Each winter at Headon Farm we take in another Farmer’s sheep to eat the grass. Usually they come us during the lead up to lambing and then get taken home to their own farm to give birth.
The unpredictability of lambing means that occasionally a ewe will have her lamb(s) here at Headon and we hope for it to be dry to give the newborns a chance. (It is often said sheep are born to die!).
Visitors in their caravans on our touring site are sometimes the first to spot a newborn lamb in the adjacent fields.
For a change this year the Farmer has brought over more mature, older lambs and their mothers to us. This is where the trouble starts! Young strong lambs, when the weather is kind love to play and explore. Being smaller they can get through gaps and into spaces their mothers can’t. Most of our fields are reasonably well fenced but this year the lambs have had us ‘on the run’! Put them in a field and they are like Houdini the escapologist – if there is a gap they will find it! We have been called and visited numerous times to say there are sheep out! Once the lambs make a break for it their mothers, who are too big to fit through the gaps, start to bleat to their lambs and get very anxious. It’s also dangerous to the lambs and road users.
This called for drastic actions, we plugged most of the gaps but one stretch of hedge required re-fencing, a job Richard was able to do and finds very satisfying. So now we have a nice new stretch of fenced field to stop the blighters!