Title: Comment: <p>This is my first chance to add  a blog so I thought I would tell people what life with the most beautiful little sheep is like....</p><p> </p><p> I first saw Portlands in a Country Living magazine  and I was captured, they looked so sweet, so cute, and I really wanted to learn more bout them, but, as usual life got in the way and it was almost impossible to even think about getting sheep until I knew life would allow it. </p><p>   I had worked in Australia with sheep, and grown up on farms in Scotland, Sussex and Norfolk, but they were grotty, crafty cunning sheep, especially the ones in Scotland where even the bloody foxes were terrified of some of the older ewes, so I knew my way around sheep and was totally comfortable with them, or so I thought. So, when time started to allow, and clients that had moved from London found themselves with 70 odd acres of land around their house wanted something to keep the grass down I went out and found myself a flock.</p><p>  Finding them was easy, the internet is a wonderful thing sometimes, and it turned out that a flock was to be found less than 10 miles from my home at the time, so along I went to have a look at them. My first sight of them was as magical as when I saw them in the magazine, they were just as cute, just as sweet, and even the fact that they were so small didn't put me off! I met the woman's shepherd, and realised I knew him from drinking in the local pubs around our home town, and he stared at me in disbelief at my suggestion that I was going to take 40 of these little angels off the owners hands. I was totally confused to be honest, there, in that pen, they were still cute, and I fell in love with their lambs almost as much as I did the ewes, I will add, that until now, and even up to the point I agreed to have them, I had not seen or had to handle the rams!</p><p>   That very day I took the girls away, happy in the knowledge that I had made the right choice, they looked just as sweet in the field, just as lovely, and my clients just loved them, so all was good. The shepherd had done their Dectomax, feet and Vetrazine so all I had to do for a while was watch them be lovely in the field, and I was due to pick the rams up in a few weeks. The shepherd even came and saw them for me, checked them out and made sure it was all good, and we duly made an date to meet up to get the rams the following week.  During this time, as luck would have it, I ran into him in the pub, you see I likes my drink, probably a little too much but there you go, and we got a talking, and he laughed himself silly at me buying these silly little fur balls! It was during this time, after several ciders that he thought he would show me a really nasty wound he had on his shin......</p><p> </p><p> Now, before I go on I should explain for any ladies out there, this isnt as odd as one would think, when guys get together and have beer they do this kind of thing, they do this kind of stuff, and man was his huge! There was almost no hair left on his shin and you could see the terrible break that had left him bed bound for months and still with a slight limp! We joked for a while about it and I kept trying to pull his leg about how he got it, but then he just turned to me and said....</p><p>"I have no idea why you are laughing mate, it was one of the rams that you have just bought that did this to me!"</p><p> </p><p>The cold feeling at the back of my neck can only be described as sheer and utter terror, and even when everyone stopped laughing at me I was still in a little bit of shock! So you can imagine how happy I was the following week when I went to pick up the things!</p><p> </p><p>Now, I had expected him to turn up with his three dogs and start bringing them in, but oh no, he then told me that not only will the rams have a go at the dogs but also that they would take ABSOLUTELY no notice of them! We eventually got them in the pen and home to their new field and I began to learn that cute, sweet and independent equated to bloody hard to catch, bloody hard to get in, almost impossible to keep in electric fencing, a nightmare to shear, a pain in the arse to pretty much do anything with in fact! The girls are not much better, and since I took in a stray Jacob (don't ask, thats another long story!) its even bloody worse, because when you do manage to get them close to the catch pen the Jacob jumps like a stag out of the pen and the whole flock scatter to the winds! I have managed to get them to follow a bucket, but it isnt without its problems as then they run in front of me and what normally happens is that I trip up, fall to the floor, sending pellets flying through the air, sending them....................... scattering to the four winds!</p><p> So, here I am several years later, I still have my old girls, yeah I know I should cull them but they still make me laugh and I still think they are cute, and even when the rams have had a pop at me, or the horns crack me where only god and my other half sees, or when they chase my fierce Australian Cattle Dog across a field, I still love to look out across the field on a bright winters day and watch them daintily nibble at the worse grass possible, or the way they come running, like fat ducks, when they are called (on the sole condition there is food at the other end of course!)</p><p> </p><p>So, if anyone wants to know what they are REALLY like, just drop me a line! </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p> Submit > < Back