Day off and vet visit

As Bud would say: woof! I am tired.

Took the day off work as the vet was coming to see to the sheeps eyes again. It’s been lingering amongst the sheep for around 2 months now but looks like its under control now.

Tony, the vet, was due around 2pm but I got a phonecall at 9am saying he’d got a call out in Ness so he’d be at mine earlier, around 11am. First job them was to get the sheep gathered (after I’d moved and fed the pigs, chicks and hens)

I had a keen assistant with me today.

The sheep are spilt into 4 smaller flocks, one with each ram, so I penned them separately as well, because they’ll stay with the rams for a few more weeks. (The upturned ground on the right is where the pigs were rooting after escaping on Wednesday!)

The vet, Tony, came just after 11 and we got cracking after yarning for a wee while. This is Tony’s third visit in regards to the sheep eye problems. Fortunately this have gone better than they did the first time. The advantage if having the same vet is we know what has to be done and I didn’t have to explain the story again!

Pictures aren’t as clear today because it was a wet day and it was only the two of us so photos not a priority! I was holding the sheep while Tony injected their eyes. There were 3 sheep with eye problems today, here is one of them. You can see her eye is cloudy – their is a wee bit of blood that leaked out after the injection in her eyelid.

The three sheep still having problems have been removed from their respective flocks and I’m keeping them next to my house. They were with 2 separate rams and one of the flocks was totally clear of infection, so it’s taking a while to clear. Tony thinks some of them were harbouring the infection and there wasn’t much more I could do. Every single sheep has been checked now so hopefully there will be no more difficulties once these three are clear – and that should be by Monday.

I took the opportunity today to swap the rams as well. This is just to make sure that, even though the rams are servicing the sheep, they aren’t firing blanks! I swapped the Suffolk and the Big Fellow (Cheviot) and the small cheviot and the blackface. Here is the small cheviot meeting some new ladies.

The sheep were all then moved onto fresh grass and I took the chance to bring feeding troughs to all of them too, since I had the time today.

Transporting a trough in style.

One of my neighbours asked me to put some sheep on his croft that hasn’t been grazed much this year, so I jumped at that chance.

And I gave all the sheep a wee treat of some feed!

After all that, I unloaded 200kgs of pig feed into the barn, before putting the pigs in their pen for the night and then had a long hot shower!

Tomorrow, I’m taking it easy but have to move half a ton of sheep feed. I feel my bones aching already.