by Tria Stebbing.

A BUSY few weeks in the field. We took a road trip to Chard to pick up a sheep foot mat. A couple of the girls have had recurrent foot problems, so we decided to bite the bullet and invest in a sheep foot bath system.
The main part is the mat on which you put the medicated foot wash, which the sheep walk through, soaking their feet in some good stuff, and hopefully getting on top of the problem from the bottom up.

The excessive mud has led to a bit of foot rot, with some of the ewes hobbling and getting heavier, and it was time to try something new. Up until now, we have kept up with purple spray, which attacks the germ, not the problem that causes it.
The next task will be to round them all up and lead them through one at a time – we are waiting for a dry weather window to try this.
At the time of writing, the mud has been replaced by sheet ice, and today snow. So we have gone from sheep happily munching their way across the paddocks to sheep having nothing to munch on in two days. A paddock covered in snow looks very pretty but if the sheep can’t get to the grass they will quickly lose condition.
Sheep are so very curious – we have started to take bales of hay up to them to supplement their diet. Hay bales, to the sheep, are clearly an unknown predator which needs to be treated with the utmost suspicion. It took a day for the older ewes to go near them and then realise they were great for munching on, and then another for the young lambs to follow.

The lambs have not seen snow before and have been very skittish, running away at the slightest thing – their world is temporarily different and they are very edgy.
Water has also been an issue as the troughs freeze every night still – today I filled a bucket with snow, hoping that a slight thaw would give them a drink.
Feed has also been increased for the older ladies as we are certain they are in lamb – it will be an-other four weeks before we can scan to see, but already their shapes are changing, some carry around the middle and some underneath.
The rams remain on top of the next paddock and occasionally call over to the ewes, but overall are pretty well behaved. Hormones seem to have settled down again and there is not so much head butting at the moment.
One of last year’s lambs, King, has just come back from a little holiday on a local care farm. We chose King to go as he has the best calmness about him and is an approachable little chap. It was a bit of a gamble as he was only just over six months old, and we were not sure if he was up to the job.

Clearly King had a great holiday with his ladies and is due to be the proud father of several sets of twins. He will make someone a lovely ram this year and now he is proven, we hope he will be sought after.
Those lambs are due a month before ours, so good timing all round. We are
not sure what they will look like as the mothers are another breed that does not usually cross with a Zwartbles, but we are hopeful for a good fleece, whatever the colour.
I am hoping the snow leaves us soon as it was a hard trek today dragging a bale up the hill for the rams, but they tucked in so readily that and muscles that ached were quickly forgotten.