Keeping Lambs

We were lucky, we hadn’t been looking, well we had, but not seriously and this property just crept up on us.

- Ruth Cuerden

It wasn’t the house that grabbed our attention it was the land that went with it, and the potential it held for us.

We already had an allotment that we would not be able to keep, so creating our own was always part of the plan.  Chickens shortly followed, which left us still with a field. Half an acre of grass bordered on one side with beautiful dog roses, and hawthorn on the other. It was too much for us just to use as a place to kick a football around, we wanted to utilise it somehow.

Our neighbours were keeping pigs, at the time and mentioned they were getting sheep later in the year, something they had done every year, providing them with a freezer full of meat.

Somewhat naively we wondered how hard sheep can be, after all I had grown up around goats and Wayne had some experience of livestock from school. After much discussion about not getting to attached and how it would work, it was decided it would be something to try this year. If it was too hard we would never have to do it again.

In March the two families visited a stable full of orphaned lambs, tiny bundles of fluff that bounced across the stable from bale to bale, sometimes using us as their climbing frame. We bottle fed them all and after an afternoon of cuddles we left them to get some rest. We were smitten.

Our first consideration was how would we want to contain them? I didn’t want them to eat all my beautiful roses and we were also aware of the badger set at the bottom of the garden. Knowing badgers can harm sheep and we didn’t want to tempt fate. We settled on a 100meters of electric fence which, was as much about keeping the lambs contained as protecting them.