The thing about cattle and trailers, a big leak and chubby lambs...

Some of the ladies at Wallace field have pulled out their earrings. All the cattle must be tagged properly to identify them so we had to get them all in and retag those who had lost a tag. I was glad of the brace as the business end of a longhorn, as the name suggests, is quite pointy and not easy to manage when they don’t want you fiddling with their ears.
We had to bring the two cows at Aglionby back to Houghton today as both are in calf and one looks almost ready to pop. The mechanics of manoeuvring cattle into trailers is interesting and usually involves equal amounts of coaxing and yelling, cattle don’t like shiny clean metal trailers and no amount of straw will convince them it’s a good idea if they don’t want to go. Trying to push a stubborn cow anywhere is not an easy task. Thankfully these two have some experience with travelling so knew the drill and didn’t resist too much, mind you I imagine being that pregnant would make anyone tired of arguing quite quickly!

At Willowford there is a leak, one of the pipes under the field is leaking and a muddy puddle has formed. We need to dig and find out if the pipe is cracked or just blocked up. It’s not immediately obvious where the pipe is so a trench must be dug. This fills with water so a drainage trench must be added. The soil is somewhat sodden and it is a little like trying to shovel trifle, I nearly loose a welly several times. John-Paul the lamb takes great pleasure in putting me off by huffing in my ear and jogging my elbow whenever I have a shovel full. Its not often he can get a human at head level, perhaps he is just giving me some encouragement to help solve the problem, but it just makes me laugh and loose the content of the shovel. After an extensive new water feature is dug we must leave it to drain before we can examine the pipe in more detail, some hot weather please to dry it out!

The thistle cutter is fixed! The removal of thistles and docks was an arduous and back breaking task with a sickle, now it is an easier but noisier task with a quad bike and the wonderful thistle cutter. I spent a happy few hours making nice neat rows through the weeds at Wallace field.

It was time to weigh some lambs on Saturday. We got all the sheep in at Aglionby and picked out the chubbiest candidates. I’m getting much better at grabbing and manoeuvring lambs, but was somewhat outwitted when it came to trying to catch and tip a Ewe which was looking a little lame and needed a pedicure. She wasn’t impressed with my efforts; I think I need more practice.