Little Dodd in midwinter

Summer's a long time ago. After floods in November (which amounted to flooded roads up here, fortunately, rather than flooded cottages)

we've had a combo of snow and ice for over a fortnight now.

It's getting to be hard on the sheep, especially now the ice is so hard, and no sign of a thaw. We carry beet pulp pellets out to them in the mornings, and haynets. Little Dodd is doing ok, though still the smallest, and really not the best fleece. Still, it's grown pretty thick, and his face and ears are covered in fur so thick it doesn't matter which way you push it, it doesn't allow any skin to emerge.

He comes rushing hopefully up across the ice, focussed on my right hand coat pocket, where I keep a handful of sheep nuts for him (Ruby and Diamond as well). However, Little Dodd still enjoys having his face stroked. Apart from that it's cupboard love all the way.

First Woman to get Nettled by a Sheep

Yes, that was me, I got nettled by Little Dodd this morning.

Hebridean sheep, no doubt bred to eat what's in front of them, including soggy seaweed, are also placid munchers of nettles. Most grazing animals don't eat nettles but Hebs do.

So there I was giving Little Dodd his morning bottle, he's covered in nettle seeds, but also a large nettle leaf - which stung me very successfully.

He's down to 2 half measure bottles of very watery Wonderlamb a day. And at the end of this week, it's grass. And nettles.

Weaning is underway

Little Dodd enjoys his 4pm bottle from two young friends. He has an efficient body clock, and will be waiting by the gate, bleating hopefully if he hears voices.

We've got him down to a feed at 7am, a feed at 4pm and a late nighter at about 10.30pm with the last of the daylight (in between watching highlights from Glastonbury this week).

I think this feeding programme is still wildly generous by commercial farming standards (but of course there's nowt commercially efficient about saving Little Dodd).

Anyway folks, LD at 7 weeks looks round and frisky on his diet of less Wonderlamb and more grass. And he stands blissfully blinking while we stroke his face and scratch gently behind his ear.

Getting Little Dodd off the Bottle

Little Dodd has made it to six weeks old. Looks like he'll live, folks. Here he is with his pals, (LD on the left) and really, they do play with the football, in an absent kind of way.

I've just had a very hectic week coping with Paul working away, me working as per usual plus evening meetings in handy places like Wigtown, Cubs, homework, the dentist, running out of Weetabix (severe crisis in this household), and the car developing a nasty crunch in its gearbox (jams in reverse. Or first, after I'd pulled out onto the A76). On top of all this Little Dodd needed fed at lunchtime when I was out at work.

He got fed by quite a range of kind people last week. Apparently he got on well with everyone, though my mother freaked him out by turning up one lunchtime in heavy rain wearing a packaway raincoat that comes down to her knees. So thank you Mum, and Martin, Shirley, Dougie and Cameron.

However, I reckon weaning must be on the horizon.

Little Dodd is a Bad Influence

The lamb in the field is Little Dodd. He has just hopped down off the dyke when I called him. He's watching with interest his 'cousin', who is still teetering along the top...

My neighbour and I embellished the dyke with an old garden chair and some extra stones on top where Little Dodd likes to scramble up, in the hopes it'll put him off, and stop him leading the other lambs into trouble.

The Late Night Wonderlamb Bottle

I originally wrote The Late Night Bottle, but thought this could be misconstrued.

Here's Little Dodd's view of a midsummer evening. It was more golden than the pic, and frankly sharper, but my camera was outclassed.

I call Little Dodd, and hear him scramble out from his sleeping place among the other sheep under the holly tree. Bats whisk around us as I stand holding the bottle.

Somewhere nearby, an owl calls.

Little Dodd discovers the green stuff

Before 7 this morning, and having downed his bottle of Wonderlamb, Little Dodd displayed for the camera his new capacity for grass.

He's certainly eating it now, grazing much more seriously than the vague way young lambs nose at it, as though trying to work out what their mothers are so absorbed by.

Time lapses between bottles of Wonderlamb must be a good incentive to find another food source.

If we can get him safely onto grass, he should be ok.

I'm sure I saw a hare cross the top of the next field. Too long-legged and tall for a rabbit.

Auntie Pearl in close up

This is Pearl. Little Dodd was knocking off his bottle today, and she decided to check whether he was getting something she wasn't.

She showed no interest in the smell of Wonderlamb, but spent several minutes staring intently at me.

Pearl is one year old. She could have had her first lambs this year, but Hebridean sheep are late maturing and long-lived, so we haven't hurried her. Pearl was a particularly beautiful and characterful lamb, and as you can see, she is a rather gorgeous sheep.

Like Little Dodd (she is his auntie) she is a climber, happy scrambling on rock, or neatly placing her front feet to scale the pig netting so she can reach to eat new hawthorn growth on the other side, while standing in a strangely upright position. For a sheep.

Lamb meets Cat

As soon as I opened the door this morning, I could hear the curlews calling. Sometimes they fly right over the cottage, their long curved beaks unmistakeable against the sky.

Little Dodd raced up the field, bleating hungrily after the night without milk. We stood in the sun while he drank. Then he clambered onto a tempting big stone in the dyke.

Midnight, the born-feral-but-rapidly-adjusted-to-soft-life cat, ducked elegantly under the gate and approached. As Dodd finished his bottle he stretched out his muzzle to hers. Little Dodd's eyes were bright with curiosity and inexperience.

Midnight sniffed him more warily. She's been chased by frisky lambs in the past.

Monday, 6.30 am: bleating and birdsong

6.30am is Little Dodd's first bottle of Wonderlamb of the day...

This morning the sun was shining, and the air was still.
At the sound of the 'hen gate' (attempts to keep the hens out of the garden) Little Dodd is bleating vigorously.

He does look better this week, and he butts my knees in his desperation to get that milk, until I can get him latched onto the bottle.

Then he settles down to suck like a curly black suction pump.

The vivid whistling of oystercatchers nesting at the lochans below us resonates across the hills. Little Dodd's tail batters my wellies.

One of the other lambs approaches us, eyes wide with her struggle between curiosity and instinctive fear.

Little Dodd - Dyke Runner!

He must be feeling better. Went out of the cottage this morning, heading for the garden gate (the sheep field is next to the garden), and heard him bleat.

He does this when he hears the back door open. I looked over the gate, and was puzzled. Could see the other two lambs, and hear Little Dodd, but he didn't seem to be in the field.

Then he bleated again. I looked up - and saw him running nimbly along the top of the drystane dyke. It's what the cat does. I just had to time to gasp when, still bleating enthusiastically, he took a flying leap off the top of the dyke and landed neatly in the field. He cantered up to me, eager for milk.

Although lambs do tend to scramble up the footings of the dykes, I've not seen one run along the top before!

Needless to say, folks, the camera wasn't there at the time. This is where he did it though - from the hawthorn tree to about 4 posts along.

Wonderlamb!

The vet had recommended Wonderlamb, another lamb milk substitute. "But I've never seen them get bloat on this one", he said.

Helpfully, Wonderlamb turns out to be manufactured in Dumfries. We did a mercy dash to acquire a sack of it. It smells thinner and goatier than the Lamblac.

Now we have half a sack of Lamblac, a full sack of Wonderlamb, and a vet's bill. Little Dodd bleats joyfully when he spots a member of the family, and races towards us, small black tail waggling fiercely. Here's Little Dodd with a fan.

Most people agree it'll be rather hard to eat him.

Perhaps he'll pull through

We went back to feeding very little and often, on sugar water and yoghurt. Little Dodd was still in the field with the other sheep, but he slept a lot and no longer played with the other lambs.

But he downed his sugar water eagerly, and his tummy problems improved. The antibiotics made a dramatic difference, and within a day he began to show more energy.

But he was losing weight.

Sick Lamb

Last Saturday Little Dodd wasn't feeding well. He was starting to suffer from bloat, a common problem in bottle-fed lambs, basically indigestion caused by not having their mother's milk.

But I became sure he also had an infection. In the end we took him to the vet, who said, "Oh dear, he's cute. I expect he's got a name".

Antibiotics, which have to be injected into his rump for 3 days. And because of the bloat problem, we have to feed him only sugar water, with a teaspoon of natural yoghurt in it.

He looks sorry for himself.

Little Dodd starts to pull through

Here he is, at the bottom of the pic, his sister and cousin (well, some sort of relative) standing under the dyke.

He's looking more rounded, less fragile, and has started to play with the other lambs.

We went and bought a sack of Lamblac, which is cluttering up the back kitchen. Made up Lamblac (mix with water) clutters up the fridge, with the ever present risk that it ends up in someone's tea...

On the naming of sheep

Well, we do eat them.

But not usually the ones with names. It's a very easy way to make the distinction. The breeding ewes are Diamond, her daughter Ruby, and her other daughter (a year younger than Ruby), who is of course called Pearl.

All of this year's lambs were frankly, destined (eventually) for the freezer.

A family member dubbed our bottle lamb 'Doddery' after two days of feeding him. 'Poor little Doddery' he said. Poor Little Dodd. We remembered there's two fells in Cumbria (we have Cumbrian connections), Little Dodd and Great Dodd.

'If he survives, he'll be Great Dodd one day'.

Officially abandoned

To my surprise he stood up (at one point I bent down to see if he was still breathing).

We've had previous success in getting a ewe to take back a twin after having warmed and fed it, so we carried the lamb back in to meet Mother.

She wasn't having any. She made it quite clear to me that, far as she was concerned, lamb number 2 was so unlikely to live that she'd cut her losses. She now loved number 1 lamb fiercely. Unfortunately she was quite fierce to unlucky number 2 lamb when he made an attempt to feed, and we saw him give up when she knocked him aside.

We kept on bottle feeding. This is Dougie, wrapped in an extra old coat to keep him warm, feeding our small lamb in the field next morning.

All nighters

This lamb was very weak. I sat him on my knee on an old towel in the chair we keep by the Rayburn, and fed him from a bottle every couple of hours (and through the night).

He seemed listless, and even after warming him up overnight, he had to have his head supported in order to feed, and there was no encouraging waggle from his tiny black tail.

All Hebridean sheep are born black, though they sometimes turn grey or brown as adults. The lambs are particularly attractive, like little deer, with neat, dished faces. They are born very slim, with shining coal-black curls.

In the morning it was still cold, but the sun was shining. Ruby and her ewe lamb were doing fine. We took the weak lamb outside in his garden trug and put him where he could hear the other sheep and get some sunshine. He seemed barely able to stand.

Little Dodd meets The Rayburn

On Saturday the weather worsened. I went outside in full winter apparel and saw that the weak lamb wasn't following his mother well. He tended to stay under the holly tree while she led the strong lamb out (into showery rain and cold, gusty wind). You couldn't blame him.

Ruby, the ewe, would wander somewhat anxiously between where she wanted to get some breakfast, and back to the weak lamb sitting damply under the tree.

I had my doubts.

At lunchtime the nasty north British climate put in a special effort for really heavy cold rain, delivered with oomph from the north east.

I went out, and found the ewe was no longer bothering to check the small lamb. He, poor soul, was sitting in a muddy puddle looking exactly as if someone had thrown several buckets of icy water over him. Which effectively fate had.

We took him inside to warm by the Rayburn, and rushed up to borrow some lamb milk substitute from our friends Carol and Richard, who have a holding higher up our hill.

Not a good day to be born

Friday 8 May at 5am was cold as March, and raining heavily on the hills of Dumfries and Galloway. Ruby had twins, a ewe and a tup.

When I found them they were both on their feet and seemed ok. The ewe lamb was much larger and more vigorous than her little brother. He looked, frankly, wobbly.

It went on raining.

We kept an eye on the new lambs. They were feeding alright, but the small one obviously wasn't enjoying the weather. By evening the ewe had taken to keeping them under the shelter of the holly tree. I mention this to indicate she wasn't entirely useless as a mother.