It is now looking as though the funeral will take a couple of weeks to organise. In the meantime, I'm staying put at Knapdale with the dogs and sheep and lots of friends to help me out. It looks as though my brother, Joe, and his girlfriend Lauren, will come up to look after us all either today or tomorrow.
This morning I received an e-mail that cheered me up somewhat. I've been chatting with Robin McEwen-King about a ram lamb of his for a few weeks now. Well, this is him, Galtress Ptolemy. Thanks very much to Robin for the photos.
He's grey,
he's spotty,
he has a fine crimpy fleece,
super conformation and he's just what I wanted.
It's a shame that he damaged his horns as a lamb, but this isn't a genetic fault so it doesn't matter. His horns were like his twin's (shown below) until he knocked them.
Hopefully I'll get down to visit soon and all being well he'll go in with the girls mid November with an aim to have lambs mid to late April. Something to look forward to!
As any beaver tracker worth their salt knows, you can't be a good beaver tracker without a good beaver tracking dog... ok so I made that up, but Fox and Whisper are learning to be useful while accompanying me to work.
For Fox, this is nothing new. He started helping me to track water voles when he was very small and will also "mark" any otter spraints that he finds while we are walking waterways.
By lavishing praising them whenever they sniff at a beaver scent mark or feeding station, they are becoming quite enthusiastic about helping to spot where the beavers have been.
I need to dedicate more time to this than I've been able to recently, but hopefully they will be very useful one day!
Fox likes beavers because they leave sticks all over the place just for him to steal. See him sneaking into the corner of this beaver dam photo?
Oliver is now 17 months old and is clearly thriving. He is living with Kath's stepmother's horses and was caught on camera the other day strutting his stuff in the field.
