THEY come with the obvious sexist soubriquets – like ‘over shoulder boulder holders’ and ‘sheepdog specials’ – but a certain piece of ladies’ apparel has been put to good use by an enterprising Easter Ross farmer.

Yes, you guessed it, an old bra – of some titanic proportions it would appear – has been used to help a grand dame from the suckler herd fight off the effects of gravity.

Everybody has one in their herd ... one whose age has rendered the udder low slung enough for the calf to find it hard to suckle. The problem in this instance was that the calf had emptied the front two teats and couldn’t reach the rear ones.

So, the Easter Ross farmer tackled up the bra to the front teats using the usual farming ingenuity involving a bit of elastic and binder twine, to encourage the youngster to seek out the rear teats before mastitis set in.

It was a spectacular success and the calf is now getting the benefit of all of the dam’s milk.

Just don’t expect to see this in an Ann Summers catalogue!

The fireman lamber

PART-TIME fireman and farmer, Stewart Macpherson, got more than he bargained for when he led a recent fire safety meeting at a farm in Inverness-shire.

In the middle of telling farmers how to gear up for better fire safety at a meeting at Wester Cairnglass, Gollanfield – the home of NFUS stalwart, Iain Wilson – he was called upon to help lamb a ewe.

Which just goes to show he’s as up for pulling a lamb out as he is for putting a fire out!

Senior survey

At the risk of upsetting the more delicate of us, I thank our Canadian correspondent, ‘Big’ Davie Caldwell for this piece of nonsense.

According to the Scots-exile, a recent survey of the frequency of sexual activity of senior males in Canada, depended on where they were born.

Statistics just released from Statistics Canada and the United Nations Board of Health Teams revealed that: European men between 60 and 80 years of age, will on average, have sex two to three times per week, whereas Japanese men, from the same age group, will have sex only once or twice per year if they are lucky.

Big Davie said: “This has come as very upsetting news to most of my buddies at the curling club, as none of us had any idea that we were Japanese.”