With the chilly mornings we’ve got the Rayburn up and running. It’s not the most efficient piece of kit but it makes it really cosy in the kitchen. However with the Rayburn and a wood burner we go through wood at a fair rate of knots. Back in April I ordered in a ‘little’ firewood for the winter. Rather than buying it already cut and split I thought I’d do it myself as I need the exercise and ‘how hard can it be’. The photo is 25 tons of tree trunks but I’ve got a great Tanaka chainsaw. Progress has been good if a little erratic, fortunately some friends came to stay. They worked like Trojans spending a full day splitting and barrowing, I think we processed about 5 tons. Thanks Tony, Ali, Victoria and Harry.
There’s probably about 5-6 tons to go but that can wait until next year when I’ve enlisted some other volunteers or should that read victims. Hopefully there’s enough in the wood store for the winter!
The tups have been in for 17 days and it’s time to change the raddle colour, why? The ewe’s cycle is approximately 17 days so by changing the colour we can see who hasn’t taken the first time they were tupped.
Yellow was the first colour we used and Orange covers the yellow as you can see. Hopefully we won’t have too many second timers, otherwise lambing will go on for longer.
Things are not going to plan, the idea was that Sultana would be our replacement sow as Kiwi is getting on and this will be her last litter. I’m already talking about Sultana in the past tense, she had one litter earlier this year but hasn’t come into season since despite spending 8 weeks with the boar. So she has had to go, on the upside as she was young we had 175kg of very nice sausages. I think we’ll have to have a village BBQ.
Kiwi farrowed 23rd August but only 1 piglet which is a real shame for her last litter. However mum and son are in separable. It’s like there’s 3 foot of bungie cord connecting them. They both seem quite content and Kiwi is hoovering up all the fallen apples.
Well, this year we decided to try our hand at showing sheep. Firstly thank you to all those Ryeland members who have helped out with advice (go to Bromyard before you show at Burwarton), trimming (quite an art) and feet (don’t leave them!). We took our Coloured shearling ram to Bromyard (4th) and Burwarton (4th) and a trio of ram, ram lamb and ewe to Kington another 4th.
Ubie and the jet wash: He looked much better afterwards.
It’s been fun getting involved in the shows, but there is quite a lot of preparation, not least making sure you shear at the right time and we nearly missed it this year. Next year we will be more prepared. I’m not sure the sheep enjoy all the preparation, especially the jet wash bit. But they did seem to enjoy going to the shows.
We’ve put the tups in a week earlier this year on 26 September, not because we particularly wanted to lamb earlier as I prefer to turn the ewes and lambs out onto fresh grass. But everyone was getting restless and it just seemed like the right time. With two distinct flocks it can get a little complicated and this year it means there’s 5 groups. Sam is with one group of Ryelands and Uhoo with a second. With Sherlock gone Ubi has all the coloured Ryelands, lucky boy. That just leaves this years ewe lambs and ram lambs, hence five groups in total. Surprising it only took a couple of hours to split and group everyone.
We don’t raddle the rams, instead we just mix the coloured marker with oil and smother it on the ram’s chest. The first year we breed Amanda used olive oil as it was ‘all we had’ apparently!
It’s all going well, after a few days a good percentage of the girls have been tupped already, hopefully the rest will follow and we’ll have a tight lambing like this year.
Dumblehole 