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The big move!
We are all settling in well to our new farm. The dogs are enjoying walks to our own beach and working regularly with the sheep. Breagh is starting to get a few training sessions and is slowly to get better. We are enjoying having the cows about especially our wee bull calf!
 Sales 2011
The sales were very good this year with people getting good prices for their lambs. We only sold some of our smaller lambs and kept all the females, plus a few wedders for fattening for the freezer.
Shearing 2011
The shetlands have been sheared and there are plenty of fleeces for sale! It was a hot day and they were glad to have their winter wool off!
  We have a lot more sheep than we used to and a lot less time so this year we decided to use the machine to clip the sheep rather than the hand shears. We were glad it was a good dry day and we got them all done so that we can help get all the local farmers sheep done. Its a busy time with lots of gathering and lots of rolling wool and transporting sheep to sheds to keep them dry for the shearing.
It was a good year lambing with better weather towards the end. Our ewes lambing earlier outdoors meant that we lost a twin to the bad weather one night but thanks to the lamb macs that was it. I only had to lamb one of the ewes who had a very big boy lamb that she needed a hand to lamb. Our contract lambing also went well with super weather. We only ended up with a couple of pet lambs which is a huge improvement on last year!!
  Lambing has started at torr a chlachan. We have quite a few twins so far still got 2/3 of the ewes to lamb. The weather has not been very kind so far to the new born lambs but they are strong and healthy enough to deal with it. Winter Feeding:
 We have had a few inches of snow on the island. Luckily we had already brought in the tups into their shed. It is very cold at night reaching -8 at times. The new hoggs are needing feeding as they are struggling to find food for themselves. Usually it takes a week or so to teach them to feed. I went out the first morning, put the feed in the troughs and pushed them to it and they began munching immediatly!! Job done!!
New Arrivals, not sheep this time!!
We have recently invested in two lovely American Quarter Horses, Tango a 6yr old mare and Chance a 3 yr old mare with white blaze. Both Alastair and I grew up with horses and have always wanted some of our own, with the idea of using them to gather in the sheep on to save our little legs. They are settling in well at Torr a Chlachan they are very inquisitive and seem quite intelligent.
New Hoggs:
 Dipping:  Only a couple of farmers who we work for dip their sheep. This involves immersing the sheep in a tank full of water and a chemical thats prevents and kills ticks, lice and flys. These days there are pour on chemicals that do roughly the same job that you can apply on the back of the sheep, this is less time consuming and less of a health risk for the handlers but not quite as effective as a whole body dip. It is a long messy task loading each sheep individually into the tank and dipping them under, ensuring they have been in the tank long enough. Thankfully it was a lovely sunny day for us to complete the task.
Begining of the Farming Year:
It is tupping time at Torr a Chlachan. We have 3 tups (male sheep) one of which is a new arrival from a local farm. He is pure cheviot and was chosen by us at marking time to be kept entire in the hope that he would make a nice tup. He came only a few weeks ago and settled in well with his new friends, Ewan the shetland tup and Spot the suffolk x blackfaced homebred tup. Both spot and the new cheviot are tup lambs. We have split the flock into two groups so they only have a few to cover so they get the idea what to do. The shetland tup will go out after a while to make sure that every ewe is in lamb.
We plan to have earlier than usual lambing so that our sheep have our full attention at this important time before we go on to do other farmers lambings.
Sale: We sold our lambs on the 7th September in Oban Mart on the mainland. The prices were very good and even our little pure shetlands got good prices for what they were. We have kept some wedders to fatten for the freezer and 1sulffolk x shetland ewe lamb for breeding.
 The shetlands were very relaxed in their pen at the mart.
Autumn: We are gearing up for sale time and that means lots of gathering for the collies as everyone needs to get their sheep in. This is a view out to Morven and Loch Cuin at Dervaig taken from out the hill. We were greatful of dry weather, but it was rather tropical to be running around the hillside after sheep. No quad bikes as these hills are in accessable by machine.
 Once the sheep are in, we take off the wedder (male) lambs and the ewe (female) lambs that are to be sold and tag them and load them into lorries to go away to the sales. The farmers keep some ewe lambs to replace lost stock and old ewes that can no longer be bred, these are called hoggs.
The dogs enjoy this as there is always plenty for them to do. Shaw likes to show off by putting them in the fank and races everyone to get in front so that she can control the sheep and tries to put them in before we have even got the gates open!! Moss is always hot on her heels making sure she doesn't mess it up.
Moss is cooling off in the trough of water after a long and hot hill gather. Rehydrating and making the dogs comfortable is priority for us after a gather. Even before our cup of tea!!
 Ensay Farm looking onto treshnish hill. Both gathered by us. We cover an area where most hills look onto the others. Quite often as there are open marches we end up with a few of the other farms sheep coming in on the gathers.
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