This past week at Struan Farm I've had some challenges since pet lamb Tiger was liberated from the Pet Pen out into the paddock. You may remember he was 2-3 weeks old when his mum died, so getting him to adjust to life on bottles fed by humans took some time. We got there.
Since he's been out in the paddock he is into wandering. If he's within calling range he will come up to the back gate for his bottles. I suspect all of our neighbours now know we have a pet lamb named Tiger given my loud, lilting calls that echo the hills. But if he's not around John has had to get on the quad bike to find him for a feed. A few days ago John discovered him all the way down at the river. While he can survive at this stage just eating grass, he won't grow and be quite as big and healthy if he doesn't drink his milk. So we want Tiger drinking his 3x per day as he should be.
We were just settling back into a proper groove this past weekend when who comes charging up to the back gate but former pet lamb Spice! She kept bunting Tiger out of the way, trying to drink his bottle. Tiger freaked out. As did I.
I finally had to swat her away so Tiger could drink his bottle. It took at least three reasonable swats before she finally got the message and left us to it. To give you some idea of their relative size, here's Spice:
And here's Tiger:
While Tiger is a big lamb, you can see why Spice would be intimidating. She went into a snit and wasn't talking to me for swatting her away that afternoon. But she must have been having a flashback about bottle feeds at the back gate a year ago.
The next morning Tiger arrived at the back gate for his breakfast, which was a good sign. He now seems to have clicked that this is where to get fed. The only problem was that both Spice and her sister Sugar were now lurking under the Pet lean-to, and BOTH came barreling up when the bottle came out! John was with me, and he pushed them away while Tiger sucked down his bottle.
Yes, we laugh when incidents like this happen here at Struan Farm!
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