Breagh View

Its cold but the sun is out. The sheep look much happier today all fluffed up and dry. Todays task was to walk round 500 hectares of hill looking for 27 cattle to bring in for the blood tests on Tuesday. Not an easy task but made nicer by the sunshine. This is on the farm where we manage the livestock.
We turned into super trackers and decided due to the wind having been blowing strongly from the north that the cattle would be in or around the land that was sheltering them from it. Then its time to start walking!! I took Breagh, Pip and Dris for the walk and they found sheep (sheepdogs) and snipe and woodcock (gundog!!) and initially weren't seeing any signs of the cattle! Oh oh. We have had 3 of us out this hill and never found any before by the way!! Well husband gave me a shout on the walkie talkie to see how I was fairing and when I turned to see if I could see him I spotted half a dozen beasts on a heather slope basically round the corner from where I had been 20 minutes ago. Anyway husband said he would check out the back corner then cut in to get them. I continued on to what was once a fishing village. Its lovely and sheltered down there with nice grass grazing. From the village I spotted some beasts that were on my route home. So far so good. After a stop for the above photo I continued on and came in behind this bunch recognising one of the bullocks as Speedy in total I only had 7. They were very obliging and apart from some reluctance to go through my gate of choice into the hill park they did go in. Radioed husband and he was nearing my destination but he had 20 and they were being naughty because they knew how outnumbered husband was!! I climbed up a bit and gave the feeding call which is a deep voiced (men usually feed them!!) "come on" well they roared in answer and headed my way. After a bit of toing and froing they went in the gate. We are pleased and utterly amazed to have got all the cattle in in one day! We had set aside tomorrow to go and look for the rest.

Breagh is gaelic for beautiful and is pronounced Bree ah and is the name of the dog in the photo, she does like to pose!!.