Ok, after a none too subtle hint from Sally on the Hebs thread, here are some pics of our new girls.
Arriving....
Exploring
Checking us out
and meeting the boss, before settling in
First impressions? My heart says "love them!". My head asks will I ever cope with animals who seem to be 1/3 sheep and 2/3 deer?
We're learning that they have a very wide 'scare' radius, so no sudden movements within about 3 miles of them please
. Sally is absolutely correct on the Hebs thread too - if you're going to pen them, it has to be very tight indeed, or they will soon teach you the meaning of "sheep hurdle". Of course getting them INTO a tight pen in the first place is nigh on impossible
. Once caught though, they soon calm down and are quite willing to let you check feet etc. (BTW, for the observant amongst you, we have now double tagged them - the seller couldn't find the right applicator to do the EIDs before we picked them up.)
Our plan for this year is to buy some Lleyn ewes with tup lambs at foot, to give us some meat this Autumn, prior to running both the Manxs and Lleyns with a Lleyn or similar tup lamb in November, who will then become our Christmas Dinner (tough love, but at least he'll go with a smile on his face!). That should give us experience of keeping something a bit more commercial as well as the primitives, and of seeing how well they cross out, as well as lambing in the spring.
So our thanks to Fleecewife and SallyintNorth for giving us the confidence to go for it and finally get some sheep. We'd held back on it for several years, mainly because we are surrounded by professional sheep farmers here, and I didn't want to make an arse of myself! So whilst our Manxes could hardly be more different than the Beltex across the fence, I definitely know which I prefer!