We put the Tups in at the end of September beginning of October. Vita (V7) was the first to be tupped on 1st October allowing 147 days gestation period means the first lamb is due on 25th Feb.
The ewes are in three groups, Clifford with with the Coloured Ryelands, Uhoo with the white Ryelands and Paddington has a group of 6 to “look after”. Paddington(he’s on the right in the photo ) is a little special as we bred him and he’s out of Sherlock who we lost last year.
All looking good so far, this year we may scan to see if there’s any triplets.
The Massey 35 is fantastic, it’s light so doesn’t cut the fields up, plenty powerful, it even runs the New Holland 276 baler. However sometimes you need to pick things up, e.g. hen houses, pig arks and cord wood to name three. Even with a set of forks on the 3 point linkage it just doesn’t work.
The answer is a loader and ideally a loader with four wheel drive. I was struggling to justify buying a 4wd with a loader just to pick up a few bits of wood and the odd hen house.
I tried a 2wd Leyland(not my favourite tractor anyway) and with only a light pig ark on the loader the back wheels slipped.All the weight was over the front axle absolutely no use at all. It took me best part of 2 hours to get the Leyland back out and the field is full of ruts.
Back in April/May I found a Case IH 885 XL for reasonable money and in pretty good nick. The 885 is probably one of the last tractors to be built before everything went electric & computer crazy so I should be able to mend anything that breaks. The 885 has 4wd, the loader works, more than enough power and came with a grab so I can pick up the cord wood.
OK you’re right, it’s a bucket with teats to feed orphan lambs. To me though it’s the answer to a good night’s sleep. With Rosie not having any milk at all, that means we need to feed her twins every few hours and that means we’re getting very little sleep, exacerbated by almost no sleep on both Monday and Tuesday. Something had to change or we’d be on our knees before lambing finishes.
Rosie with her twins
Rosie’s twins took to the bucket pretty straight away. Spot, the twin with a black spot on it’s front left leg, gorged big time. She was so bloated she went and lay in the corner of the shed for the next 4 hours to sleep off her huge meal.
Well, there are certain heavy jobs that need to get done around Dumblehole; moving plywood pig arks, moving cord word for chopping and picking up large bales of straw. Unfortunately the Massey is brilliant but not always large enough to do everything. So Mike has been looking for a larger tractor and has found an old Leyland which might suit us very well. There was a little hiccup when Mike went out to move the pig ark as it’s so very wet and muddy it did get stuck. After about an hours’ digging Mike managed to free it and so it’s now on the drive waiting for some (lots) of dry weather before we try again.
On Sunday night we had 6 lambs all was progressing well. Working off the tup date we were expecting the bulk of the ewes to lamb during the week. What we didn’t expect was 8 ewes to lamb in 36 hours! Hattie was the start off at 03:30 on Monday morning. She looked like she could lamb at any moment, and having lost two lambs earlier in the week, we were checking Hattie every half hour. By 06:30 she’d been straining for 30 mins but nothing showing, on investigation I found 4 front feet and no heads. After a bit of rummaging around and help from Jackie we got two lambs both fit and well. Just as that was over both Sally and Snowflake started to lamb. Amanda was looking after Snowflake and I had Sally. Both needed some help, both had twins. Not long after Ebony had triplets. Triplets aren’t ideal as the ewe can only rear 2 lambs so the choice is take one away and either foster it or bottle feed. The other choice is to bottle feed all three.
Tuesday 03:00 it started all over again with Rosie who had twins. Unfortunately she had no milk so that’s another set of twins to bottle feed. The maternity was rapidly filling up! Later that morning Jet started. It’s her first lambing and she’s quite small, although she needed a little help, the twins are fine. Jet doesn’t have much milk either so another set of twins that need a top up bottle. That’s 7 that need a bottle every few hours.
The other girls lambed at rather more sensible time of day.
Thank goodness for a Defender. We needed to take the pigs to Leintwardine and decided to trailer train them in the field. As with all good plans we had to modify them somewhat.
Mike used the tractor because we knew the fields were still quite wet. However, to get to the pig field requires us to go down a muddy slope and up a fairly stiff grassy one. Needless to say the tractor/trailer got stuck and no manoeuvring could free it. So, out came Toad the Defender. We got into our field via our neighbours (thanks Bob) and then pulled the tractor with one of our old sailing ropes. It was touch and go, but with a bit of attitude we managed to pull the whole rig free. The photos show the rope attached when it then got stuck coming back into the small paddock. Again the Defender managed to get it out although because of the angle of the rope we nearly took the gate post off.
So Plan B for trailer training the piggies; we brought them up to the concrete area with the feed bucket and then fed them on the trailer ramp. Fortunately they loved it so we didn’t have to worry about training them everyday. When D-day came they went straight into the trailer with no bother at all.
Tractor and trailer stuck and making a right mess of the paddock.
So here we go again, it’s time to move the pigs to their winter quarters. I was preparing myself for it to take all morning after last years attempts. I led the pigs down the field to their new area although the little boar ran back to Mike and wouldn’t come with the girls, so I had to tempt him with food on his own. Once he’d got the idea he followed me and was reunited with his girls. Then we set about moving the ark itself. This was amazingly easy with the forks on the tractor and this was Mike pulling it out of the mud.
It only took about 30 mins all told to get the ark and pigs moved. Amazing. It took about 3 hours when we did a couple of years ago so we’re getting very efficient!
A quick Xmas update. The fields are too wet to move anything with the tractor unless we want to ruin them. So we are taking hay to the sheep by barrow. Unfortunately we are on clay here so certain areas are now ponds and I have to steer the wheelbarrow through 1/2 a foot of water and the sheep have made a real mess round the hay feeders. But they are at least in a field that’s dry. The pigs however are loving it! Soft earth and it’s so warm they are finding lots to eat.
And because it’s so warm there are Iris and Aconites flowering (normally Feb) and we are having a home grown cauliflower. This photo shows what I picked from the poly tunnel today to go with our Sasso cock bird for dinner: The cauliflower was planted in August to overwinter and eat in early spring but like everything else as it’s so warm they have flowered early. The bad news is we won’t have any in March.
As those of you who have been following our news know, Kiwi only had 1 piglet and so as she is due to go this week, we have bought 3 little gilts to keep our little boar company. They were car sick on the way back so it was windows open all the way to stop us being sick too; the smell wasn’t great. We were well prepared with an enclosure next to Kiwi and her piglet, but like all well planned activities with animals it did not go to plan. The weaners came out of the land rover, saw Kiwi and thought MUM! and dived under the electric fence to be with her. She was actually very good with them, but they did get the message to stay out of the way until she was good and ready to engage with them. But the really lovely thing was that the little boar was delighted! So he will be happy when Kiwi leaves us tomorrow.
25th October and we had our first frost which is a good excuse, as if I needed one, to post an Autumnal dawn. However the main reason for posting though is that’s it’s analogous to my feelings about the local squirrel population.
Let me explain, the tree in the foreground is a Walnut which had an abundant crop of walnuts this year, more than enough for man and squirrel. However the local grey squirrels saw it differently and stripped the tree bear, there’s not a single walnut left. All of which made me see red aka why the photo fits! I’m already scheming on how I’ll stop them next year.
Dumblehole 