Yogi is our coloured Ryeland tup lamb bred by Widgits. He was born earlier this year so this is his first time. It’s also first time for the shearling ewes all Clifford lambs born last year 2017. You can see Clifford’s distinctive markings in all the ewes.
Zero is special, she’s a cade lamb and almost died. Her mum had mastitis which poisoned her milk, which passed the infection onto the lambs. Unfortunately her sibling didn’t survive but Zero did thankfully. Why Zero? because she had zero chance of surviving.
Zero
Yogi
Officially they are Oxford Sandy & Black pigs but were commonly called Plum Pudding pigs. We had a couple of OSB Berkshire crosses in the past and thought we’d try a few pedigree weaners with a view on keeping two gilts back as breed stock if we get on with them. They are growing much quicker than the Berkshires which isn’t surprising as the OSB is a much larger breed. They just 16 weeks old in the photos and love apples. Along with their usual rations they’re getting a bucket of Bramley cookers as well.
Like the Berkshire the OSB is one of Britain’s old pig breeds and has been around 2-300 hundred years originating in Oxfordshire although the exact history has been lost. The breed reached crisis point at least twice in it’s past when numbers dropped so low that extinction was a real possibility. It down to a few determined breeders that kept the breed going so that it still exists today. If you’re interested in the history take a look at the breed web site.
After the snow the grass romping away in April and May and then no rain so it all stopped growing. Our soil is clay and so it held onto any moisture for quite some time but eventually it ran dry. It was lucky I’d made some hay as I hadn’t planned to but as the grass got away from the sheep I put a few acres aside. Just as well as I had to feed it to the sheep, the grass had just stopped.
The brook that runs through our fields dried up completely several times during the summer, first time that’s happened since we’ve lived here.
In some ways the summer wasn’t particularly dry if you look at the total rainfall. It’s just that all the rain came over a very short period and hence ran off the fields without soaking in. On 20th September we had our highest daily rainfall total since I began collecting weather data, almost 50% higher than the previous highest.
The trials and tribulations on our smallholding
Dumblehole 