Call this a resort - blehhh

Sheep? Who'd have 'em? It's not rocket-science but it takes a certain amount of engagement, and presence, to manage sheep. The worst thing that can happen is that a) one of t'buggers dies b) we don't realise for a while. Since the foot&mouth epidemic of 2001, farrrmers can no longer leave dead sheep in a quite corner to be recycled by fox and crow. Every beast is now ear-tagged and the DeptAg wants to know the entire life history [incl death, disposal, or sale] of every tagged sheep. We got complacent, unmindful and careless in 2020 [must have been Covid!] and allowed one of our aged ewes to die . . . and get partly dismembered by "the cleaners". I ignored the flies, pretended I was CSI Midlands, and shovelled the bits into a heavy-duty plastic bag for delivery to The Fallen Animal Guy the other side of the mountain.

Since then I count the ewes [60 legs and 15 wet noses and I'm satisfied] several times a day. I've had to cut sheep-wire to free sheep-heads on numerous occasions - hint: cut a vertical strand rather than a horizontal one. And, face-it, it's easier to handle a whole dead sheep than her scattered parts. 

Pegleg trough (see shadow below)

We're in an awkward season now. The grass really hasn't started to grow, so we are having to rotate our stock flock through the various paddocks. We had a bin full of sheep muesli and, one chilly spring day in March The Gaffer decided that the sheep may as well eat it. Accordingly The Outdoor Man heaved a feed-trough from of a distant field and left it in the field with a bucketful of muesli. The sheep were delighted. A tuthree days later, also frezzzing, I cast thereto another bucket of feed. Much gambolling and unseemly shoving at the trough.

But shortly after that I found that the empty trough had been kicked to buggery [see top L]. The end piece out and one side hanging by a thread. All the sheep were looking at their hooves all innocent, or whistling nonchalantly at the far end of the field. What ever these professions of not me guv'nor it was easy to imagine them developing expectations from getting quality chow with added molasses and then abruptly not getting it: Call this a resort? - blehhh - take that <kick>; think it's easy being a sheep? <stomp> horizontal sleet, eh? fancy some?

But something had to be done, though, with the thoroughly broken-through trough ^*, even if that was choppitup for kindling. What I did in contrast was use the least rotten trapezoidal end piece as a template to cut two new ends from western red cedar off-cuts from the 2016 woodshed project and the 2023 planter-box project. Once these ends were installed, it was easy to cut 400mm off the rottenest part of each trough . . . making good for another couple of years use. No complaints that the troughs are now 15% shorter & 10% lighter for hefting about the property according to the exigencies of the muesli service.

Credit to Young Bolivar for making the original troughs that same 2016 Summer as he designed and built the cedar woodshed.
(*)Where I grew up, these 'appliances' were called troffs, hereabouts they sound more like trocks.