It's Show Time

Well it's that time of year again when we go through the paces of preparing the cattle and sheep for their annual outing to the Arisaig Road to the Isles Agricultural Show.

The first show of the year for us, so there is a lot of preparing to do before the big day.
The cattle were shaved on the Tuesday before the big day.
This involves shaving their faces and tail tops.
Clipping their underbelly and combing out their coats.
They were washed and groomed up on the Friday night, what a blessing that it was a mild day and there was no midges out to eat us or the calves.
We decided to take two Heifers both just over a year old, one Limousin cross named Penny and a Charolais cross named April.
They are both placid and easily handled, once they were all cleaned and dried they were penned in deep straw to keep them clean for the next days show.
The sheep on the other hand are a different matter.
We decided to take Myran a Cheviot Ewe, her Ram Craigy from last year, also her Ewe lamb Cirsty from this year.
We also took Claire's Ewe lamb Babs from last year.
They were all sheared a few weeks ago, to give this years coats a chance to come through.
Craigy was first on the block, he was trimmed up again to shape his fleece, his hoofs were clipped and he wash shampooed up with a bright white shampoo to make him look really white as Cheviot's should.
Myran and Babs were next with the same routine, I must say they were all well behaved, by now they are used to this routine as they have all been through it a couple of times.
Cirsty on the other hand was a little fighter, she hated getting a wash, we had a large trug bucket for her, I think I got wetter than she did.
But they all came out like little snowballs ; )
They were all dried up also and bedded down on thick straw to keep them clean.
Now being crofters you have to be inventive sometimes, we only have one cattle float which is not big enough to carry all of the animals so we manufactured the other trailer we have to make a sheep trailer to transport them to the show, if I might say it looked quite the thing and did the job really well.
My hubby unloaded the calves and penned them up, then gave me and hand to unload the sheep.
The classes for both cattle and sheep was very strong as is usual for the Arisaig show.
The cattle started first in the big ring and the Black face sheep in the smaller ring.
Whilst all this was going on my daughter and I set about touching up our sheep.
Whitening their legs and faces with a powder mix, to make them white and clean looking.
They are very patient animals and stood well for the finishing touches.
Mean while my husbands class was a strong class and he picked up a third and forth rosette for his efforts, he was beaten by a supreme beast.

Never mind there is always next year, it's the taking part that counts, without the entries there would be no show at all, these people come from miles around, with the price of fuel as it is and the fuel strike that is going on, I take my hat off to them all for turning out to make the day a special one.
My classes were also strong this year too.
Craigy my Ram was first out and beaten into second place by a beautiful Suffolk owned by a neighbouring crofter in Arisaig.
Both the Ewe lambs also picked up second places too.
Myran on the other hand went through all of her classes to win over all Sheep Champion again this year, she was up against a strong Black face Ewe in the final.
Myran is a great show off, she stands in the ring and strikes a pose and that's it, she takes it all in her stride and wonders what all the fuss is about and why all of these people are looking at her.
Well we were pleased as punch that she did it again, it is a great feeling to win something after all of the effort you put in to preparing the animals for a show.
She went into the ring for the overall show animal with a Highland Bullock also owned by a local to the area.
It took a long time for the judges to debate and choose a winner.
The Highland Bullock took the prize and a well deserved congratulations goes out to them.
We were very happy with what we had already won.
After all the fuss had died down, we took a walk around the show and had something to eat, it is a long day and unfortunately you cannot get away to have a walk around until you finished with the main events in the rings.
This years main ring attraction was a sheep dog demonstration, which was really entertaining, the dog handler had seven dogs working in the ring at the same time, quite a hard task to do with two dogs never mind seven and three puppies too.
There was speed ball events, and dog agility events, quad bike challenge and much more.
All in all a great day out for everyone.
The end of the day came and we loaded up and came home, we let the animals out for a feed and had an early night ourselves after all of the hard work we needed it.
Thank you to everyone who came up and congratulated us on our win, also to the many friends that came to support the show from far and wide, I am sorry I did not get around you all to spend some time with you all but will catch up with you all later.
Also a big thank you to my Husband and Daughter for all of their help.

A King is Born

Well Miran finally did it, she had her lamb, a little boy the first boy lamb to be born on Creag Mhor Croft.

As you know we are commercial cattle breeders normally, but we took a liking to sheep when I had a couple of pet lambs to rear.

So we ended up with three beautiful pure Hill Cheviot's named Miran, Sharon & Claire.

Sharon had her first lamb a female called teeny, Claire had twin lambs called Poppet & Babs.

Miran had a little boy and we thought it only fitting to call him Creag Mhor Creagy for short.

We had to give a hand to help him into the world as he was so large, his mother was very large so we expected twins but she only had Creagy, both doing really well.

She went into labour in the morning a week last Tuesday, she struggled for a while, we thought it was best to let her have a go herself as nature intended, but after a short while it became obvious that she was not dilating enough to get him out.

So we got the nursing pen ready and put her in.

She was as good as gold, my husband held her and I managed to get my fingers inside to put a small pulling rope around his feet.

We managed to get his feet and nose out but it was a struggle to get his head out.

Once his head was out he popped like a cork out of a bottle, I caught his back legs and give him a little swing to get the mucus from his mouth and nose, as soon as he bleated I knew he was going to be okay.

We laid him in front of Miran and she licked him wildly and made comforting noises all the while.

They all answer to their names and bleat back to you when you call them, they are so entertaining you could watch them all day running around and skipping here and there.

Creagy has decided lately that it is much more comfortable to lay on his mothers back than on the ground, I will try and get a picture later to show because as soon as I approach them he jumps down, but I will prevail as it would be one for the scrap book as they say.

The lambs all have their own personalities already, Babs likes to climb on things, Poppet likes to run and jump about and be the fastest runner as she appears to race the others up and down the field, Teeny is a little shy like her mother Sharon, Creagy is wanting to be boss.

They all come in on an evening, the lambs have not spent a night out yet, we have a few foxes in the area, so we don't leave them out not until they can fend for themselves anyway.

When they are in the pen it is like a frenzied free for all each lamb darting under any mother and sucking which ever teat is available at the moment, that is until the mother realises it is not her lamb sucking, then she walks away, Creagy has been left standing in mid suck with his mouth in a pursed position on many an occasion, it is quite a comical sight to see, but he goes straight back and has another go.

What determination.

Creag Mhor

A Brief Word

Hi to the great outside world. I am new to all this so bare with me until I get to know my way around. I live in a remote area of the Scottish Highlands. I have lived here Eight years, my Husband has been here all of his life. We work together on a Croft Nr Arisaig, which has at the moment 29 head of mixed breed cattle and presently 3 Cheviot sheep, due to lamb in April. We both also hold down full time jobs, so our lives can be quite hectic I am not going to use this Blog as a day to day news bulletin of everything we do. More a small window into our lives, for anyone who may or may not be interested in what it is like to be us.
Thank you for visiting my Blog please leave any comments if you wish, any questions you would like to ask I will try to answer.