Tag Archives: News

Sheep

Yogi & Zero

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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
Pigs

Plum Pudding Pigs

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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.

Weather

Summer Grass

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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.

Machinery

Winter’s fuel

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Heating Dumblehole isn’t a matter of turning up the thermostat, the oil central heating just can’t cope even if it’s on 24 hours a day. What seems to work is to have the wood burning Rayburn in the kitchen and the ClearView log burner at the other end of the house fired up. Between the two of them it keeps the temperature pleasant, probably cool by most people’s standards. As a consequence we need a lot of firewood and I do mean a lot, the load in the photo will last just over a year! I don’t have a gym membership but I do have a chainsaw and will cut and split the cord wood by hand.

Usually the wood is dropped off in a neighbours field and I have to move it with the loader. This year with the ground being so dry I though we could get the lorry to drop the wood where I need it. Amanda wasn’t convinced but I was pretty sure we’d get the lorry over the bridge and round the corner, it was close!

I'm pretty sure you'll make it
I’m pretty sure you’ll make it

 

Machinery, Pigs

Berkshires are back

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Once the snow was thawed out we could get the weaners. Steve came over as he hadn’t been before and I think we wanted to try out the new pickup. The snow may have gone but the fields were wet and Steve didn’t get as far as he’d hoped.

First the back end of the horse box when sideways into the gatepost. We managed to pick it up and straighten things out. The the mud was just too much so the 885 came to help again and towed everything down to the pig arc.

The weaners weren’t too bothered and with a bit of encouragement soon came out to investigate.

Sheep

Spring Pasture 2018

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We lamb late compared to many Ryeland flocks, why? The days are longer, the weather’s warmer and the grass is lush and growing.. err not in 2018 it wasn’t, even in March we still had snow. It was a harsh Winter by our standards with snow in November and more again at the start of 2018. On average we had about a foot of snow but in places where it had drifted we had over 2 feet.

We always feed ad hoc hay and some concentrates for 4 weeks each side of lambing. This season we started feeding the ewes concentrate in November and didn’t stop until late April.

The ewes come in overnight mainly for our convenience, spend 1-2 days when they lamb other than that they are out on the grass. This year everyone was in, and in for days and days. Fortunately we replaced one of our old sheds with a steel framed barn, without it we’d have struggled. I don’t know where we could have sheltered the newborn lambs. The snow was so light and fluffy it was blowing in through the air vents in the roof of the barn, crazy let’s hope 2019 is back to normal.

Having said all of that lambing went well with no mortalities, however the lambing percentage was down. Initially we had nothing but twins and then it switched over and we had nothing but singles. We have no idea why, we used 3 tups, all sheep had the same diet and management regime. The only difference seems to be lambing date, that’s farming I guess!

Weather

Lowest Recorded Temperature

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november-frostUpdate: 12 Dec 2017 07:21 -11.4C (11.4F)  far too cold to take photos! I remember my hand freezing to a metal gate, fortunately I was wearing gloves.  Keeping the water liquid for the hens was a every hour on the hour task as it refroze so quickly.  We had a run of 12 days where the temperature fell below freezing.

Previous Low: 30 Nov 2016 06:63 -7.5C (18.5F)
This morning 30 November 2016 at 06:38 we recorded our lowest all time temperature -7.5C (18.5F), I’ve only been recording the weather stats since November 2013 so maybe it’s not that dramatic.  Having said that last year, 2015, the lowest temp was only -5C on the 20th Jan 2015 and in 2014 it got down to -6.7C on 30 Dec 2014 when we had almost two weeks of really cold weather over Christmas and into New Year.

wispToday is the third cold day in a row, we’ve been out first thing each morning and throughout the day breaking the ice on all the troughs and drinkers for the pigs, sheep and hens.Wisp doesn’t seem too perturbed she still can running over for a fuss.

The upside is that the sun is out and with not a cloud in the sky it great to be outside and then rush back into the kitchen to sit on the Rayburn when you’re frozen to the core.

The cold weather has slowed up the mole invasion, I guess the ground is so hard it’s not as easy to dig through. In the last few weeks there must be upwards of a hundred mole hills in Kiwi’s field, it’s looking more like a battlefield than pasture.

Pigs

The Grunters are back

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After our sows had to go, one was old and her replacement didn’t come back into season,  we were undecided if we should have any more pigs. Why? Well they are a tie as they need feeding twice a day and access to clean water, second they trash the fields. However on the upside everyone, including us, loves our sausages and pork.

After two months without any pigs we decided we missed having them around so we’ve got a few weaners to keep us in pork and tide us over until we’ve decided what we’re doing. The Berkshire is a great breed, docile, we’ve had very little problems rearing them and best of all the meat is superb. We’ve had a couple of Oxford Sandy & Black(OSB)  Berkshire crosses several years back which we took to bacon weight, and I quite fancy the Large Black. The dilemma is with the Berkshire being so good why change? Maybe we’ll try a few weaners of each before we commit ourselves to any breeding sows; it’s all down to flavour.

The batch in the photo were 8 weeks when we got them and very flighty, not surprisingly as this was their first time away from Mum. We thought we had it covered by letting them out of the Land Rover directly into their run but they bolted straight through the electric fencing, the electric didn’t stop them, if anything it spurred them on. Off they went  into a ditch, ran along it for 50 yards and then into the hedge.  You might not know but pigs unlike other livestock are not easy to herd.  I managed to get in front of them and over about 30 minutes we managed to get them back to their paddock.  Four weeks on they are still flighty, but settled in and used to us, to the point where we can tickle them behind their ears. Yep it’s great to have the pigs back at Dumblehole.

Sheep

Tups are in

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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.

Sheep

What’s this?

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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.

Chilling with Mum
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.