Shearing time …

When moving animals, when you do not have a sheep dog or the animals (alpacas) really hate them, a little preparation and planning goes a long way.

Over the years we have established a number of transit lanes which by virtue of closing or opening gates can facilitate moving sheep and alpacas to just where we want them. Lanes that are normally closed, like our olive lanes, can become overgrown with grass which in summer is a bad thing. But alpacas (or sheep) can make short work of that – eating what’s edible and trampling what’s not.

So in preparation for sheep shearing, and alpaca shearing later, the alpaca girls got a few days of casual grazing down the olive end of one transit lane. 

The sheep were mostly pretty easy to pen, except for one that was late to the party and took some extra coaxing. We had the ewes and their wethers at one end of the shed, with the rams and their wethers at the opposite end. As they needed to be penned overnight to “empty out” we appologised in advance to the barn cat for her noisy temporary neighbours. And as usual, George and V2 (rams) spent most of their time ramming the pen panels at each other. By morning they must have both had headaches … but the sturdy fence panels held.

All the sheep were much happier to be rid of their heavy fleeces. The weather was relatively kind – not too hot or too cold for the first few days off shears. In the few weeks since shearing, their fleece has already grown back enough to protect them from the burning sun and any cold snaps. Although at the moment they are really hugging the shade and go running for their shelter at the first sign of rain.

And now we have a short respite until the alpacas get shorn between Christmas and New Year.