Stay Signed In
Do you want to access your site more quickly on this computer? Check this box, and your username and password will be remembered for two weeks. Click logout to turn this off.
Stay Safe
Do not check this box if you are using a public computer. You don't want anyone seeing your personal info or messing with your site.
One oof my other interests is sheep. I am going into breeding a rare breed of sheep called lincoln longwools. you can find out info on the sheep here at www.lincolnlongwool.co.uk.
i bought my first one from heckington show today, 29/7/06 for the sum of £134.53. Here are some pics of her.
I also have 2 Lincoln rams, which you can see below
Today, on the 1st of February 2007, the longwool gimmer on the left of this page had a lamb. A male. It took lots of hard work to push the lamb out, as it was so big even an experienced ewe would have had trouble passing it. It appears she had been in labour for around 2 weeks. But, the lamb was born dead.
I was excited, as it was my first lamb to be bred by my own sheep. Then, after 1 hour of hard straining, at 4:10am, the feet were visible. Excitement rose, and then a head appeared. She was clearly having trouble, so my dad stepped in and lent a hand in pulling him out. He had no pulse, and the expected cough and splutter didnt come. Panic set in. 20 minutes we spent trying to revive it. 20 minutes. We tried everything, swinging it, dipping it in water, even mouth to mouth. Nothing worked though. I can't express in words how upset we were. To see her go through so much pain and have nothing at the end of it. Waiting since September for it to come, every day seeing her come further on.
No doubt about it, if it would have lived, it would have won some big prizes. It had everything good. Size, nice ears, nice legs, nice head. I would say it would be the sort of one that makes like £500+ in a sale. I wouldn't have sold him though, not for any money, as he was my first. Such a bloody shame.
We rang Martin Robinson, who we bought the gimmer and tups off, and he was gutted too. He told us he had a 3 day old Texel lamb that was caid. We fetched it, and rubbed it on the dead lamb, to get the scent of it onto the new one, so the gimmer would accept it. She was having none of it though. Rejected it.
So we brought her in the house. She now sleeps in a puppy pen next to my computer. She is such a lovely little lamb, bottle feeding her every 2 hours or so. Comes and sits on my knee at the computer and watches me on the forum. No doubt we are going to form a good friendship.
Below is a picture of me and the Texel on the computer. She is 3 days old in the picture.
We phoned Maurice Parker aswell, who said he did have a caid Lincoln. A female, whose mum was 9 years old, had no teeth, and had triplets. First died, leaving her with 2. She only had enough milk for 1, so we took the other. We decided to call this one "Fieldside Trudy" after our horse that died, who started all our animals and yard off.
Below you can see pictures of them both.
I am also keenly interested in agriculture, with my dad bringing me into it at an early age, as he was a mechanic for a large agricultural firm, Platts Harris, and is now the Service manager at the Tuxford branch. Here are some pictures of the stages of harvest, with the baling of straw for our smallholding.
Well it starts off with the combine cutting the cereals, this one is a Deutz Fahr, cutting wheat, which we then moved on to bale.
Then we come along with a baler, and hook that up to a tractor (Case 785XL), and drive next to the rows of straw, being very careful to get the right amount of straw into the chamber/pick-up. Too much, and it will snap a shear bolt (not bad, but a pain in the arse!!)
The straw gets picked up by the tines, pushed into the packing chamber by the big tines on the picture, and then through the knotters
<-- Knotters
The bales are collected in a sledge, and released in groups of 7
<-- Bales are stacked
Bales are collected by Fordson and Perry loader
And are sheeted down ready for transport on trailer
