12April2008
Posted by Kate under: Fruit & Vegetables; Smallholding.
For the last three weeks we’ve been busy in the greenhouse propagating seeds, ready to fill our new raised beds, the first two weeks were frustrating with nothing showing it’s head, but this week even with a few days of hail and snow, our little unheated glasshouse stayed toasty, so much so that almost overnight trays full of seedlings appeared. Artichokes, tomatoes, courgettes, cucumbers, peppers, lettuce, leeks, sprouts, and herbs
I don’t know about anyone else, but for me there’s nothing more relaxing than being in a nice warm greenhouse, rain pouring down outside, with a nice cup of tea, a deckchair and veg book to hand, contemplating the next packet of seeds.
With the local village plant sale next month, I have become increasingly aware that there are many more bustling greenhouses in our village than had previously occurred to me, several of which I have visited in an attempt to pick up tips or just goggle at the array of vegetables and flowers being grown, I had always been led to believe that gardeners held their secrets of success close to their chest, but around here they seem positively bursting to share tips.
Plant your garlic in December, Onions in January, use vermiculite to prevent damping off, use old loo rolls as seed pots on a layer of newspaper, plant celeriac in peat pots with a 50/50 mix of vermiculite and soil topped with a thin layer of vermiculite, thin out and plant pot directly in soil (I am definitely trying this one). Plant carrots in drainpipes, plant tomatoes in old buckets or tins rather than grow bags as retain moisture better, parsnips like sand, use nets for supporting pumpkins, the list goes on.
8April2008
Posted by Richard under: Sheep; Smallholding.
When it came to bottle feeding the three cade (orphan) lambs, we decided that we want to take the slightly lazy route and use a bucket feeder, rather than individual bottles. We originally sourced one made by Nettex. It looked the business and was reasonably priced, so we ordered it and started using it. The lambs made very short work of the teats, we got through 16 in three weeks, and the ones they didn’t destroy were pulled out of their housing as soon as they started to feed (despite the screw-fastening being tightened to the extreme). In short - it wasn’t up to the job - Southdowns aren’t exactly the largest sheep on the planet, so if they can destroy a product I doubt it would stand up to Texel or Charolais crosses.
We looked around further and got some advice - and found a local company ‘Dairy Spares’ who are the approved UK supplier of the MilkBar ™ feeder from New Zealand (trust NZ to produce a decent product for lambs). We got it delivered - and started to use it. It cost a bit more - but it is made for the job and comes in shocking pink to boot. The lambs have managed to tear two teats so far in two weeks but they can be replaced fairly easily and for a couple of quid, and as long as you ‘feed & remove’ it seems to be much more sturdy. We bought the three teat size (which seems to be old stock), but they do a 1 teat, 7 teat and 10 teat version - it did cost a bit more than some of the budget versions, but it should last for years.
I know after only a year of shepherding perhaps we shouldn’t be offering advice - but based on trial and error, we reckon the MilkBar™ feeder is probably a decent investment. If you’re looking for a bucket feeder for lambs or kids, we found this one durable, robust and easy to clean.
6April2008
Posted by Richard under: Chickens; Fruit & Vegetables; Hay; Ponies and Horses; Sheep; Smallholding; Wild food; Wildlife.
Well, that’s the first year done. We moved in one year ago today - and a fair amount of water has passed under the bridge over the last twelve months.
We started to grow our own vegetables and fruit - with some successes, and some failures. The greenhouse did well - with tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers being harvested all summer. Outside we managed to crop lots of lettuce, leeks and onions. We didn’t have much joy with either the carrots or any brassicas. The former was mainly due to stony soil (this year we have gone for container grown carrots), while the latter were subject to major catapillar attacks. This year we got organised a bit earlier - so we should have more on the go, including new potatoes, parsnips, chillis, and horseradish.
We also got a great crop of fruit of the trees and bushes - apples, plums, gooseberrys, blackberrys and lots of hazelnuts. We also found time to plant up raspberries, blackcurrant and redcurrants.
We got our own hens for the first time - after we had made the neccesary repairs and amendments to the old garden shed. It resulted in more fresh eggs than we could think of ways of cooking. In the depths of winter, the local fox managed to reduce us down to three birds - but we have restocked now, and are back up to a full seven bird production.
We’ve managed to end up with a decent sized flock of pedigree Southdown sheep - we now have eight breeding ewes with thirteen lambs in the Brownlow Flock. We have gone through the whole shepherds year - bottlefeeding, weaning, fattening, slaughter, tupping, lambing…everything apart from shearing (which is coming up shortly). Kate remembered her shepherding skills from 20 years ago. We had to deal with movement restrictions due to FMD and BTV. Despite the weather, we even found time to get 120 bales of hay off the fields which saw the livestock through the winter.
We still have the two resident Shetland ponies - Kaiser and Katie….black lumps of pure muscle that thunder around the fields making the ground shake. Powerful animals despite their size.
And there has been plenty of wildlife - from butterflies, dragonflies, frogs, newts, owls, partridge, redwings, fieldfare, foxes (grrr), to badgers.
There is still plenty we want to do - bring the old well back on line, plumb some proper troughs in, take some ram lambs to the autumn sales (if they are good enough), show some sheep (if they are good enough), a few ducks, access to more grazing, hedgelaying, the list goes on - but today we celebrated with a good meal of our own shoulder of lamb braised in port with carrots and roast potatoes and had a day off (except feeding the lambs and putting the chickens away).
22March2008
Posted by Richard under: Chickens; Smallholding.
We lost quite a few hens to the local fox during a cold snap in mid-winter, and the two remaining hens and one cockerel just weren’t providing enough eggs to keep us happy. The time had come to source some additional layers.
We had spent a good few weeks scouring the internet and local papers, as well as mentioning our search to friends.
We did come very close to getting some ex-battery hens, but the whole cockerel thing would have probably been too much for them - so we decided against it. (they needed some freedom and tlc, not an over-amorous rooster armed with inch-long spurs).
Our friends, who we now have a year-long grazing agreement with, have a great collection of hens - one we have always slightly coverted. They managed to pick them up from a free-range producer who was selling up. The present owner of the flock is the 11 year old daughter of the house, and she is slowly becoming the local poultry baroness of the area.
During some recent conversations, it came up that the poultry baroness had managed to procure herself an incubator for her birthday - and was raising her own replacement stock - so some of last years birds were now up for sale.
It was fair to say that we didn’t haggle too much (she even clipped their primaries for us) and we managed to come away with five new birds - a handsome Welsummer (with dark brown eggs). two Cream Legbars (with sky blue eggs) and two ‘layers’ of currently unidentified breeds (that give peach coloured eggs). These, along with our two white-laying bantams will give us that country cottage picture perfect egg-basket.
It is fair to say that a few feathers flew yesterday afternoon when the new birds were introduced - as the cockerel got ‘acquainted’ with the new birds and pecking orders were ascertained amongst the girls. At dusk, there was some judicious use of a landing net to ensure everyone was locked away.
This morning, things were back to relative normality - and the entire group of hens moved off around the paddock as a single unit - and each came back to lay in the nest boxes (rather than in some random corner of the barn).
14March2008
Posted by Richard under: Sheep; Smallholding.
Our pasture was recovering too slowly from the constant grazing from the Southdown ewes and Shetland ponies - so we have come to a temporary arrangement with some local friends to rent some of their grazing. The past few weeks have been spent fixing up fencing at the new site, getting a new CPH number, plumbing in a trough, and tagging the new lambs.
Finally, today was the day to move them down the road to their new home-from-home. We hooked up the horsebox and put the lambs in the sectioned off front part, with the eight ewes in the main section. Everything went well with the eight mile trip and they all came bounding out when the ramp went down at the far end.
Overall, this give us an extra four acres or so of grazing or hay to work with - which will make life easier and reduce the feed bill for the ewes.
It seems strange to be down by twenty-one head of sheep. It definately much, much quieter - but we still have the three cade lambs here, Katie & Kaiser the Shetland ponies and the chickens - so plenty to keep us busy (with regular trips down the road to check on the other site).
9March2008
Posted by Richard under: Fruit & Vegetables; Sheep; Smallholding.
It’s been a busy week - so no-one has had chance to update the blog. (note to self: must find time to keep NPF updated).
The week started with work taking me down south for a couple of days on business - this sort of knocked everything off kilter for the rest of the week.
First off - all the Southdown ewes and lambs are doing fine. The three cade lambs are taking their milk well and starting on creep feed. The other lambs are out in the field with the ewes, and seem to be gaining weight as expected. We are pretty low on pasture at the moment, but have come to an agreement with some friends to allow us to graze their fields in return for help with sorting out the fencing. So a big part of this weekend has been taken up straining up the stock netting - our friends got the neighbouring farmer to come and put in the seven strainers and multitude of intermediate posts with his mechanical post knocker….which saved a massive amount of work. He managed in five hours what would have taken us about five days. Anyway, the plan is to move the Southdowns onto this new field once the lambs are big enough to travel (and we have tagged them properly).
In the spare time (haha), we have managed to get the potatoes (Kestrel, Accent, and another one I can’t remember) starting to chit, the tomatoes (Big Boy and Gardeners Delight) have already germinated and are in the propogator, and we have sown some early carrots, parsnips, garlic (doing well), onions, spring onions, leeks, sprouts, celeriac, basil, parsley, peppers, aubergines, and artichokes. The rhubarb crowns arrived yesterday, so I have thrown them in behind the raised beds where we stored some old manure - so hopefully they will come on well ready for next year.
Anyway - I do promise to make a few more regular updates in the coming weeks…at least twice a week.
29February2008
Posted by Richard under: Sheep; Smallholding.
Lambing is finally over and we can look forward to getting a bit more sleep.
-
- Ten ewes tupped
- Nine ewes lambed
- Thirteen lambs born alive
- Eight ram lambs
- Five ewe lambs
- Four sets of twins
- Five singles
One bit of bad news. One of our ewes, Fay, unfortunately went downhill rapidly with a very virulent case of mastitis. Her temperature soared through the roof and she became unresponsive in a matter of a couple of hours. The initial diagnosis was hypomagnesia, but later it was confirmed as being caused by a e.coli mastitis, and the advice we had from three separate sources (the vet, Andy and another local breeder) was that best cause of action was to cull her immediately. She was in a lot of pain, and was highly infectious to both the flock and humans. Her lamb is currently looking fit & well but is being kept isolated (under strict bio-security) and is being bottlefed.
So we have lost two of our ewes through lambing - which is a big wrench - but it was a recognised risk of buying some older stock that hadn’t been lambed recently. Millys prolapse earlier was probably unavoidable - on further investigation it seems she may have prolapsed during lambing on a previous occasion prior to us purchasing her, but we didn’t know this from the lambing records we saw when she was purchased. We will have to try to review if we could have done anything to prevent the case of mastitis in Fay - again she may have been predisposed to it from before we purchased her, it could have been damage to her teats (her lamb was large and hungry), we kept her bedding clean when she was penned up and she was out on fresh pasture within a couple of days…not sure if we can pinpoint a single cause.
However, overall the ewes have done a great job and have set us up with some replacement stock for the future. Fingers-crossed and with a good deal of vigilance, we haven’t lost any lambs, which is a great sign.
PS: Kate was a hero yesterday and trimmed the feet on the final few ewes before turnout, and in the process has ‘put her back out’….just in time for Mothers Day.
24February2008
Posted by Richard under: Sheep; Smallholding.
A mixture of general mayhem and fatigue has kept us away from the blog for most of the last week. Lambing has moved on a bit further - but it is by no means over yet.
The Evans ewe had a single ram lamb on Thursday - it needed a bit of assistance from Kate, as it had one leg tucked back - but Kate sorted it. The ewe has lots of milk, but the lamb isn’t feeding as much as it should. We are keeping an eye on it but giving it time to sort itself out.
Fatima had twin ram lambs the same day - both real bruisers…unfortunately one has big black patch on its front leg. Pedigree Southdowns don’t do ‘black patches’ - so it is probably bound for the freezer at five months. Fatima has also developed mastitis (which we are treating), but has severely reduced her milk supply. This means one lamb will need to be bottlefed…and old ‘black leg’ has drawn the short straw.
Flora (who delivered a ram lamb and two stillborns back on the 9th) is still suffering an infection. We think it is related to the two dead lambs, and she is being treated with a course of Clamoxyl. However, as a consequence of her illness, her milk has dried up. This means her lamb is having to be bottlefed. Currently both ewe and lamb are not that happy with the situation, with plenty of bleating going on.
So we have ended up with two cade (bottlefed) lambs. If we had a few more ewes or they had lambed closer together, we may have had an opportunity to get them adopted onto other ewes - but no such luck at the moment. Bottlefeeding ram lambs is something we wanted to avoid - you want rams to be a bit cautious of people, but if they are bottlefed then they lose that inhibition can become nasty. Saying that - all rams can go that way.
Well, we still have four ewes waiting to lamb…and I swear they can’t be far off…they are all whales. Fingers-crossed, they will be done by next weekend and we can return to relative normality with sheep in the fields and ponies in stables.
PS: Thanks heavens it has warmed up a bit and stopped raining - the grass is starting to grow!!
PPS: Must get in the greenhouse and start off some seeds.
15February2008
Posted by Richard under: Sheep; Smallholding.
It’s been a waiting game for last few days - with no further lambs arriving.
We’ve still been doing the four hourly checks on the ewes and lambs (Kate’s done most of the checks at 3am). There has been plenty of feeding and watering, tails have been docked, worming done. The two biggest lambs (Darwin and Pancake) are outside now - Derek should follow them shortly. He was a bit smaller than the other two, so we have waiting for him to bulk up a bit (even though the risk of infection is greater inside).
Some of the ewes look fit to burst - Cloe is so bagged up we can’t quite believe that she hasn’t lambed yet. With so little activity, it can get a bit difficult to muster up the ‘drive’ to get out of bed in the middle of the night to check on the ewes - but you sort of know that the first time you skip a check they will all decide to deliver ‘breech’ quads at the same time - so you keep on getting up and going out to the stable in the cold.
We have until around the end of the month before we know that the tup didn’t get the ewes ‘in lamb’ the first time of asking - but he was pretty active when he first arrived so I am sure that most of the old girls will start to deliver in the next week or so.
14February2008
Posted by Kate under: Sheep; Smallholding.
Two old chairs and some gash timber and the kids and I have have made what we think is the most elegant of feed stalls for our new babies. The lambs are not old enough to need creep feed just yet, but it was a bit of a half term project.