Rampant Roger and pal Romeo

Today has been one of those days. Lots of things going right, lots of things going wrong.
Last night, Roger, he of the escapee tendencies, decided even earlier than before that it was high time he be let at the girls. He was thrumming with testosterone, even if the ewes weren't yet in heat. The musty pong at the gate of his field was overpowering and I could smell potent ram on my hands even though I hadn't touched him.
So I wasn't entirely surprised when I opened the front door for some long forgotten reason or other and blinked as Roger tippytoed in excitement across the yard. How the hell had he got out of his field? The gate is practically deer-proof height. He headed for his old ram's paddock, now inhabited by Dahlia and her piglets and stamped in confusion as the sow grunted deeply and then ignored him.
We got him back into his field and he appeared to settle, but by morning he'd gone and joined the mule ewes a couple of fields away, having grown wings or something overnight. Pegasus should have been his name by rights. Four of us herded the flock together, he was caught and stuffed into a trailer and taken up to the barn. There we shoved him into a pen and using hurdles vertically, created a holding area more like a lion's circus cage than anything else. With the pig's weigh crate acting as ballast he was imprisoned for sure.
Behind the barn in the small paddock used to quarantine incoming livestock, is Romeo, the dashing new black Torwen ram, bought from the National Ram Sales in Builth Wells on Monday. Quarantined, and also kept separate from Roger to make sure they don't injure or kill each other just before they become essential to our livelihood. Sorted, I thought.
A couple of hours later I can hear banging from the barn; one or other of the rams is belting seven bells out of the metal gate, so I go up to check. There in the paddock is Roger, where once was Romeo. And safe inside the barn in the lion's cage is Romeo, where once was Roger. Either they have swapped skins or magic has been at work.
I'm stunned. It takes me five minutes to work out what has happened. Roger had pushed the weigh crate and hurdles til he could get at the gate, buggered the tin and skipped through what is a pretty small gap for a rather large ram. And then the new black chap had done the reverse. I go and get the OH to discuss what to do next, and when we get back up there, both rams are now outside munching grass. Next thing, Roger sees us, bounds towards us through the hole in the gate and goes back into the lion’s cage. We strengthen the pen, fix the gate, and they are, for the moment, back in the right places.
In the morning we'll pen them in tightly together whilst we bring in all the ewes and decide who's staying for breeding and what's off to market, but I really don't want to put the rams with the ewes for another three weeks or we'll be lambing in bloody February! No spring grass, freezing nights, snow more than likely and all together a crappy idea. If Roger's still in his lion's cage in the morning I'll try and take a snap, but for now here's a not very good image of what is a rather handsome Romeo.

Bingo Little

Welcome home, Bingo Little. After years of putting it off, several hilarious but useless attempts at A.I, and too many visits across the lovely but circuitous South West, I present, for your delectation and delight, the new boar.
He is a young chap, and this was his first (and hopefully last) journey by trailer. He had Aunt Agatha for company, but even so, he was fretful and suspicious. Neither did he like being transferred into the stock box to be tractored to his new home. He made a raft of new noises that weren't encouraging. But two days later he is trotting up to me to be fed, ignores the excited wooflings of the dogs (they love pigs, those two), and snoozes deep in his straw-filled ark, with the mere tip of snout protruding. He will have a few months yet before his services are required - both sows are up the duff, Aunt Dahlia due in just a few weeks - and he has a lot of growing to do. But now we have a family group, are no longer reliant on bottles of spunk ( I know, I know, the pros call it semen), and I don't have to get intimate with the sows every six months.
And why Bingo Little (aka Bingo)? He's the Wodehouse character who falls for every woman he meets. Bodes well.

Roger rogers

The grief an overexcited ram can cause a farmer cannot be exaggerated. New chap Roger created something of a stir yesterday morning when I came to give him some fresh hay first thing and found his paddock empty. I set off across the farm to check on the various flocks of ewes but couldn't see him anywhere, whilst OH cruised the lanes in the Landrover for him - lying dead in a ditch, humping someone elses prime pedigree ewes, or butting his way through hedges and freshly washed cars.
Could we find him? No. I flag down the postman and he promises to ask at each farm he passes. We drop in on all the local farmers and they say they'll keep a look out. We go home, me to wait for phone calls and OH to retrace my steps across the farm.
There is a spluttering of "Should've gone to Specsavers" as I clearly missed what was obviously there in my trails through the fields. I hang my head in shame, and then realise that Roger has got in with a large flock (two hundred or more) of mule ewes that have yet to go to the ram. My words are blue, and we waste no time in bringing every ewe in that flock into the barn, Roger wedged firmly among them. There is hardly room to move in there which means it's not difficult to catch randy Roger and hold him manfully whilst I usher out the disappointed ewes.
I'm mortified and hope he hasn't impregnated too many of them - their matings should be with pedigree Suffolk rams. We won't know how awful the consequences are for another five months.
Roger is penned tight, and we realise we're not going to be able to keep him like this for a fortnight, when he's due to join the other Badger Face Torddus, so decide that perhaps he can stay in the barn for a week and split the difference.
This morning he has leapt out of his pen, bending the hurdles in his wake, knocked aside a ten inch thick gatepost and is bounding about the paddock, still frustrated that his semi-freedom has taken him no closer to fresh totty. We relent, unable to bear the prospect of disappearing ram for another fortnight.
All the ewes are brought in for crutching and fluking and Heptavacing, and then the white 'uns are led off with Roger, and the black with Samson. Lambing will be two weeks early in 2010.

Bidding in Builth

Off to the National Ram Sale on Monday to buy a ram (obviously), but also some ewes.
The aptly named Toyboy is now too closely related to the breeding flock so has gone off to bonk his way across Exmoor leaving me to head to Wales on the hunt for his replacement.
Those auction palpitations never fail to get you. The females aren't so much of a problem as you can buy as many or as few as you have room for in the trailer, so an extra one here or there doesn't matter. But a ram? I only want one Torddu ram, and there are several possibilities in the various pens, so when do I bid, and when not? I can't afford NOT to come home with one as it'll mean yet more expensive traipsing around the country, what with the majority being in Wales and very few if any in Devon, but I can't come home with two. That really puts the pressure on. I mark my catalogue with those I don't want - too fat (loads of them are wobbly with fat rather than muscle and I want a working not a show ram), too young (I need a proven sire), too ugly (personal bias), problematic horns and so on. I bid for one that comes before my preferred choice but the auctioneer doesn't see me wave my catalogue even though I am sat right in front of him and by now have had several sheep knocked down to me, so I am a real bidder, parting with genuine dosh. Ah well. My fave then comes into the ring and I get all excited - he is a really big chap, sound, strong, muscular, great horns, with a fabulously endowed set of bollocks. Just what I need. No. Rewind. Just what my ewes need.
Just a couple of other bidders are interested as they are mostly showing folk at this Badger Face Society annual show and sale, and he has the attributes of a worker. He's knocked down to me at a decent price.
Wormed and vaccinated he is now in the ram's paddock, looking a little lost, stamping his feet, snorting through his nostrils, every ounce trembling with testosterone. If he breathed fire I wouldn't be surprised, so I'm not going to introduce him to Samson until tupping is finished. If the two rams get into a fight and something happens, that's zero lamb next year.

Sex and the single pig

Oh my. I've been at the sharp end of pig sex. Not having a boar, and not wanting to go to the hassle of hiring in a pedigree beast and having to feed it and put up with its hugeness and unfamiliarity, Aunt Agatha has been artificially inseminated. Not just once, but three times. The vet came out to show us and then decided the sow wasn't quite ready, so came back the following morning when we all played our part, me doing the sexing up bit, pretending to be the boar (major massage, rub and general physical labour stuff) whilst the others were at the business end with a half metre long catheter and a bottle of semen.
That afternoon we were on our own, and there I was, puffing and blowing and getting my pig in the mood. First thing this morning, the third and final bottle is squished down a fresh catheter and I'm done in with the physicality of it all, whilst OH does the techie bit with a squirt of Boarmate and a-twiddling of tubes and a-squeezing of bottles. A picture of the complete sex kit is attached - Boarmate spray, semen and the corkscrew tipped catheter - without the knackered helper. If I smoked I'd be off for a fag.

Mega spawn

Now these are amazing photos of this year's frog spawn and reminded me that it's about time to go on the jelly hunt. But I didn't expect to find megaspawn.
I counted eight separate nuclei in one bonkersly over-sized egg. What's that all about then? Conjoined froglets? Octuplet amphibians? All I could think of was the immense relief that Mama frog must have felt dumping that lot in the water.

Lurve

I was as eager as the rams to get them in with the ewes this morning, so I rushed my animal feeding and bedding chores and then did my little shepherdess act and moved the lambs through the yard into an empty field to ensure no underage distractions.
Yes, I should have waited for help but Toyboy is so single minded that I didn't expect any problems. I opened his gate, waved a scoop of nuts under his nose, and trotted off quick smart expecting him to follow. He did, and at a cracking pace. I had to hare across the intervening field to open the gate to the harem before he had time to consider bashing through and claim droit de seigneur. Gate open, chap in, girls eager and much mutual circling and greeting. With 19 ewes to serve he hardly knew where to start.
Moving Samson was definitely a two person job. He has spent the past month pacing in anticipation, fairly wearing himself to a frazzle of sexual frustration and snatches half-heartedly at grass and hay between the real business of leering at unreachable totty. With a bit of ushering and the use of a thick rope as a halter he was encouraged through gates and fields until he saw his goal. He was off like a shot, a series of frenzied hellos, and two ewes served within the minute. I left him to it.

Crutching

A day of preparation. Just one week to go before the rams (Toy-boy and Samson) are reintroduced to their laydeez, so the girls need titivating and trimming. The area around their tails is crutched, which is basically a mini-shearing session, removing the heavy fleece on their tails, back legs and bottom to keep them clean, offer easy access to the chaps, and hopefully in five months time still offer visible access to the udder when lambing gets going.
Because Badger Face sheep are meant to keep their long tails unlike many other breeds that have their tails ringed within the first few days of life, they look particularly daft without the fleece, carrying incongrously naked bell-pull tails.
Once wormed and bikini waxed, the black Torwens and white Torddus were split into separate fields so that the rams can tend to their own and generate purebred offspring, which gives me the option of selling breeding stock if there are some particularly choice examples born.
For another seven days the chaps will grow increasingly whiffy, testosterone oozing wildly and filling the air with the unmistakeable scent of rampant ram.

Samson awaiting his Delilah

Not a great photo as it was dusk and he didn't want to pose, but here is the new Torwen ram, Samson, wormed, Heptavac'd, toes trimmed and in isolation for three days before putting him out to pasture. No wonder he looks depressed. But come 1st November he can make whoopee.

Of runner ducks

I've always enjoyed a good runner duck. I've had various runners over the years but never managed, somehow, to get hold of my favourite colourway, the black runner duck.
These are the ducks that shepherds use at country shows to demonstrate the skill of their best dogs whilst keeping the punters chortling. They (the ducks, not the shepherds) stand very upright and have amusement written into their genes. They are also mighty fine egg layers.
They are very different in physical type from my chunky Aylesburys, and the contrast is part of the appeal. I'd finally decided a couple of months ago to start a small flock of black runners as soon as decent fox-proof pens could be made. Following two unwelcome visits, as a temporary measure the Aylesburys have been protected by three types of electric fencing, but if I give myself another jolt I'll probably lose the ability to string a sentence together, so told myself I'd just have to wait, and my runner duck dreams were put on short-term hold.
And then, you know how it is, you browse the postcards pinned up on the noticeboard at the feed merchants, and there it was, a free to good home notice from someone understandably fed up with a randy drake molesting her small defenceless call ducks.
His name is Beany, and now he's mine. And before you worry, he's safe. At night he goes into a duck hut, and by day he shares the front garden with Hard-Hattie until the pens are made and I can get him some girls of his own.

My best guess.. not for those of a sensitive disposition

I'd said on Friday that I wondered what I'd find the next day...
Well. Here it is. On the huge rotting engine beam that has been taken out of the round house as part of the barn restoration and put in the ram's paddock. The big patch on the right is about six inches high.
First thought: "the ram's been sick".
Second thought (polite version): "the ram has ejaculated".
Third thought: "It could be some sort of fungus?".
I don't think I'm congenitally suited to being an ecologist. Too dirty-minded. Well, it was Saturday morning.

Love is in the air

Cole Porter was on my lips even before I read the Guardian's Saturday Poem. I was composing and humming a lewd farming version to myself, whilst admiring the gander's ability to copulate with three different geese in the space of ten minutes. Putting the ducks to bed later the drake couldn't even go the distance from paddock to hut without a quickie en route with his favourite bird.
The ram, now in sweet seclusion having done his thing during November and December, is still feeling distinctly amorous and I had to remonstrate with him quite firmly that no, constant head-bashing of the gate was not going to lead back to the harem.
The ewes, on the other hand, are heavily in lamb, with just six weeks to go. They spend their time eating and lying down, mating a distant memory.
All of which leads me to this week's bad joke. At some point in the next few days there should be a magnificent erection; the roof trusses are due to go up on the cob barn and a crane is on order. Pictures will be taken.

Spawn

After reading Paula's entry, I was a woman on a mission. I hadn't spotted any jelly in the ditches in the last few days, but then I hadn't truly been looking. On the lunchtime dog walk I checked all the slow and no-moving ditches; the ones that merely trickle rather than cascade. And there it was. A first clump of frog spawn; massive, undeniable evidence of amphibian sex, the whole thing one big wet patch. It glistens and winks with promise, each of those black dots a potential tadpole.
So, it's official x 2. The frogs are at it in Devon.

Spinal treat

I wasn't planning on doing a post tonight; the lamb korma needs my attention. But the lovely man at The Spine (Guardian accredited dontcha know) has obliged and produced a collided and elided Janet and John that absolutely proves my point that Mr Depp and Ms Street-Porter are Russell Brand's parents. The Sun will carry the full story tomorrow.

The Toy-boy and the harem

A morning of crutching, worming and toe-trimming. All the ewes should be at their best as they will be checked but preferably left untouched and unstressed for the next 21 weeks. Post pedicure and coiffure they moved into Long Lands, heads straight down into the green stuff.
I stank of wet sheep. The gates were opened, a feed bucket was waved encouragingly in front of the tup. It was raining, it was grey, I could hardly see across the field but Toy-boy didn't notice. He was a ram on a mission. Head held high, nostrils flaring, ignoring the feed but momentarily interested in my Eau de Ewe trousers, he sneered and headed for the real thing. He made his entrance. The sheep raised their heads from their breakfast. The crowd swallowed the star of the show. Sniff. Paw. Mount. Sorted.

Censorship

Rachel has made me chortle most mightily, and one is obliged to share a good thing. Apparently I am damned and forbidden reading for the under eighteens. I am officially an adult blog. This is determined based on the presence of the following words:

• sex (8x)
• murder (5x)
• death (4x)
• dyke (3x)
• rape (2x)
• cocks (1x)

I didn't recall discussing dykes, so I did a blog search. The references are to Dick van and Greg. I'll leave you to search for my comments on cocks. Go on, have a laugh...get your rating here.

Bats and balls

I didn't need Bat Woman to tell me there were bats nesting in the roof. One evening last summer I counted 150 of them setting out through the crack between the roof and the top of the wall for a night of midge annihilation. You can hear their version of African clicking language and squeaking remonstrations of "me first" as they jostle to emerge at dusk. The amount and distribution of the guano suggested to our knowledgeable bat woman that there were whiskered bats (Myotis mystacinus), common pipistrelles (Pipistrellus pipistrellus), brown long eared bats (Plecotus auritus), natterer’s bats (M.nattereri ) and Daubenton’s bats colonising for the summer in the rafters. She collected the bat shit in little jewellery boxes. I think she took the earrings out first. As the bats leave for their night of hunting they swoop right or left, coming low, just inches over your head, before circling towards the hedgerows that provide enough mini-meat to sustain them. One evening our neighbour's friend brought an ultrasonic bat detector box and we stood in the dark in the road between the two farms (little traffic comes past once tractor hours are over) whilst she interpreted the sounds, identifying the types of bat flying overhead. But yesterday I was given an out of print bat book and suddenly I had an insight into what all that battery of clicking is about. After some great pictures of the various types of bat, there at the back is a parade of privates, a genus of genitals, a display of dicks. There for all to gawp at are shots of bat penises; slightly furry, dressed to the right and to the left , shapely and not so shapely, well endowed and discreet. For a bat girl who likes a bit of meat on her man, the noctule bat is the boy to date and mate. Relatively speaking, he's hung like a donkey.

Drop'em blossom

Bored now! Lambing has been going on for 19 days and I need to get back to normal sleeping patterns soon before everyone I know and love deserts me due to (my) irritation and shortness of temper. Can't say I've got the sweetest of tempers at any time but alarm clocks set at unseemly times of the night and early hours don't exactly sooth the jagged soul. It's true that once you are up and feeding the sheep, the lambs now old enough to leave mum and congregate in gangs, you get to see their wild toddler antics which in another week will become decidedly adolescent; lots of riding each other like wheelbarrows. With lovely long evenings I should be out there being vigorous in the polytunnel, wrestling with veg, spades and trowels, but I'm too tired to have more than a token poke in the soil.

Lambing prep

So you sort through the household veterinary supplies, and look for castration rings (check), soft rope (check), iodine (check), syringes and needles (check), lube (check), armpit length gloves (nope), and make a short list of goodies to buy before the off. Only trouble is the checklist on the kitchen table looks like a shopping list for a sex-shop spree rather than the more mundane agricultural store and you wonder if you should put it somewhere a little less prominent to avoid shocking the visitors. Then you get to the farm shop and start to chortle at the drawings on the side of the insemination gloves - accompanied by wording normally restricted to other latex products, reminding you that they are for single use. And then it adds (they can't be serious) that if the product proves defective you should return it to the retailer..... do they mean the used ones or those left in the packet??

Ethics, morals and confusion

I rarely read any newspaper article with a man in a dog-collar featured at its head, but something about John Sentamu's piece, "Ethics must shape our global economy" made me press on. The Archbishop of York describes how feeble is the typical guess as to the meaning of ethics: a feeling of what is right or wrong; linking ethics to one's religious beliefs; thinking that being consistent with the law of the land will make your actions ethical. We can all think of examples when taking those as our ethical standards would have meant condoning or carrying out terrifyingly unjust actions.

The Archbishop describes ethics as referring to "well-based standards of right and wrong that prescribe what humans ought to do, usually in terms of rights, obligations, benefits to society, justice, or specific virtues - such as decency... ethical standards also include ... honesty, compassion, and loyalty... rights to life, freedom from injury, and privacy. Secondly, ethics refers to the study and development of one's standards... it is necessary to constantly examine one's standards to ensure they are reasonable and well-founded. Ethics...means...studying our moral beliefs and conduct, and striving to ensure we, and the institutions we help to shape, live up to reasonable, solidly based standards. We must always allow our standards to be open to question and judgement."

And that's when I moved from agreement to confusion. For me, the term morality or moral beliefs means something that someone somewhere is going to get het up about in order to restrict my or someone elses personal freedom and probably our personal rights. Rather than feel comfortable with the idea of morals, I get very nervous that some dubious moral code is being used to justify entirely unethical actions, or at the very least make it difficult for individuals to assert their rights.

I suspect many of my concerns are linked to what others would call sexual "moralities". That a religion can dictate that couples refrain from using contraception because it deems it intrinsically evil; that condoms are the work of the devil and are useless anyway; that couples should either refrain from sex altogether or keep pushing out a child every year and compromise the woman's health, their sanity and their family, seems to me utterly unethical. That anyone other than the woman involved can ultimately decide whether or not she can or cannot have an abortion is likewise unacceptable in my ethical terms. Just as untenable to me are: denying young people sex education and easy access to contraception; that those with a "moral code" are refusing women the morning after pill; that gay couples should be treated differently in law from heterosexual married couples etc etc etc.....

The prurience of the tabloids when dealing with sexual affairs also sickens; they trawl unendingly for what they see as "dirt", splash it happily all over the front pages to sell their papers (and we buy them!) and condemn those targetted as if we were in the middle ages and stoning and the stocks had just been banned so public ridicule must be ensured in other ways. It's just sex, folks; stop getting so worked up about it.

But away from personal life, what about those business ethics issues? Green or ecological policies seems to be a confusion with ethical policies; if we are ecologically sound, surely we cannot be unethical at the same time? I don't know the answer; I only pose the question, but I guess that it's a matter of perception, knowledge and understanding the longest of long term effects of the actions we take today and tomorrow.