Tupping Time!

Late afternoon sunlight on oak trees

On October 26^th I packed up the car and headed off down the A37 and onto the A303 towards Exeter and then on into Cornwall to Launceston. I started off in bright sunshine with high cloud making it a little hazy but, by the time I got to Honiton the grey clouds had gained the day and I had to swap my sunglasses for my ordinary driving glasses. It started to rain a little just past Exeter but, as I rounded the bulking shoulder of Dartmoor, the skies cleared again and I was back into sunshine. It wasn't to last, however, and by the time I got to Launceston the rain looked as if it was set in for the day.

I had gone back to help at East Penrest because it was tupping time – the time of year when the rams are put in with the ewes. If you put the rams in on November 5^th, your first lambs should be due on April 1^st. Of course, ewes' gestation periods vary, just like humans, but it is a useful rule of thumb. At this time of year, James gathers all the ewes into a pen and inspects them visually to make his first selection. He then marks the ewes that are not in good enough condition and turns them back out into the field, leaving behind a reduced number from which to choose.

When I arrived, our first job was to take a closer look at these ewes and make a decision about the ones that would ultimately go to the ram. This year, for various reasons, James only wanted to put 20 ewes in lamb, so the selection process was quite involved. He had made a note of all the ear tag numbers and then noted what they had produced last spring, whether they were good mothers, whether they came from a particularly good blood line, etc. Having done this we then stood back and looked to see what caught our eye; we were looking for good height and a long length body, plus all of the previous criteria. It took us most of the morning to choose our 'dream team' of about thirty ewes, and these we then ran into the barn for the next stage of the process.

Once penned in the barn, each ewe was inspected individually by putting her into the turnover crate. (I know that I have explained what this is before but it does no harm to explain again!) The ewe walks into the crate and the gate is closed behind her; shaped metal poles on a frame are then clamped around her to hold her firmly behind her front legs, around her belly and in front of her back legs, and this frame, by means of springs and counterweights lifts her off her feet and turns her upside down. Once in this position, most sheep will then lie still particularly, as James discovered, if you pillow their heads on a bag stuffed with something soft (in this case, baler twine!). When they were restrained in this way, James was able to carry out the final examinations to check the condition of their teeth and their udders. Sheep gain adult incisor teeth, two at a time, from about one year old and you will hear farmers refer to sheep as being 'two tooth' (1-2 years old), 'four tooth'(2-3 years old, 'six tooth'(3-4 years old) or 'full-mouthed' i.e. 8 teeth (4+ years). After the age of four, the teeth gradually fall out and the sheep is described as 'broken-mouthed' and, at this point it can become difficult for sheep to bite off short grass efficiently and they may lose condition – hence the check at tupping time, because you want the ewes to be in the best condition possible for carrying and raising healthy lambs. Udders are checked to make sure that there are no suspicious lumps that may indicate that the ewe has had mastitis and may therefore only have one (or in some cases, neither) teat working. Finally, we gave them a pedicure, trimming back the overgrown horn with shears, to minimise the risk of lameness during their pregnancy. After all this rigorous checking, we finally had our twenty ewes (Number 74 passed with flying colours!).

The next day, using the sheep shears, James dagged the twenty ewes. Dagging is removing the long and dirty wool from an area around the tail and down the back of the back legs, and is useful for two reasons: one is hygiene, when the ram is mating with the ewe and at lambing time, so that infections are minimised, and the other is that long wool around the udder can sometimes confuse a newborn lamb and it finds difficulty in locating the teat.

It was then time to decide which ewe was going to which ram as James was using two this year – Henry, who has been used for the past couple of years and Ian, who was the previous stock ram and has to be used this year because some of Henry's daughters are now old enough to breed. Once the decision was made the ewes were colour-coded – an orange spot on the neck for Ian's gang and a purple spot for Henry's harem. After the equivalent of a sheep trip to the doctor and then the beauty parlour, we turned the twenty ewes out into a fresh field.

Needle-felted No 74!

Jo and James usually try to go away for a few days when I am staying with them and this gives me a welcome boost to my income, as well as allowing them to visit their families in Portsmouth and Kent. This time, they were also going to have a short holiday, so I was left in charge for nearly two weeks. They left on Friday 30^th October, and those of you who have read this far, and paid attention, will realise that that is quite a few days before 5^th November when, traditionally, the rams are put in with the ewes! Not only that but, because there wasn't a lot of grass in the second field, the two lots of ewes were still together in one field.

Knowing that Jess, the sheepdog, won't work for me, I had to devise a cunning plan to capture the ewes and split them into their two groups. When we had put the twenty in the field, we also took out some sheep hurdles and a hay rack, made a pen by the gate into the second field, left the pen open, and placed the hay rack inside so that the sheep would get used to coming into the pen to have hay. Two days before I intended to split the group, I took a few sheep feed pellets out with me, when I checked them and re-filled the hayrack, and put these in the trough at the base of the rack. The second day I did the same so that the ewes were then all quite keen to come to the hayrack at the same time. On the third day, I took out an even bigger bucket of feed and, while they were all jostling for position and fighting over the pellets, I carefully and quietly pulled the hurdles round and joined them together. I now had twenty sheep in a large pen with a hayrack in the middle. In order to split them up I needed to divide the pen in two and also get the hayrack out of the way so, hurdle by hurdle, I had to remove about four or five hurdles from the outer ring, without leaving a gap for the sheep to escape through and also, bypass the hayrack so that it was outside the finished pens. This could have been the trickiest part of the manoeuvre because, if they had got away at that stage, I would never have caught them with the same trick again! (Who says sheep are stupid?) Once both pens were complete it was just a case of manhandling all ten with orange spots into one pen leaving all the purple spots in the other, and then opening the gate into the new field to let them through. Phase one of Operation Tup-in had been successfully completed!

Needle-felted rabbit

For Phase 2 I had to have some assistance. Luckily, a local beef farmer, who also does traditional building work, had been working on the farmhouse roof and had agreed to come on the Friday morning to drive the tractor and help with the rams. To make the rams easier to capture, James has been feeding them a few sheep pellets in a trough in an open pen for some time, so that when I went out at 7.30am it was relatively easy to pen them up and then push out the two boys that I didn't want. Once Nick arrived at 8.00am we just had to load the rams into the transport box on the back of the tractor, put on the two ram harnesses, that hold the coloured crayons for marking the mated ewes, and drive them out to the fields, making sure that the correct ram went in with the correct ewes. Phase 2 was complete! By the next day there were several yellow bottoms in both fields, so lambing should commence on about April 2^nd or 3^rd and, if they all hold to the first service, will be over approximately one week later!!

Jess & Pickle

Apart from this major bit of excitement, my days normally consisted of feeding the chickens and cats, counting all of the sheep and making sure they were OK in the morning and then later on, checking the ewes and lambs again and feeding the dogs, cats and chickens and putting the chickens to bed. A lot of the time the weather was not good so I spent quite a bit of the day indoors doing knitting or needle-felting to pass the time. There was one day when, after I'd done the morning checks, I was already so wet that I decided to stay outdoors and clear debris from the trackside stream as the hedges had just been flailed and there were leaves, sticks and small branches clogging it up. Jess and Pickle, the two dogs, had great fun 'helping' me and at one time, all three of us were paddling about in the stream. It was only when I stopped to go in for lunch that I realised how wet I was! Luckily, my waterproofs are pretty good and the Aga was alight, so it didn't take long to dry out and get warm again.

The Bonfire Party at the church

I had two bonfire experiences while I was there – the first one was my own that I lit on Hallowe'en, when the weather had been dry for a couple of days, there was no wind, and the stars were shining brightly in a clear night sky. It was beautiful and spiritually uplifting and I didn't mind that I was the only one there enjoying it. The second one was the local bonfire and fireworks display on November 5^th on ground adjacent to the church in Lezant. I made an apple and cinnamon tray bake as my contribution to the festivities and there were also other cakes, hot dogs and tea and coffee on offer. It had rained heavily and been very blustery all day but at about 3.30 the wind dropped, the rain stopped and by 5.00pm it was almost perfect weather for a bonfire party. For such a small community, the firework display was really impressive and the bonfire burned well, despite its previous soakings.

Jo and James also organised for me to go to a concert in the church – a Night at the Musicals – which was great fun and covered musical theatre from Gilbert and Sullivan's Mikado right through to Les Miserables. I'd been to a concert there five years ago and this was the same husband and wife team, plus another soprano and a pianist. The man, particularly, had a gorgeous voice and normally sings opera but his rendition of 'Summertime' from Porgy and Bess sent shivers up my spine – beautiful. I went with a lady called Sue, who I've met several times before and, when I said that I didn't know the story of Les Miserables, she kindly looked out her DVD for me to watch. I'd forgotten, temporarily, that the elephant in the grounds of the house where I'd worked back in June, was one of two from the film set of Les Miserables, so I got quite a surprise to suddenly see it on the television!

My other social outing, whilst I was there, was a visit to the local WI, again with Sue. I realised that I have attended three of their meetings this year and they are thinking of making me an honorary member!

Jo and James eventually came back and I was relieved to hand back responsibility for all of the animals and resume my normal WWOOFing persona. Another WWOOFer, from Canada, joined me for my last two days there and we spent the time picking apples in the orchard ahead of Storm Barney, and processing them for the freezer. Many of the apples had already been sent off to be made into apple juice, but there were still many more on the trees and lying in the grass. As I passed by the orchard every day, on my way to check the animals, I realised what an important part of the local bird population's diet they formed – I heard and saw flocks of starlings, several jays and what I think were mistle thrushes as well as many blackbirds. The windfalls should keep them going for quite a bit of the winter, I should think.

I'm now home again and trying to adjust to a different rhythm to my days - if it ever stops raining I must go and check my vegetable bed, complete the soft fruit bed and say 'Hello' to my chickens.

Reflections in the pond