Sometimes things don't go quite as easily as we hope
We put our tups out with the ewes a couple of days ago - a bit late but life, or in this case death, intervened. We have 5 tups in 5 adjacent paddocks, with one lucky chap in the middle. His paddock shares a side with every one of the other tups' paddocks and he just happens to be the only 2 horned Heb, with a monster set of heavy horns.
These chaps spend 11 months of the year living peaceably together, the best of friends. Stick them in with their ewes at breeding time and they're transmogrified into lethal weapons
My husband had, as every year, spent a couple of days checking out the fences between the paddocks, and the gate closures, and had put up a length of electric wire partway round to prevent butting through the fence- couldn't go the whole way round or we couldn't get through the gates.
This evening I got a call to stop gardening and come out because Tam Linn the 2 horned Heb had almost broken through into his arch rival's paddock. He had just about burst through the reinforced gate closure and had bashed the fence so many times that the mesh was stretched fit to burst and almost flat, with the stobs at a crazy angle. He was so nearly through and kept trying even with me on guard with a big stick.
I did what I could with the gates whilst OH put up tensioned wire at head-butt height, then we ran the electric strand the whole way round his paddock, including across the gates (we'll just have to go the long way round) This was all done in the rapidly falling dusk, rushing to get it done while we could still see. There's always the chance of a black tup sneaking up on you in the dark, although this lad has never been bad like that.
Inevitably OH dropped the reel of electric wire, leaving a huge rat's nest of tangled wire for me to sort out - with freezing fingers, no specs and doing it by touch alone towards the end as it was dark and I'd left my torch behind. Very smug when the last knot was untangled
Eventually it was all done and the fence power turned on. OH climbed over it to take a short-cut and got a nice big jolt, but at least we know Tam Linn the bad will get his comeuppance with his first butt
We're wondering just what we'll find in the morning, if our emergency measures have been enough. And there was me hoping to do a little quiet weeding in my flower garden.
Topic: how annoying (Read 4763 times)
