Sheep nourishment

Based on the last couple of months observation.

Things that sheep will eat:
Grass
Ewe nuts
Bindweed
Ewe nuts
Brambles
Next-door's plants that are growing up against the fence (sorree!)
Ewe nuts (and they remind us if they haven't had them 1st thing in the morning).

Things that sheep won't eat:
Nettles
Anything above knee height.

Things that sheep mustn't eat:
Ragwort
Foxgloves.

We've had all of the above in the fields. To be fair to the sheep, a lot of the vegetation was too tall for them to eat when they first arrived, and the poisonous plants had definitely seeded. So we undertook a major programme of digging and strimming. The sheep were very curious. Any time we shut them out of a field to do some cutting back, they waited till the gate was open again and rushed in to see what was available.

Unfortunately, the nettles then spring up to dominate what's left. So more strimming. To be fair, the sheep have been seen to nibble the odd leaf, but we suspect that nettles are so low on their list of culinary delights that we won't be able to rely on grazing to keep them down.

Now we are six.

And two more sheep have arrived. They are sort-of related to the existing ones, sharing the odd father, grandparent, etc but they still got some butting from the first four inhabitants of the field, just to put them in their place. They are called Custard and Carrot, not the most enticing combination, and are yearlings, so are a little smaller than the others.

Here they are, on a bright morning, not quite being as fast as the others to get their mouths into the trough of  ewe nuts. But they are definitely part of the flock.





They have their work cut out. The rain we've had recently meant that everything in the field grew. Trees, yes, but also cow parsley, thistles, ragwort, foxgloves that seem to have blown over from neighbouring gardens, all of them up to 6 foot high. And that meant the sheep weren't going to get through them. They will eat plants that are at ground level, not their head height, let alone ours.


Oh, and also some of those weeds aren't good for them, anyway. Watch out for a future post on sheep diet. 


So we had to get the strimmer out again, this time with a sharp metallic cutter to get through a jungle of weeds. We've been careful to keep the sheep locked out of any part of the field we are working in, and they seem to know that something's up, waiting until they can get in again and see how much more space they have.