Sorry for the delay :(

I realise that it's been some time since my last post - but December was a rather horrible month! 

So...here's December...

The boys (RIP) were taken to the abattoir the seaside right at the beginning of the month and we got them back (in bits) the following week. I must admit that I was very sad to see them go, especially when one of them was reluctant to get into the trailer. I was dreading getting the meat back, thinking I'd be in floods of tears, but it was surprisingly not too distressing seeing all the meat on the table. Out of the eight halves we sold five to friends and kept the other three. Unfortunately, what we weren't aware of, it being our first year of keeping sheep, was that ram lambs (as opposed to castrated lambs) start to lose condition towards winter, as they stop eating so much and start competing with one another - as well as standing around near the fence hoping to woo some women. Consequently, our lambs weren't as fat as we'd hoped but that's a lesson learnt for next time. We've already ordered castrated males for this year! This will also mean that we can keep the boys and girls together, and therefore rotate our paddocks through the spring and summer. 

Speaking of the paddocks - they are like lakes at the moment - despite the fact that they are on a slope! This never-ending rain is not good for sheep at all and I'm having to keep a careful eye on the girls to make sure that they don't get foot rot/rain scald/liver fluke/break a leg in the slippery mud...I was really quite worried about the fluke, as the snails that cause it are so prevalent in wet and (relatively) warm conditions. So many people have lost sheep because of it last year. So, I decided that I needed to treat the girls just to make sure. As fluke has been such a problem, the usual drenches were about as rare as hen's teeth and I couldn't get hold of any, not even from the vet! This meant drastic measures and so I asked the vet to come and show me how to inject the girls with an injectable treatment instead. It was fairly straightforward, mainly because our girls are so very tame. I did manage to stab myself with the first one, but luckily didn't depress the plunger and inject myself! 

I've also taken to bringing the girls up to the garden every few days, so that they have somewhere dry to stand (on the drive) and some better grass to eat. This has the added benefit of keeping the lawn down during the winter, with some self-spreading manure ;) The children have had great fun playing with the sheep outside! Here's a couple of pics...

As you can see, the playhouse in the background of the last photo is coming along nicely. Just the stairs and the veranda to go!

Other things that happened in December - On the day we sent the ram lambs off, I had a phone call from the hospital telling me that I had severe dyskaryosis/dysplasia on my cervix and so I had to go in urgently to have a colposcopy. That was really horrid, as they decided to do a LEEP/LLETZ procedure at the same time. I'm still waiting on the biopsy results but hopefully everything will be fine.

Bed is a-calling now so the things I made last month will have to wait for a new post tomorrow :)