Top foolery!

OUR April Fool story last week about Jim Kennedy’s Arbez sheep – a stripy ovine equivalent of a zebra (arbez, is zebra reversed, geddit?) – seems to have fooled more people than we imagined.
Maybole-based Jim said he was inundated with genuine requests from people looking for the means to get a hold of some of the ‘new’ breed – "quite a few of them were from Ireland," he told The Raider.
“In fact, such has been the positive response from people who thought these sheep were real, my son Wallace said we should scour the world to see if there were any such sheep or something like them!,” said Jim. “ We could’ve made a bomb – even Sam Carlisle, the owner of Lockerbie abattoir, was taken in!”
And, it was a great success for us too. We had more than 120,000 Facebook visits and scores of shares of the story, including one on Wallace’s page which had more than 50,000 viewers. Just goes to show, a wee laugh does everyone a lot of good!

Watch out for the ‘lion’

THIS Saturday sees the world’s greatest handicap steeplechase, the Grand National at Aintree, and our own tipster, Dougie 'Fill yer pockets' MacSkimming aims just to do that!
The only hope for a Scottish-trained winner lies in the hands of Kinross trainer, Lucinda Russell, with One For Arthur which has had a taste of the Aintree fences before, finishing fifth there in December. He should run well, but may not last out on the stamina front.
But the one which really catches Dougie’s eye is the Twiston-Davies-trained Blaklion which has the heart of a lion and brings class to the table as last season’s RSA winner at the Cheltenham Festival.
You could also have a ‘saver’ on Saint Are, runner-up two years ago. He’ll like the ground and the booking of Irish jockey, Davy Russell, is a positive!

Run off their feet!

THE COO SHED coffee shop recently opened at South Corton Farm, near Ayr, where the Kerr family run their dairy business and traditional plant nursery, known as Corton Plants. 
Last Saturday was the first day in business for Alison and her team and it’s safe to say they were run off their feet all weekend! The Coo Shed is open every day from 9.30am-4.30pm and can be found just off the A77, south of Ayr.