Imagine being eager to get up early. Imagine you are eager because you’ve got a lovely big pile of poo to pick up. Madness? Nope. That was me and Chloe this morning. She was there before me and I was early. We had all those lambs to feed before we could tackle the poo as well. But there was no way we were getting to either without getting through the silvernoses first. Chloe had the food in a bag. They went straight for her. They gathered around her and nearly had her off her feet. It was funny to watch it happen to someone else. Sorry Chlo 😁
It was no better in the barn. The wool tsunami hit us when we opened the pallet gate. We both had 2 bottles each but that’s only half of them. We had different tactics. I stuck with the first two I had picked until they had finished. Chloe tried to give everybody some. We just kept going with bottle after bottle until everyone refused any more. Then Chloe tried to catch and tip Psycho Bitch but she went full on Psycho. I phoned Josh and he said he would come to tip Psycho Bitch and take the dead ewe. He was going to be about an hour. Oo! Plenty for time for us to poo pick 😁
The pet lambs had to stay in because of the rain but we let them roam the barn. We fed the outfield sheep and checked for any new lambs. “It’s been AGES since there were any new lambs!” Chloe said. With that a rather large ewe walked in front of us. It looked like there were some left to lamb. When we got to the office my new trailer was there. It now has sides thanks to Neil. He put the sides from the old one on it. Nice surprise for me. We put the feed buckets in it and used it to feed the alpacas.
Chloe had asked me how much food goes in each bucket. I realised that I had been filling them and passing them to her when they were ready. I took the time to show and explain how the buckets were done. In the girls’ field, Chloe fed the girls because I wanted to check Percy out. Yesterday, Josh had to cut all the poo off him. It took a while. I wanted to see how clean Percy was. He was at the top of the field and all the rest of the lambs were at the top. I called him a few times and then had to wait for him to run around. I tipped the food out and he dived right in, with his bum facing away from. I waited for a while but couldn’t see from where I was 🤦♀️
With all the other jobs done, we could get to the poo. There was some left in the poover so we emptied that out. Then I drove the quadling and poover up to the boys’ field. The pile we had been eager to get to was in the danger zone. We have to pick poo carefully in this area and never alone because it’s so steep. I drove carefully when the poover was empty and at it’s lightest. We had a bit of trouble starting it but we finally got it going. Chloe was enjoying cleaning when the poover died. Fuel? Doubtful. Ì’d filled it. I opened it and it was indeed full. Strange. Chloe tried a few switches and then we couldn’t start it. We weren’t really sure which way was on for the fuel switch. I sent a video to Neil to ask. We had done it the wrong way AFTER it cut out the first time but that didn’t explain why it had stopped in the first place. Strange. We finally got going, finished that poo patch and went onto an even bigger one. I messaged Josh to see how long he was going to be because we had to take the quadling and trailer up for him to pick up the dead ewe. Then Chloe started looking up the poover pipe. Not a good sign. She sucked poo up the pipe and it dropped straight back out. We turned it off and looked up the pipe. It didn’t seem blocked but Chloe went off in search of a a stick. Josh rang, he was on his way so we had to go. We unhitched the poover and drove the quadling out to collect the trailer.
I gave Chloe the choice and she decided to ride on the quadling while I drove the mule. I parked outside the barn but she decided to drive in. The trouble is, when the silvernoses hear a vehicle it plants a thought in their minds: food. They come running. I opened the barn gate for Chloe and about 6 sheep and various lambs dashed in to join the chaos of the pet lambs. We wouldn’t separate them in a hurry let alone get them out 🤦♀️At this point, Josh arrived “Why did you drive in and let all the sheep in?” While he sorted the ewe we filled the bags with hay to take down. We loaded them into the back of the mule. Then Josh tipped the ewe for black/brown lamb (now called Apache because she is patchy) to have milk. She didn’t want it. We tried for a while. Squirted milk on her mouth, opened her mouth and put her on the teat but she refused to drink. She is missing her mother and went back to the place where she last saw her. Heartbreaking. We will leave her for now but keep her with the pet lambs. She is a bit older than them but not ready to be weaned. Hopefully she will be hungry enough tomorrow to drink. If not we may have to tube feed her. She should learn from the other pet lambs.
While this was going on I managed to get some of the ewes out. Not my best move. Sian is so big she can get her front feet up onto the mule wheels and therefore reached the hay stacked up in there! I told her not to and she did exactly as she pleased 😑 We herded the pet lambs into their pen to get the other ewes and lambs out. Chloe took hay outside to distract them long enough for Josh to drive out with the ewe ready to leave for Layton to collect. With all that done, Josh went home. Chloe and I went to collect some feed and took the feed and hay down. As we were happily bouncing along there was a little noise. “Something has fallen off hasn’t it?” Sure enough there was a bag of hay rolling down the slope. Chloe put her foot on the brake for me to grab the bag. As I stepped out of the mule my toe got caught on the doorway and I nearly fell out of the door. It’s a good job I’m lithe and athletic aye or I would have face planted. I gathered my balance and the bag and we carried on.
I showed Chloe how to open the bags. They have to be opened a certain way to reuse as poo bags. Then back to the poover. It started first time but still wasn’t picking up. There must be a blockage inside somewhere. The only trouble is, if you try to open it, all the poo falls out so we had to take it back to base and open it over the board. A pleasing amount of poo came out. We peered inside and saw that the pipe was blocked at the entrance to the main body of the poover. Chloe used her favoured ‘poke it with a stick method’ and freed the blockage. By the time we had bagged that lot it was time to leave for the day because I had the rest if the day off. I was going to watch “We Will Rock You” so I’ll be having a lie in before we pick more poo!
Helen x
