JOHN has a well established night time routine of getting up in the early hours to check on the herd.

I have an equally well-established habit of sleeping straight through him getting up. But then, as he has switched on all the lights and also managed to find a really nice warm part of the bed on my side to put his cold feet on when he gets back in, I wake up and can't get back to sleep again.

As a result most of my friends are used to finding messages winged off to them at about three o clock in the morning when they will, like most reasonable folk, be fast asleep.

What adds to the night time disturbance factor, however, is John's sneaky habit of letting our Jack Russell, Millie, out as he goes to check on the cows, but forgetting (he says) to bring her back in again when he returns.

Millie has no intention of returning to the dull business of sleeping in her bed if there is the opportunity to go ratting. And the dead of night is prime time for such exciting adventures.

Once cornered, Millie is determined to share news of her prey to everyone in the vicinity. A shrill excited squeal that carries a long way. Well at least to Fizz and Pip's kennels and our bedroom.

Although not natural ratters, Pip and Fizz see no reason why they should be excluded from all the excitement. So the canine cacophony now includes a sharp bark from our sheepdog Fizz and a deep woof from Pip, our Labrador.

By now John is sleeping the sleep of the righteous. The deep, unconscious slumber of one who has already been up to check on the cows and may have delivered a calf to boot.

He has no intention of getting out of bed because, despite all the racket outside, he is apparently now deaf to the world. Although no doubt one distressed moo would have him out of bed in a flash.

So it falls to me to stand shivering in my dressing gown at the back door, yelling at Fizz and Pip to be quiet and Millie to “get back in the house”. If she has killed a rat, it can be sorted out in the morning. By John.

But Millie may have competition in the ratting stakes. A ghostly form flitted out from under the barn when I tramped over the yard at 2am to try and get hold of an unrepentant terrier and drag her back into the house.

This morning when I went out to collect eggs from the assorted hidey holes in the straw stacks that the hens stubbornly prefer to lay in rather than their nest boxes, I found a pile of owl pellets on the straw. Directly below one of the beams supporting the barn.

Was this the same owl that over wintered with us last year? Does Millie have competition in the rat elimination stakes? I do hope so. Two killers are better than one where rats are concerned.