The Two Day Thing

Last ewe has now lambed so there are now 20 and all are now looking good - last of the ringing done this morning - although I have a sneaky feeling one little boy escaped our attentions.  I got a bit muddled as I ended up flat on my back after a major charge through the race while I was in charge of letting them through one at a time.  They can be powerful things, sheep!

Last night we went to collect Dobbie and Caedmon from the lambing field.  Dobbie was very good, had his halter on and trotted up into the stock trailer where he settled down straight away.  Caedmon was another matter entirely.  He did not want to leave his sheep and we were chasing round after him for ages, until he suddenly realised Dobby was missing, let us capture him and walked back up the field very nicely on his halter.  This morning we got them sheared and they now look very elegant - and much cooler.

In amongst all of this I only managed to snatch a glimpse of the Royal Wedding but from the tiny bit I saw, the balcony part, she looked very lovely and he looked very handsome - will have to catch up tonight.  I couldn't watch for long as I had a paddock to prepare for a very special visitor - more news on that soon.  In fact there will, hopefully, be more than one visitor to tell you about next week!

We are now starting to get ready for our first matings of the year - Prue, Emily and Little Star - all empty as Emily and Little Star were not ready last year and Prue was on a break!  We are going to adjust slightly the way we do our matings this year following on from some tips from The Wise Woman.  Now I don't doubt that everyone else probably does this anyway but it was new to me - so - The Two Day Thing is our master plan for these first three.  Day 1 we do the first mating.  Day 2 we offer the male to the female again and remate if receptive. We'll do this  at approx the same time of day or at least within 26 hours of first mating. This appears to be as the female comes in to oestrous approx 26 hours after first mating. This means that, should the first lot of semen have lost its oomph or died, then there is a second batch winging its way to the desired spot at the right time. Hopefully! (Sorry Oh Wise One - I cut and pasted that bit as it sounded so good!!).  7 days after 1st mating - Spit off.  Then we will repeat spit-offs weekly for a while as we did last year.  Sorted!!  Actually, everyone we mated to Dude last year appears to be pregnant despite a slightly disorganised approach but this year I want to get a bit more together with it all.  May have got some of the technical stuff wrong there but  we'll see how we go!
Now Carl is painting the outside of the house - shed door first - I am supposed to be weeding a border - don't want to do it - and then I think Carl and Sam are going to pick up a chain harrow they have acquired.  It has extending arms which sounds rather exciting!