This by way of being an update of the last few months.
It all started out by the suspicious behaviour on behalf of the lady general factotum. She was going around looking at us and muttering to herself that although we lose our wool naturally in fact we looked scruffy and were in need of ‘smartening up’ We four who, although of different ages, all suffer from the same problem in this intense drought that has been occurring, where to siesta during the heat? Normally we would lie among the trees and gently snooze or chew the cud peacefully, but during the drought there was no green grass to lie on and the heat was searing so we retired to our night sleeping quarters in the hanger. It is while there that we pick up some of the dirt from the floor and naturally as white bodied sheep we are prone to look a little scruffy. It soon wears off after the grass grows again.Eventually it transpired that she had a set of electric clippers which fortunately did not work effectively, it all ended rather sadly with just half of my baby wool being shorn and the others gladly subsided peacefully in the hanger. It turns out that we were due to exhibit at a local show but due to veterinary restrictions we were refused entry.
A couple of weeks later our lady cut down several cherry tree branches and some willow, in fact there was so much that it became difficult to get to some parts of the paddock. We four, who I must remind you eat the leaves off anything, were practically in heaven at this bonanza. We managed to clear all the leaves off in about three days, this included our regular siesta time during the hot part of the day.
I may not have mentioned the dreaded Turkeys, we have about twenty five and they mill about creating havoc, interfering with our eating of the trees and generally being complete non entities, I did try when I was much younger to sort them out by running in between the warring parties several times each week and head butting one or two if they didn’t give up. Fast forward to October this year and again the Turkeys were scrapping in a narrow part of the paddock, The lady was trying to sort them out to no avail and I finally got so worked up that I decided to charge into them, at that time I weighed about 70 or 80 kilos, this was fine except that the lady was in the way and as I charged forward she stuck her hand out to protect herself and broke one of her fingers on my head.
Finally autumn arrived and we have had a superb treat of the apples in the little orchard at the bottom of our paddock, they fell down daily for about a month, much to our liking. In fact I was most protective of the apples and the lady had to bring a big stick with her for her own protection, normally I am of a quite gentle disposition. Just a short update on our origins. We were imported from Germany or Austria and were born into (reputedly) the first flock in France. When the lady arrived to pick us up we were crammed in a pen with fifty other sheep. A mixture of Cameroons, Black Bellies and Dorpers. There was hardly enough space to move, we were all scrawny and didn’t weigh much at all. She checked the three of us all over and piled us into a trailer. It was while on the journey home that I felt the first stirring of something in my loins and was obliged to do something about it, hence the babies just over 5 months later. We have been fed well and now almost fully grown I make about 100 Kilos and should get to around 120 kilos fully grown.
And Arthur/ He has grown a great deal and he too has stirring in his loins, in fact he would have sex with a rabbit hole if he could find one. He even tries to mount me which is not a good idea as I give him a good walloping every time, in fact to such an extent that the other day when he attempted it I had to chase him over the fence into the chicken pen to get him out of the way. I feel his days are numbered.