We have at last moved further into the age of the internet and have our own website!!

You can find us and more of what we have been up to at www.flexigraze.org.uk

As I write this the weather has turned from being relatively warm and dry to wet cold rain on an easterly wind, just what isn't wanted for those who have started lambing. There is thunder, lightning and hail outside at present! Hopefully it will warm again in a few days as the forecast is predicting.

Most of the winter grazing programme has been completed now and with all the stock looking well after the milder winter. the Exmoor ponies are looking particularly sleek and well fed. The sheep are mostly back at the coast and being sorted into those that will be sold and those that will graze through the summer and next winter.

On that note shearling lamb sales will begin again in the next couple of weeks so if anyone is wanting any please get in touch through the email there will be plenty available of the next 3 months.

Time seems to have flown by since the onset of autumn with lots of stock to move onto their winter grazing sites and a new intake of sheep arriving.
Most of the cattle are now safely away to their winter quarters and with just a few left to graze a parcel of selected sites around north Tyneside. With the weather turning much wetter since the turn of the year we will have to watch the ground conditions carefully for the remainder of the winter to make sure the swards are left in the appropriate condition for the spring.
The new year has also seen the St Georges group being disbanded, a victim of cutbacks within the NHS, which means we will be short of stock checkers for a couple of sites so if anyone lives nearby and fancies some fresh air while checking the animals let me know!

Shetland wethers arriving to grazing some whin sill grassland near Hexham.

Autumn seems to be approaching fast now with heavy rain showers and cooler nights. The autumn sheep movements are well under way with sales of shearling lamb going reasonably well. There is usually a rush of orders in November before we have to stop for Christmas. The butcher we use is too busy during December to process any for us and by the time the new year arrives the grass has disappeared and we have to wait for the spring growth in April / May before sales can resumed. That's seasonality for you!

The first of our annual purchases of this years lambs are arriving down from the hills and will graze some of the easier land over this winter.

Below Red Galloway cows and calves grazing along side Exmoor ponies on summer marsh grazing.

Early July sees the end of the seasons shearling sales, with many people taking their holidays it seems a good time to take a break before we resume again through September, October and November before breaking again for the winter. The past few months have been disrupted quite a lot by the abattoir refitting and putting in new lines hopefully all the teething troubles will have been resolved before we start again.

The good weather has meant there has been some good hay made on the flower meadows. At Hollywell Geoff left some strips uncut for the butterflies. On the day he was cutting the hay the grass was full of hem and it doesn't seem right to take away all their habitat. The sheep will graze down what has been left over the winter and next year the strips will be left in a different part of the field.

Late June saw us run a small trial on a block of Carr woodland which is becoming dominated by birch. 88 swale wethers were put out onto the woodland as the birch started to come into  leaf and left there for a couple of weeks. We then took them off to give them a break, grazed them on some adjacent grassland for a week and then put them back onto the woodland for a further two weeks. Thanks to Kevin for taking the pictures.

Before...........

 

After...........

 

 

Once they had grazed down the more palatable grass around the edges the tucked into the new birch leaves stripping them bare. The sheep were then removed and taken away ready for shearing. The birch leaves have since regrown but the small trees are now looking weaker and more 'shrub' like in appearance. We plan to repeat the process next spring to see if we can limit the amount of birch which is starting to dominating the site.

The other major task this month has been to shear all the sheep. fortunately the weather has been kinder this year and we were only rained off once. With lots of small groups of sheep dotted around the area the shearing can be becoming quite a drawn out process with having to move 2-3 times a day. A big thanks to all those volunteers who helped move the pens and roll the wool the job was completed in good time and the wool all packed up ready to be sent away. Let's hope it runs as smoothly next year.

Well it has certainly been an interesting couple of months since my last post. The warmer weather has been a long time coming and because of that grass and any type of growth has been slow.

Over the winter in general there has been less grazing needed on many sites due to the ground being so wet and much of the grass being trodden into the ground instead of being available to graze. The upshot of this has been that stock has been on some sites for a much shorter time than normal which has put pressure on the fields we use as 'lay back' for the animals when they are not needed on the conservation areas.

In general there has been less demand for cattle grazing over the recent months. Some of this is undoubtedly due to budget pressures within the different organisations we graze for. Quiet native breed cattle which are suitable for this type of grazing are not easy to source and with the drop in demand could well lead to some of our graziers withdrawing from the programme. With the ever increasing threat of TB moving northwards I do wonder if using small groups of cattle to graze small and disjointed parcels of land will remain feasible in the future.

This years shearlings have been much slower to finish than usual and when we did have some ready the abattoir had shut down for a refit meaning another 3 week wait. However all is up and running again now and batches are going through at a steady pace. There will plenty of shearling lamb available from our rare breeds through out June and if anyone is interested the can contact us at flexigraze@northwt.org.uk

The sheep were enjoying a rare day of sunshine yesterday and like the rest of us looking forward to a better spell of weather. February is supposed to be one of the driest months of the year in these parts........heres hoping!

Things are settling back into a rather wet routine again now after the snow. Hopefully we will get a settled spell for a while to help the water drain away. Thanks to our volunteer checkers who have been keeping a regular on the stock.

This morning I came across a couple of young roe deer in one of the fields, they seemed to be a bit lost. I think they are last years calves (twins) and have probably just been driven off their home territory by their mother and are now having to find their own way and establish territories of their own.

The animals seem to enjoying the change in the weather from the constant rain. The cold doesn't really bother them and the snow isn't deep enough to cause them a problem as they are happy to dig down through it to the grass.

 

 The only small issue we have had is with an occasional sheep becoming tangled in bramble bushes.

 

 

There will be one or two groups to move to new pastures once the snow melts away and it is safe to move them in the trailer.

The last 3 years it's been snow and ice and this year true to form it has been floods. Every year no matter when we plan the annual round up of the Soays from Powhill the weather conspires to make the task more difficult and stressful than it might usually be.

The heavy rains across the region the day before the roundup made persuading the Soay sheep to cross the stream to part way along the site and up to the small enclosure a bit of a challenge, not too mention getting there along flooded roads in the first place! The annual roundup and move to the winter grazing site is always an event which has the potential to take much longer than anticipated as the Soays are not renowned for their co-operation! However with help from Dave and Sarah and despite a couple of minor hiccups they were all successfully gathered in are now happily grazing away on their winter site.

Now all we have to do is catch them up in the spring to take them back there next year!!

Well this years lambs are arriving steadily and winter grazing has started on 2 sites in Durham which require shearlings to graze hem as they are quite 'hard' sites and the younger sheep wouldn't thrive there. Hopefully over the next couple of weeks the rest of the lambs should be in situ and we can get the winter programme fully under way.

Don't forget there are plenty of shearlings available for the box scheme. Should anyone fancy trying one they will be available until the end of November and then there will be a break until the end of March.

Contact us at Flexigraze@northwt.org.uk

After battling with the wet weather all summer we have eventually been able to move some cattle onto Druridge pools. There are less of them than we would have liked but this season has been thrown all over the place by the quantity of rain there has been. Hopefully next year will be better.

Sitting here keeping out of the rain working out the logistics of all the stock movements that need to be done over the next few weeks. It is always tricky at this time of year with the new intake of sheep arriving from the hill farms. We are looking to buy nearly 200 this year to bring the numbers back up to around 300.
With groups of last years animals to move onto the sites with poor quality grazing we have to do some careful planning to ensure that no movement standstills are accidentally broken. It all usually goes smoothly unless there are unplanned for delays, for example there is one bunch that cannot be moved at present as the access routes are underwater. Only an inconvenience but does mean that jobs can keep being pushed back.

Jess and I took some sheep down to the woolly event at Tyne Riverside Country Park a couple of Sundays ago on one of the few sunny days this summer.
The 2 sheep are different breeds, one being a Shetland and the other a Manx Loaghtan.
They drew a lot of attention as did Jess who divided her time between being petted by the numerous visit and keeping an eye on any other dogs passing by.

Some shetland sheep which have been grazing on Prestwick Carr. They take a bit of finding in the 60 acres of woodland but we eventually tracked them down and got them out to the fence. Note Jess in the background making sure they didn't disappear again!

The autumn grazing programme is starting to get underway with a few Highland cattle and some Exmoor ponies out on site already.
We set up an electric fence in the corner of a field the other day in order to train the sheep which will making the pilgrimage to graze on Holy island late this autumn. It is important that they learn to respect an electric fence before they go otherwise they could get out and wander wherever they like including back across the causeway. May be we should teach them to read tide tables as well!

Will this rain never relent? All the grazing sites even the normally dry ones have water laying on the surface after the weekend. Maybe we will have a nice dry September and October to make up for it all!
Over the past week we have had a pony and a sheep succumb; both with natural causes. The pony is from one particular herd on Exmoor which does seem to have a congenital heart defect in some of the offspring. Still very sad but at least they had a natural existence conservation grazing while they are with us.

The photo below is of some Soay sheep sheltering in the shade on one of the few hot days we have had.

Some Exmoor ponies happily munching away on Longhorsley moor between the rain showers. They are doing quite a good job at keep the undergrowth back but it could really do with 2-3 highland cattle there as well to browse and rub on the young birch saplings and keep them in check.

Well that's another season of shearling sales nearly over, the last ones will be sold next week and then there will be a break until the end of September when there will be some available again until the end of November. It has been a much easier run this year with the grass growing early in March and no heavy snowfall over winter. This meant that the shearlings were available earlier in the spring than they are some years giving a longer availability.