Well this is the baler arriving! Mike has bought a mower (slightly too big for the Massey, but I understand there’s a cunning plan), a haybob and a mower, so we are all set to make our own hay next season. This could be a real saving or a disaster as we have never made hay. All the items were shipped by a huge lorry and unloaded at the farm up the road (thank you Tim!) and then Mike collected each bit and drove it round. This wasn’t completely straight forward as the mower is too heavy and the front wheels of the Massey weren’t doing a lot. He had to reverse it over the brook and up the drive and with no steerage it was a trifle tricky. But it didn’t end up in the brook and it’s all in the barn now and we look forward to using it next year. I am sure it will be a joint effort as the grass will need turning every day, so I’d better read up on hay making!
I have to admit the Porkers were driving me crazy. It’s not all their fault but wading 30 yards through a foot of mud being hassled by 6 delinquent pigs each weighing 80Kg twice a day was a game that was ‘wearing a little thin’ shall we say. I thought Amanda was winding me up when she announced the butcher’s couldn’t take them for another week, that’s another 14 trips through the quickmud. What’s quickmud; it’s the clay equivalent of quicksand. If you move fast enough you can stay on top, any hesitation and you’re up to your knees. They say revenge is a dish best served cold, my preference in this case is roasted, sliced with crackling on the side
Enclose the pigs on the pasture. Apply the rain evenly over ten days. Feed the pigs twice daily to encourage them to root.
“et voilà” good pasture turned to mud bath in under two weeks.
It might all look calm and orderly in the photo but there’s quite a bit of pushing and shoving at feeding time. We were feeding the pigs in the middle of their paddock and it was only going to be a matter of time before one of us belly flopped into the mud.
Well, the tractor repairs are coming along well, as you can see Mike is concentrating hard. He was disturbed this afternoon however by the 6 porkers escaping. They had piled the mud over the electric and then made a run for it. One went to Mum (Kiwi) and the others thought it would be fun to chase the sheep. Sadly we have no photos as we were too busy getting them back in their run with food. At this rate we will be relieved to see them go in two weeks.
Bought a livestock trailer at auction on Friday. Backed the Landrover up to the trailer to hitch it up to bring it home. Lowered the jockey wheel but it stopped 2inches higher than the tow bar. Unlike a single axle trailer this one is a double axle and balances on the two axles. Three options a) leave trailer and come back another day when I’ve adjusted the tow bar b) raise the Landrover or c) lower the trailer. a) wasn’t an option. I tried bouncing on the trailer but couldn’t get it low enough to hook on. Transferring the pig feed from the Landrover to the front of the livestock trailer narrowed the gap to an inch. Enlisted the help of a passer by, well not quite a passer by, my escapades were blocking his exit from the auction. With both on us standing on the trailer we managed to get it hitched.
Here is feeding time with piglets after 1/2 inch of rain. The buckets are supposed to reduce the food waste, but as you can see the piglets have other ideas. The field has gone from being muddy to looking like the Somme, it won’t be long before we move them all to drier ground. Thank goodness their ark is nice and dry.
We have hatched some eggs this spring as a trial. We used eggs from pure breed Cream Legbars and a Ludlow Legbar Cockerel because I love the blue eggs and the Ludlow Legbars have been excellent egg layers, both in terms of quality and reliability. We hatched seven chicks; four hens and three cocks. This is one of the cocks with one of the hens. Two of the hens look like Cream legbars and two like the one in the photo. To date they are laying beautiful blue eggs and should supply us all winter and into next year.
We’ve got two small flocks of sheep; a pedigree flock of Coloured Ryelands and another of the white Ryelands. To retain the pedigree of both flocks means that they need to be kept separate during tupping and a separate ram for each flock. To compound things even further we have ram lambs(or tup lambs) that need to be kept away from the ewes so that they can’t mate with them and ewe lams that need to stay away from all the rams as they are too young to be tupped. To make matters even more complicated I decided that the tup lamb we bought for next season is too good not to use this year on a couple of ewes. All in all 5 groups that need to be kept separate from each other. To compound things we’ve only got four fields so it’s a logistical nightmare as they need to move to new ground when they’ve eaten the pasture down. Much use of temporary fencing to split the fields up.
Trillian
However it’s all gone smoothly so far. Sam our white Ryeland tupped all the white ewes in the first couple of weeks. A couple of the girls he covered again, hopefully they’ve taken this time, we’ll know in 3 weeks. Sherlock has covered all the Coloured Ryelands bar one, Trillian.
She got her name from the ‘Hitch Hiker’s guide to the Galaxy’ as her tag is T42. Ubi our coloured tup lamb has covered three ewes, our two elders Twiggy (always skinny) and Manx (tail was docked very short) plus Snowflake who we bought at the Ryeland show and sale.
You may be wondering how we know when the ewes have been tupped. Each of the rams has a sticky paste of colouring and oil put on his chest. The colour gets transferred to the ewes back when he tups them. We change the colour every 17 days, which enables us to see if the ewe is tupped again. In the photo you’ll see most of the ewes have a bright yellow bottom. Yellow was the first colour used. The ewe in the foreground has a greeny coloured bottom, that’s because the second colour used was blue. The last colour we use is red. If they aren’t covered after 3 cycles then it’s not going to happen.
The draught control on the Massey isn’t working . It’s the draught control keeps the implement (e.g. plough) at a constant depth independent of the tractor’s ups and downs as it travels over the ground. Very clever system invented by Harry Ferguson some 80 years ago. Anyway mine isn’t working so armed with the workshop manual and a phone, to call a friend, I’ve started to dismantle the Massey. Minor problem the Massey came off the production line in 1960 and so all the nuts and bolts are imperial and all my large spanners are metric. Tracked down some large spanners and I’ve got the offending part off, it’s off to the mechanic tomorrow.
Whilst the tractor is in the shed I’ll try and fix the fuel leaks. Got the fuel tank off to sort the drip from the tap and clean out 50 years of muck. Need a few washers to sort the rest of the leaks out, all in all no biggy. As you can imagine the old girl is not looking at her best.
The piglets are scampering about sticking their snouts into everything. One escapee managed to duck under the electric and through the stock wire. We couldn’t find it and with the light fading we had to leave it to it’s own devices. ‘It should find it’s way back, that’s what piglets do’ we told ourselves!
Headcount check at first light, 8 are you sure? After a double and triple check all eight present and correct. Sultana remains her laid back self keeping the little ones and herself fed.
Sultana
The most adventurous piglet has a white blaze on it’s forehead shaped like Harry Potter’s scar. Not a good name as she’s a gilt, maybe we’ll shorten it to ‘HP’.
Kiwi’s back with us, she’s been away for the last 5 weeks with the boar, hopefully she should farrow in February. Her last litter are coming on well, they’re just about 4 months now which is when they get boisterous, they’re like delinquent teenagers pushing and shoving each other. Pigs have a talent for turning good grazing into a mud bath in double quick time. These Six are black belt ninjas hopefully we can keep them there for another month and then it’s off to the butcher.
Sultana’s litter is a week old and pretty lazy if you ask me. Only two have come out of the ark, the rest are happy to stay inside all warm and cosy and wait for Sultana. We think the two adventurous ones are the same two that were out on day one. Today however another two have braved the outside world, take a look at the video.
Sad news unfortunately we lost one piglet yesterday, we think Sultana sat on it, so we’re down to eight. The others are doing well though, fingers crossed.
To make the perfect mud bath you will need;
Dumblehole 