What does Jess get up to when she's not hard at work gathering the Flexigraze sheep...................

She has her own personal box next to the fire where she can chill out and keep a watchful eye on proceedings!

The cattle are slowly munching their way through the winter grazing. These two hungry fellows are at Weetslade country park.

Some of our rare breed sheep starting work grazing a Site of Special Scientific Interest on the Magnesian Limestone escarpment in Durham. In this group there are 3 different breeds Hebridean, Manx Loaghtan and Shetland.

The relatively mild weather so far this winter means that there has been more grazing than usual on most sites with the stock taking a little longer to clear it. After a hectic morning yesterday most of the stock is in place for the second half of the winter grazing programme. There will be another rush at the end of february / beginning of March when all the hay meadows get a final graze off before the broadleaved plants emerge in the spring.

Happy New Year to everyone.

All the animals have come through the Xmas break well and despite a very blustery day today are ready to get on with the second half of the winter grazing programme. With the run up to Xmas being so mild there is still a lot of grazing out there and the animals are taking longer than usual to chomp through it, though i have to say it is a much better situation than having to deal with all the snow last year...........lets hope it stays away for a bit longer yet!

The sheep have been up grazing on Holy island again this autumn. There have been more of them there this year and so they have cleared it of quicker. That was the hope as the snow did cause some disruption last year!

They have made a good job clearing off the rough and have taken out both the michelmas daisy and the piri piri, both invasive species, that were inside the fenced off area.

All this lovely autumn weather is great apart from the fact that the cows at Silverlink seem to prefer snoozing to munching. Never mind I think I would prefer for the weather to stay warm and sunny for a bit longer!