Thank you all for the input and encouragement. Especially the sheep psychology which I am applying from now onwards.
We tried Wednesday, set up the hurdles. Learnt from previous experience to either set another hurdle in an opposing direction or tie very tightly! No luck. Fields were water logging. Tried a bit of bucket work and got a few come over. Think they were hungry.
Thursday tried again. Got the bucket ones penned successfully (led into end of funnel area and pulled loose stock fence around we’d set up. Husband said didn’t think we’d get the rest but I said we should try and it worked. They came in two more batches, and we moved some off in between, but going on the theory that they’d want to be with the others seemed to work. We didn’t chase. Just walked at a distance and calmly blocked the direction we didn’t want them to go. I think having some penned as “bait” really helped. Then we had the fun of getting them in the quad trailer and moving them a few at a time but that’s a different story!
The worst thing was realising the extent of the damage this scab has done (we’re convinced it is scab, could see no crawlies at all). One in particular has lost wool down to her skin and has a small lesion which we sprayed with AB spray. We’ve kept her and another and put them in a small paddock here as I want to keep an eye on her.
It breaks my heart that I have failed these girls. Two weeks ago she was not like this. It was a 2ml dose of Zermex 2%, and I watched the guy do it properly. He wasn’t rushing it and they were all marked off as done. It just hasn’t worked, or if it has only for some. When I checked them I genuinely thought they were itching less. The ram didn’t seem to be rubbing at all (although in the end he was almost always separate from the ewes, at opposite ends of the fields) and I sincerely thought the girls weren’t so bad. Whether the wet weather dampened the symptoms, I don’t know.
It seems general consensus here is that injectables and pour-ons are useless and dipping is the only way to cure it. It’s not going to be until after Christmas and is kind of weather dependent, although the guy asked if we had somewhere to house them if it was raining, which we do. Anyway, I’m worried about them in the meantime. And to top it one of the Radnors has started pulling a bit of wool. Of course as sure as I was that they didn’t share fence lines I discounted the hay feeder that we wheeled from the Badger field to the Radnor field... that our visitor loved to run against. Just so naive...
I am reticent now about bucket training and spending time with them. The two we have here and the others. They all came today when I rattled and whistled. Some go for the cake and some don’t. But they all followed from the same direction. Just need to put much more into building our relationship. We’ve been non-stop busy trying to get things straight in this new place, the days don’t last two minutes, and they always seemed so content.
Thank you for all the comments, advice, and understanding. I am sure some people may read this and are kind enough not to say what they think. No one is going to punish me more than myself, believe me. If I’d only took action a week earlier... A steep learning curve indeed.