Lonely boy Bentley

Here's our new ram Bentley, now on his own for the winter, until the lambs are born and the ewes are safely past the period when they might come into heat.

He wasn't at all happy about this.

I took away his ewes yesterday afternoon, distracting him with some food, while I slipped the ewes out of the gate. Once he realized they were gone he began ramming the gate and baaa-ing in frustration, except that in a full grown ram, what passes for a baa is actually more of a grrrrr!

Tough. He'll have to stick it out. Most rams are such knuckleheads that there is no choice but to keep them separate from the rest of the herd much of the time, in well-fortified pens. Rams must lead solitary lives much of the year.

You can put rams of the same age class together out-of-breeding season. They can't do too much damage to each other when they're well-matched, and they're not that inclined to spar when there are no ewes to compete over.

But in season, and when one ram is clearly more dominant, they must be kept separate, or they'll destroy each other. This happened to us a couple of years ago, when a visiting ram, Snorri, beat the living daylights out of our old ram, Abraram. I had to put old Abe down with the rifle and make mincemeat out of him. I decided then and there never to have two grown rams on the farm at the same time ever again.

The other thing I did yesterday is cut away Regina's forelocks where she had become wool-blind. Wool-blindness is when a sheep can't see for fleece over her eyes. Corriedales can be prone to it, especially when crossed, as ours are, with Romney blood. Regina is the yearling in the background. You can see her eyes. That's how you know that this is a new photo of her.

Here's a chicken that looks like it wants to come in the house. For a warm-up, maybe? Or to eat Haggis's food?