Tales from Spylaw, part 1

Since our visit to Spylaw last year, the owners, Andy and Lorna, have added some sheep to the smallholding. Every morning during our stay Amy and I made our way down to the paddock in order to inspect the flock. Our mutual favourite was Torrin, a lamb so tame that whenever he spotted us approaching he made a beeline for us in order to get his ears scratched. This puzzles me slightly as I always thought that the reason some animals enjoy being stroked is that mutual grooming is part of their social processes i.e. cats and dogs. As far as I’m aware sheep don’t lick each other, but I may well be wrong as Torrin took undisputable pleasure in being fussed over.

We got to watch the sheep being sheared at one point. I’ve seen it being done once before, but have never been so close to the action. I was quite surprised how often the shears nicked the sheep. I couldn’t work out if that was the norm or if we were just witnessing a slightly incompetent shearer. I was tempted to ask but decided against it. I’ve looked the process up on the mighty Wikipedia since and discovered that a professional shearer removes the fleece in around five minutes, which was about right so I assume we were witnessing a craftsman rather than an amateur. I was certainly impressed at how he managed to keep the sheep still while he went about his business, I’m thinking about adopting the same techniques for when I’m brushing Amy’s hair.