Just an update here. On average 3 times a week i have to ride up the hill and free Dudliea from brambles. All the other sheep are strong enough to pull themselves free in the mornings but insist on going up there to sleep at night.
I don't think Duddy even tries.. she just Baa's and waits with that sad one-eyed expression. She still guzzles her bottle down twice a day and still looks pathetic otherwise.
The rest of the cades (or ex cades now they're all quite large) are a rambumptious
lot... rush to the gate when i go see them twie a day and prefer a little dry food hand fed - three muzzles jostling together. The original unclaimed starys we couldn't get near have finally got less jumpy witht eh big breakthrough yesterday when Polar ate from a hand for the first time..and today she was jostling with the rest and got her muzzle stroked without freaking.
One day last week i lost Dudliea. She wasn't with the rest for afternoon bottle and when i rode up and followed the shrubbery edges of the field there was no sign and no baa. It was my second sweep on the 10 acre field edges - after walking the stream in case she'd drowned in that. That i found an open gate halfway up that i'd missed on first sweep. Someone must have been in there 'cos no way does a rope loop jump over a gate post on it's own. That gate leads to a small disued quarry and young woodland full of impassable bramble on a steep slope. I had images of spending days cutting my way through it looking for a dead sheep but my calling baa to Duddy was answered with a faint return in her low gravelly voice - stuck by one thin tendril of blackberry right in the middle of quarry. I tucked her under my arm, pulled it adrift and carried her back to Fiona field - and tied that sodding gate shut.
Topic: Dudleia - life's victim (Read 8605 times)
