House Sitting in England - is it Different to Sitting in Australia?

After nine months house sitting in Australia, we were keen to try it in my own home country (England). So we did. We did it in the Forest of Dean (South West) which is looking very good at the moment:

We wanted to do a post about the differences between house sitting in Australia and house sitting in England, but really the differences are more about the countries themselves than the houses. And anyway, each house sit is different in their own unique way it all depends on the pets / home owners /  house / location, so many things. So instead of doing a post about the differences, we decided to do one on the firsts in house sitting for us:

Sheep 

Never had we ever looked after sheep before. In the end it turned out that they were easier than cats and loads easier than dogs. They basically look after themselves! During the summer they eat the grass in the field so you don't have to feed them (or mow the garden), they put themselves to bed at night too. What I'm feeding them in the above picture is sheep nuts, which is a treat for sheep, so they only get a tiny amount at this time of year.  They went mad for it and were very eager to eat it. Other than that it was just moving the mineral block every morning. 

However, saying how easy they were I'm sure they would have been a lot more work than dogs/cats if they had needed a vet - you can hardly get them into a carrier and into the car! But luckily no such kerfuffle occurred. 

If we had the house/land we think we would have sheep. They keep the lawn tidy (ish) and definitely have distinct personalities! However, I think to start off with we'd have dogs and.. 

Chickens!

Again a house sitting first for us and again an easy one. The chickens were a bit more work than the sheep, but not much and they gave us rewards (eggs). Chickens are usually fed once or twice a day, in the summer they need less as they dig around for worms and things. Again they put themselves to bed at night and we just had to lock them in so the fox wouldn't get them. Talking of foxes...

Foxes and Badgers 

This was the first time Tanbay had seen them in the wild.

The house also had two sweet cats, but that wasn't a first for us.

So there you have it, house sitting in England isn't that different from house sitting anywhere else, looking after chickens and sheep is more rewarding than it is taxing :) and foxes and badgers are always great.

P.S. We got all of our house sits from www.Trustedhousesitter.com