Goodbye lambs

6 lambs have now been sent to the abattoir.
We caught them a couple of days in advance as it is stressful running around the field desperately trying to catch the little bleeders on the day they are meant to be going. The sheep are reasonably easy to catch, but the lambs are much more wary.
A friend of ours has a bearded collie (also called Poppy confusingly), she is getting on a bit and has not been trained as a sheep dog, but we thought she would have the instinct, so her owner brought her along to see if it made it any easier.
She was amazing! Admittedly if we hadn't been in a small area and we had wanted the sheep taken in a particular direction it might have been a different story! She singled out a single lamb and just followed it until it stopped running (which wasn't long at all) and hunkered down, then she kept them pinned in place just by staring at them until we came and grabbed the lamb. Awesome. No action shots unfortunately - it was too high action.

In the field. Poppy and Poppy on the left

Kirsty is planning on 'One woman and her dog' next year

All 6 safely in the barn

We then drove them off to the abattoir. We wanted to have them all butchered (cut in to chops, joints etc) by the abattoir, but the butcher there is fully booked until the Christmas week. They said though that they could send them to a butcher in Lourdes (The coop des Gaves) who could do it then we could collect from there.
Too late we discovered that this means we cannot get the skins back. It seems if we butcher them ourselves they they get tagged as a 'familial' or family killing but if they are going to a butcher they are down as something different and you can only get the skin for familial abattage. No point arguing although it seems highly illogical! In some ways just as well as curing them is a big job and we need to dedicate ourselves to the insulation. We will still get the innards for haggis making.