right and anti-clockwise. Also, I am working on getting him to run wider as this settles the sheep. A few weeks ago he was working too close and we did have sheep going off in all directions. If he keeps progressing as fast as he is at the moment, I think I might have a very useful dog in the making.
The photo is his trick after working, to cool down – either a trough or the river Tale, whichever is the closest. There is only one problem……. I have to move smartish to avoid getting soaked as he hurtles back to me at 100 mph, shaking furiously, for a well deserved pat on the back. Bless him.
Janet East