Apologies for Radio Silence!

Such a long hard summer, then suddenly we’re prepping for winter.   During the summer we dealt with a drought, blue tongue, shingles, broken toes and more.

I honestly don’t really know where to start with this one!  Over the summer we had a really tough time with no grazing due to the drought, and started feeding silage in July.  We don’t normally feed silage until around October, so it was a real financial hit to us.

We got one sheep through blue tongue, but sadly lost one, despite vaccinating.  I’m just so pleased we were able to vaccinate, as I dread to think what our losses may have been if we hadn’t  .  A lot of farms were actually unable to get the vaccine until it was far too late, and it’s had a huge impact on their flocks, and their lambing next year will also likely be affected as there is a clear link between a ram catching bluetongue and then becoming infertile.

I broke a toe….. Twice!  Both times stood on by a sheep - and although I wear steel toe caps all year around, they don’t cover my little toe.   I then got shingles too.

So now here we are on the way into winter.  We’re currently getting groundworks done so we can bring the sheep home for the winter and begin to feed them up - they lost condition (weight) over the summer despite the extra feeding, so I’m keen to bring them inside where they don’t get soaked through and burn through calories trying to keep warm.  Last year I brought them in over winter, and it was a real game changer for the sheep - we had warm, dry sheep who spent their days munching on silage and fodder beet, and were turned out on dry spells too.

I’ll try to be a bit more on the ballwith my blogs - this summer was the hardest I’ve had, so I’m hoping things may ease a bit this winter and I’ll be able to keep you all in the loop a bit more!I hope you are all well and I will check back in soon!