A few days ago Farmer John rounded up the ewes and the lambs here at Struan Farm for crutching and dosing. Worms and fly seem to be bad this season, and a "dag" or two was apparent as well as long worms in the poo. Ahead of his mustering we herded our ten pet lambs, Matilda, Clover, Mixie, Dixie, Scout, Romeo, Alfie, Trixie, Daisy and TimTam, down to the woolshed where they had their evening bottle and spent the night in the yards. Pet lambs are notoriously hard to manage for farm dogs (basically they ignore them), so mum usually needs to intervene to get the job done, with help from "dad" if he's around.
After their beauty and health therapy treatments they were released back into the Cottage Paddock the next morning. Alfie, Trixie and TimTam made their way back up to their paddock gate for the evening feed, but we had to go round up the rest of the mob. We managed to get find everyone except Clover. Daisy had decided to join this group, so we put six lambs into the house paddock and scratched our heads over where Clover might be. We did check the pond to make sure she wasn't stuck in the muck down there. She's eating grass now, so wouldn't starve, but usually a lamb would "baa" when left alone and was going without her bottle. They have finely tuned internal clocks and know when they're meant to be fed. Clover might have been recovering from the whole crutching and dosing thing and needed some time to herself, I wasn't sure.
The next morning John went out and found her in the front paddock with Alfie, Trixie and TimTam. He also noticed some sheep poop at our front entrance gate, so the theory is that she walked across the cattle stop into the main Homestead gardens and went for a wander around. Thankfully she didn't wander out on the road.
As I was writing this I heard baaing outside the house that sounded a bit unusual. Seems Alfie had also figured out a way to walk across the cattle stop, the one that leads up to our driveway. Clover might have clued him in. He wandered up the driveway and into the orchard, where he happily munched grass and apple tree. Lydia and I managed to wrangle him and get him back into the paddock, but I was concerned that now that he had found the Garden of Eden up the driveway he would lead others astray, across the cattle stop. As a result, John made the executive decision to consolidate the two mobs of pet lambs in our house paddock. We've mustered Alfie, Clover and TimTam into the house paddock with the other six to avoid any more cattle stop incidents and risk that someone would end up on the road. Trixie has stayed in the front paddock for the time being. She's hobbling with her hip problem and I didn't see any sense in trying to force her to move unless she gets lonely and wants that.
I'm not looking forward to bottle time with this number jostling and bunting, it could be time to wean. The joys of pet lambs, eh?
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