Chilly weather routine

What to do on a rainy Saturday afternoon, when it's freezing cold and your nice warm fleecy coat is now in a black poly bag up in the loft (with lots of other black poly bags)?!  Nothing for it but to get into the shelters, chew on some hay and snuggle up to your buddies for warmth.  It's now a couple of weeks since the shearing but due to the low temperatures we are still finding the boys shivering a little now and then.  Yesterday was particularly cold and as soon as the rain started the boys hit the hay!  It is surprising perhaps that they feel the cold so much, being high altitude animals, but perhaps the sudden loss of all the fleece combined with unusually low temperatures makes them shiver to keep warm.

Six of the boys were in this shelter, from the left Gaucho, Fidget, Rufus, Fyta, Wee Eck and Faro.

Fidget at the back of the shelter - his favourite bed, furthest from the draughty entrance and surrounded by the others for protection!

'Big ears' -  Wee Eck sorting out a little snack for himself.

In the field shelter next door were Fergus (above) and Gaucho who is just out of shot, with Fergus delighted to have a whole hay bucket to himself.  One unfortunate casualty of the boys being in the shelters a lot is that they tend to mess everywhere so the 'poop patrol' is often in action.  Interestingly, they do not mess in the shelter next door where most of them lie down, or use as a rolling area.

And finally..........Red Hot Pokers (Kniphofia) looking great at this time of the year and always guaranteed to bring plenty of colour to the garden.   Lots of little birds feed off the flower heads,  and the chickens in the compound through the fence get plenty of shelter from them.