*TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES* There are pictures on this post but unfortunately they aren’t showing up. Please let me know if you can see them, as it’ll help me fix this.
Our first homebred lambs were 18 months old in November. Cisco was a really lovely ram in looks and a good temperament so was traded to another smallholder in exchange for Django, our new ram. Cisco has 6 girls of his own and I’m crossing my fingers that we hear of some lovely lambs from him next year.
The shearling ewes were put in with Django along with our 3 mature ewes. If everyone lambs then we’ll have a lot of sheep on our 2.5 acres, especially if the shearling ewes have twins. If that happens then I think we’ll be looking at selling some ewes with lambs at foot. We could also sell some stock at weaning. Everyone has been covered by Django at least once so its a wait and see what we get now.
Lots of lovely coloured bums
That left Crichton and Crais. Although Crais had done a lot of growing he was still smaller than Cisco and his horns weren’t quite growing in the right direction. As he was kept intact there was no option of him being a friend for a ram. Crichton was lovely and friendly but that also made him a bit dangerous. He thought he was people but he was also most likely to butt you. He did it a few times to me through the fence if I wasn’t scratching his chin right. Both boys were destined for the freezer.
From left to right, Cisco, Crais and Crichton
The night before they went, after they had been penned up safe, Sam and I had a discussion about meat. We raised these lambs. Crichton was so friendly. Could we eat them? Did we want to eat them?
The answer to the latter for me was yes. I am a meat eater, I don’t see that changing, and with the way my gut is, meat is one of the few things I can eat without trouble. Despite being a meat eater I also care passionately about animals. Some people find that hard to marry but I believe that it’s ok to eat animals if they have had a good life and a good (quick, low stress) death. I’m not completely there yet but I’d like all my meat to come from animals we have raised or have been raised by people we know. As to the former question, I feel that if I can’t eat meat I have raised then I shouldn’t eat it at all. I guess I believe that I should be aware of the animal and the life that was sacrificed.
The hogget from our homebred sheep wouldn’t be our first homebred meat. We have eaten chickens that we have bred. Sam felt that the sheep were closer to us, more relatable and that made it more difficult. We both went to bed with slightly heavy hearts that night.
Ingredients for a homegrown feast
One thing that came out of the conversation was looking at our consumption of meat in general. As a family we eat a lot of meat. We also have a lot of meat on the freezer. We talked it through and realised we were saving our homegrown (and other smallholder grown) meat for ‘special occasions’ and sharing with friends and family. Whilst it’s nice to share, doing this was keeping us away from the aim of only eating meat from known sources. We need to stop ‘saving’ meat in the freezer. We also decided to make an effort to reduce the amount of meat we buy in. I am working on buying only 2 fresh dinner meats a week. Everything else should come from our freezer (or kievs and pizza – our meals for overwhelmed days). Lastly, we decided to reduce down our consumption. See about meals without meat where we can and reducing meat portion sizes where we do eat meat.
A mutton shoulder from last year that we decided to stop ‘saving’
When we got the meat back I have to admit I was nervous. As they were intact rams which were living close to the ewes I was worried about ram taint. I didn’t even advertise the meat for sale in case it was inedible. As soon as I got the meat into the fridge and freezers I cut a bit of us and fried it. I’ve never sniffed meat with such suspicion. Thankfully I needn’t have worried. It was delicious and we tucked into fried chops that night.
Pan fried hogget chops – delicious
Despite not advertising we sold 3 halves by word of mouth. Selling always worries me in case people aren’t happy with what they bought but everyone reported that the meat was the best they’ve had. It’s a wonderful feeling producing good meat.
We got the horns and skins back as well. The skins are salting on the polytunnel and will be sent for tanning in the new year. The horns are outside waiting for nature to work it’s magic and the cores to come out.
One of the skins pre-salting (it was very dark by the time I could work on them)
All in all I’m feeling very positive about the whole thing. Now that Django has covered the ewes the ball is rolling for the whole process to start again.
Dans
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Well we have now had our first large animal scare. This is a pretty long post about Crichton. Sam went out last Weds to mow some grass after work and thought Crichton didn’t quite seem himself. He let me know and went about the mowing. Another check once he had finished revealed that Crichton was lying down in the hedge, shivering and non-responsive to food or much else but at least conscious.
I facebooked my vet friend (not sure what we do without you Cassie!) whilst calling the vet. We had an extra slight drama as the vet said they had reduced the practice boundaries and we were no longer covered so he can’t come out, he did give phone advice though. We managed to get Crichton into the polytunnel and gave him some antibiotics (the first dose was subcutaneous though as I was panicking and both vets advised a second intramuscular dose). We also gave an intramuscular dose of ivermectin wormer in case he was carrying a high burden or had haemoncus. He was very pale in his gums and eyelids and very sluggish although at least he was standing in the polytunnel. Checked his temperature and it was 35.6C, sheep should be 38.5C ish so things weren’t looking good. The vet advised to keep him warm and call in the morning if the sheep is still alive.
On his feet but looking very bad
We set him up a pen on top of an empty veg bed with straw, hay and water and put a fan heater nearby (but not too close) to hopefully help him warm up. The vet said painkillers might help but as we didn’t have any don’t worry. I went back in after a bit and he had moved off the straw to be closer to the heater so I covered him in the straw and moved the heater a bit further in the hopes we didn’t set fire to him overnight.
It wasn’t a good night. I tentatively went into the polytunnel in the morning not sure if I would find him dead or alive. Opening that door was nerve wracking. He was alive though. He had also been eating the soil, it was between his teeth. I stood him up to take his temperature which was up at 37ish, so much improved. Once up he went over to the water and had a little drink which made me feel much better, I got him some nice fresh green hay which he had a bit of then lay down again. I took Chi off to nursery at this point and called the vet for advice. Apparently we were actually still clients, it had been a mix up and the vet would call me back when he could.
You can see the soil he had been eating
The day started heating up, Crichton seemed to get more lethargic and the polytunnel was getting hot so I led him out to the orchard where he just stood whilst I moved the hurdles to pen him there. He ate a bit of grass then lay down again. The vet called back in the afternoon and said he could come if I wanted, 10 mins away. He agreed that Crichton looked very depressed and was very lethargic. Checked the guts in case there was a blockage but everything felt and sounded fine. He was very pale so he gave an intravenous vitamin and drew some blood at the same time. Actually got a really big clot from that so despite being pale he wasn’t very anemic. He gave the painkiller and Crichton did stay standing for a bit more. He got the ultrasound out of the car and checked the guts with that, absolutely fine, checked the liver and it was pretty huge. The bile ducts were quite enlarged and fibrous too. His best guess was that it was either plant toxicity or fluke, with the slight possibility of haemoncus still on the table as it can be ivermectin resistant. The good news was it was unlikely to be clostridium as Crichton would probably be dead already so it wasn’t the delay in heptavac.
Penned up waiting for the vet.
The vet left us with some painkillers and vitamins and recommendation to get an adult flukicide (closantel based) as he didn’t think it was juvenile fluke. I got my microscope out and did a quick (well longer than I wanted) fluke count on the sample I had grabbed from Crichton the night before. Absolutely no fluke eggs but a lot of worm eggs. The fluke test is a sedimentation test, you don’t normally see worm eggs in there unless there is a very very high burden, so the amount I saw in Crichton’s sample was surprising. I called the vet to see if the diagnosis was still the same on the basis of a 0 fluke egg count. Unfortunately I didn’t get a reply. I could have headed out to the agri store but at that point Sam was eyeball high in work, I would be rushing to get there before closing, I was beyond shattered (had said to Sam on the Weds afternoon that I needed some really good rest or might crash) and Chi hadn’t napped, if she napped at 4:30 we would get no sleep that night. Crichton was looking better so we made the decision to wait until Friday morning for the wormer and hopefully the vet would get back to us. He didn’t.
I made the decision to go with the closantel based wormer despite the 0 fluke egg count. It should also kill the haemoncus if the ivermectin didn’t and was a different class of wormer that I could use on the others as we wormed with ivermectin last time. Unfortunately they only had a £66 bottle which made me cry slightly but not much I could do about that, other than calling the day before so they could order in a smaller one. If I hadn’t been so worried about Crichton I could have gotten them to order in a smaller, injectable closantel based drug that would cost a lot less but it wouldn’t get there until Monday (which I doubted as it was bank holiday) and it’s an hour’s round trip if you don’t get stuck at the level crossing and don’t count the time spent there.
Sporting his shaved side and looking better before the closantel drench
Once home we saw that Crichton was doing a lot better. He was loose in the polytunnel with a grassy area penned off outside as it was a cooler day and he was much harder to catch (although still not difficult). He had his daily jabs and the wormer. He kept on like this for a couple days, each day being a bit harder to catch, standing up for longer and eating more. He is still very thin but he is back out with other boys (went back with them on the Monday) and seems to be doing well.
My only guess is that when the grass was low in the other field he ate something he shouldn’t have, or a higher quantity of something he shouldn’t have. None of the others seemed ill, though we gave them all a closantel wormer anyway based on Crichton’s count. The BCS of all the others is pretty good, even runty Crais is looking much chunkier than Crichton. My July sending for meat has been pushed back due to the wormer and I also don’t think there will be much on Crichton at that time. We may have to hold onto them for longer and just hope we manage the grass ok. Maybe a Jan sending off, we’ll see. The ewes are in fighting form, literally, I have bruises from worming them and straddling them to do the wormer was quite difficult, they are solid girls. I think my sheep wrangling days are getting numbered too as bump is getting bigger and making bending hard. Hopefully just to heptavac them sometime this week and then again in 3 weeks time for the ewe lambs and that should be our wrangling over for the summer. Debating treating for flystrike, we were fine last year and we check the sheep quite regularly, but it would give us a bit more peace of mind.
Sometimes you can make the best plans in the world and it all goes awry. We’re having a bit of this at the moment.
Easter weekend seemed like it would be a great time to get on top of some of the jobs that had piled up. Sam had 4 days off and we’d just had our first real taste of Spring the weekend before. We started really well, getting into the polytunnel on Friday and doing a good tidy. The chickens we had in there had merged all our beds into one which we worked at sweeping into individual beds. We are planning to make the polytunnel beds raised beds this year, we have the wood for it but we will see how that goes. On the upside they should have done a good job at removing pests and added a bit of fertiliser. I’d quite like to let some chickens loose on empty beds each year. Whilst sweeping and weeding the beds Sam spotted two parsnips we had missed, they were huge. He also managed to start work on getting our muck heap fenced in as the chickens have been spreading that too.
Tidying the beds
Parsnips
I busied myself with doing the second coat of varnish on the new poop tray for the chicken house. The plan was to get that in on Sunday when the weather would be drier, it will massively reduce the amount of time spent cleaning the chicken house and hopefully give us some cleaner eggs. I then cleaned out the chicken house in the polytunnel as it was no longer in use, Aurora being back in the main flock and Chihiro being in the freezer. Whilst the varnish was out and as it was nearly finished I threw a coat onto the inside of the roof. The ventilation on the house isn’t great and we found that some days there was condensation inside which was rotting the inside of the roof. It isn’t a brilliant house, I did a review of it here, but it works for housing chicks and broody hens, newcomers and anyone we want to isolate. I know the varnish isn’t a proper fix but hopefully it will help. Chi was kept entertained once she realised she could get into the house. We even managed to play a board game that night, things were looking good!
One varnished poop tray
Coat of varnish on the roof of the house
Having fun in the chicken house
Saturday was a Chi day, we took her to her first cinema trip which she seemed to enjoy. We were meant to go swimming after but she was very tired and ratty which should have been my first clue something was up. She was asleep by the time we got home and we managed to get another game played. Sunday we had swimming in the morning then the plan was home to make the most of the dry spell. The forecast lied. There was no dry so we went to a soft play instead. Whilst there I noticed Chi was getting ill again, which resulted in a 3 day stay at hospital. Bang went the rest of the plans for the weekend and the next week as I really struggle to take her outside in the cold and wet when she isn’t well. We seemed to be getting better but something else has cropped up that the GP is looking into. Over a week after getting out of hospital and I am still worried about taking her out. Children really can add a random factor into smallholding that you just can’t account for.
On top of that the rain hasn’t helped things. We haven’t been hit as badly as some people but the land is pretty saturated, we’re about to buy even more hay, in April. It feels wrong but there just isn’t enough grass.
The chickens are laying like mad, but we’re getting less people stopping at the stall to buy eggs. Plus the chickens have muddy feet so we’re getting a lot more dirty eggs that I feel bad trying to sell. We have 20 boxes of eggs in the fridge right now for our use. I have to admit I’m feeling a fair bit overwhelmed! There’ll be a post soon about the different bits I’m doing with eggs. On top of that I was so glad to see 4 boxes had gone from the gate yesterday, only to find out that once again no money has been left. We have a repeat offender who will help themselves to several boxes and leave no money. It’s depressing to put so much work in and have people take advantage, especially when you are producing on such a small scale so every sale counts.
One day’s harvest of eggs
It’s also starting to get impossible to get to the Derbyshire Redcap cockerels as the entrance to their polytunnel is flooded, they have also started to fight with each other. The geese still aren’t laying and have eaten through their grass. We’ve made the decision to send the geese for meat. We really wanted to keep the descendants of Athos, April and Abigail but they are all boys and we are struggling with the workload this year. It will be very strange not to have geese on the land. The two cockerels are going too as they are well past time and I don’t know when I will get to killing and butchering them.
The cockerels sizing each other up
Last bit of news was some mucky bums on two of the ewe lambs (Celaena and Caitlin), they hadn’t been wormed when we did the other lambs last year so they got their first dose of wormer. Not before Celaena jumped straight over the hurdles and went for a wander around the area though. She takes after her father I think. We did Caprica at the same time as her bum was a bit mucky. I would have liked to do a worm count first but honestly I’m struggling to get things done. The ram lambs are showing no signs of needing and neither are the ewes so we left them be. They are starting to look quite smart, I’m thinking about trying to sell Cisco for breeding, he’s a great ram lamb, when he isn’t putting his head in a fence, but that’s probably to do with the lack of grass.
Cisco and Crichton
Cisco’s managed to weave his head in the fence
All in all we are finding things hard right now. We make plans to get things on track but other things crop up. There’s lots to do, the year is ticking by, Chi isn’t well, I’m pretty useless and the weather is literally raining on us. It’s probably the hardest we have found smallholding since starting and we have had thoughts about packing up. We won’t make a decision now, not in the midst of the bad, but we are longing for some good weather and a bit of a break from all the hardships of winter.
Dans
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Well the last few days it’s actually been cold and rainy but last weekend we felt the first promise of spring in the air and despite the rain it feels like the land is waking and the wheel is turning. We had our first good weekend of outside work, doing a general tidy up of the back garden, snipping back some dead branches on the fruit trees and a bit of late pruning. We got some bigger jobs in too though.
Saturday was mostly spent with me killing and preparing Chihiro, the only Light Sussex chick (now 29 weeks old) that Aurora hatched. He was younger than the two Derbyshire Redcaps but he was becoming a bit troublesome, fighting with Aramis through the polytunnel (which now needs some repair work). There was also the fact that we could do him and return Aurora to the flock. We were a little worried that my nausea would return and we would have killed him but been unable to process him, the idea of doing the Redcaps and wasting the two of them was just a bit too much. I hate the idea of wasting anything from the animals that die for us. It actually went really well. He was quite large, 3.1kg dead weight, and I was able to pluck him with no damage to the skin (first time). I’m still very slow to process the chickens, it took me 2 hours to get him gutted somehow. I was looking after Chi at the same time who kept coming in to ask questions/for snacks and I had to dig out all my tools only to find they weren’t sharp. Then I also found I couldn’t fit my hand into the body cavity from the top end, and the guts were really hard to remove. Oh and I cut myself. A bit of a nightmare really. He was quite fatty which I think didn’t help. We really need to work out how to get the chicks more free ranging whilst still keeping them safe. The Derbyshire Redcaps are up next, hopefully Easter Monday. I’ll be very glad to have all the cockerels bar Aramis dispatched, it’s been on my to-do list for far too long.
The feathers came out really nicely after dunking in hot water
Chi being there wasn’t all bad though, we do want her to know where her food comes from. She actually came over for a look and was a bit concerned that I was pulling his feathers too hard. I explained that the white chicken was no longer alive and as such it wasn’t hurting him. I tried to explain that we were going to eat him and we don’t eat feathers so they have to come off. She seemed to accept this then went to play in the polytunnel whilst I stressed that I’d handled it all wrong. When I was gutting him she was a bit weary again, she said ‘too hard’ when I took his feet off but I explained again that he was dead and couldn’t feel it and we don’t eat the feet. Again she seemed to accept this. She said later that we eat the chicken but not head or feet. We had chicken thighs (shop bought) for dinner that night and she had no issues so hopefully I handled it all ok. She has always been present for the killing, plucking and gutting but this is the first time she has taken an interest or commented. If anyone has any suggestions on how to approach it all I’d be really interested.
Chi asking questions
In a moment of temporary insanity I decided to volunteer to set up a winemaking interest group for our local smallholding club (Fenland Smallholders Club). It is mainly on facebook but we had our first face to face meeting on the Saturday night. I was very nervous about it but we did a little bring and taste, question and answer session, a bit about filtering with a demonstration from Sam and a troubleshooter for how to fix a wine that hasn’t come out as you’d like. Was actually quite a success which was a relief!
Sunday was mostly more pottering on the land, catching up on small tasks that had been waiting a while, including a nice new head on the hose so no more trekking back and forth to turn the tap on and off. We did a deep clean on the chicken house ahead of the hopeful renovations next week (new poop tray and nest boxes), it really did need it. We let the chickens have the run of the land a couple weeks back and they discovered the muck heap. What had been quite a tidy heap has been spread by them so Sam worked at getting it into one pile and thinking about how we fence it off from them. Chi had great fun climbing it whilst he did though!
I’m sure she’s helping!
The weather was still good on Monday so Chi and I headed out for a bit. I sorted through the last of the apples from the autumn and did the first coat of varnish on the poop tray for the chicken house. No photos as my phone died.
One last thing. Burnham has made a full recovery. I posted about her being off one of her legs a couple weeks back, you can read about it here. There’s now no sign of a limp and she is back to being found in all the places she shouldn’t be. It was hard trying to help Arwen but ultimately not being able to. It’s a good feeling when we can successfully help our animals.
Dans
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I had been trying to do posts on different topics here, but things pile up, I find myself waiting to post until a particular project is finished and finding lots of other things that I’m wanting to talk about but feel I should wait until the earlier stuff has had a post. So I’m going to try forgetting about all that and have a go at doing a post once a week on the various goings on. I can always do a special post on a particular project/adventure when they occur.
So I guess I’ll do a bit of a catch up starting with the livestock. All of the chicks are going like weeds. We found Alice randomly joined the flock one day and had no inclination to go back to her chicks so I guess she was done with motherhood. Her chicks (the cross breeds) will be joining the flock in a couple of weeks. We managed to get 3 definite hens and 2 that I think are cockerels but they have no tail feathers to speak of so far.
The cross breed chicks
The Derbyshire Redcap (DRC) chicks are so flighty that we are having a bit of trouble keeping them contained, they just fly over the heras panels, but we got 4 hens and 2 cocks, 1 of which is really quite stunning so will try selling him. We are about a month of having them join the flock. I was a bit nervous given how much trouble the DRC pullets had given us but thankfully they are all now going into the house and have even started laying (had to wait until 30 weeks!). Just waiting for the eggs to increase in size a bit and then we shall hopefully start having eggs on the gate again. We’ve been in a bit of a low patch and I’m pretty sure we have an egg thief/eater. We’re getting a camera set up in the house to have a peek.
The lone chick (Ixworth) is starting to feather up now, I’m keeping my fingers crossed for a hen. It won’t be ready to join the flock until Christmas time though. Not our greatest hatch ever but Aurora is happy with her chick.
We also had some surprise hens. A neighbour is moving away and had 3 hens that she wasn’t taking with her. We agreed to take them in so have 3 Rhode Island Red hens that were born in 2016. They are laying well so should have their eggs in our boxes soon. We’ll introduce them to the flock at the same time as the cross breed chicks. They aren’t a rare breed but I’m a bit of a sucker for taking in animals.
We lost Boomer, one of the Cuckoo Marans, about a month ago. Like Aino we have no idea what happened. Happy and healthy in the run up, no marks, no swelling and a good body weight. I guess it will just be one of those things. So we started the year on 8 hens and a cockerel and now have 23 hens, 3 cockerels and 3 possible cockerels. I have a lot of naming to do! The chicken house had a bit of an update so we have more space and better perching in there for the birds. Just need to update the poop trays and nest boxes.
Boomer, RIP
The geese really are growing like weeds. They are huge. Really huge. They still have a couple of their baby feathers but are well on their way to adulthood. There’s at least 1 gander, possibly 3. They have just started making adult noises so we’ll be watching for their behaviour and sounds to attempt sexing them. The two white ones are destined for the butcher but I would like to keep the other 3 if we can. We are just in the process of getting them some new housing built (our first real building project) but for now they are in the trailer, safe from foxes at least.
10th July
23rd Sept
The sheep are doing really well. We have just separated off the lambs from the ewes, and the ewe lambs from the ram lambs and Cisco was having a bit of a try with one of the ewe lambs. Really hoping we didn’t leave it too late and aren’t surprised by lambs in January! They have all just turned 4 months. It’s a bit noisy out at the moment but that should settle . Once the ewes have dried off we will put the ewe lambs back in with them.
Ram lambs (left to right) Crais, Cisco and Crichton
Three of the ewes are off to slaughter at the start of next month. I’m quite nervous but so far things are coming together. We have people interested in the meat and will hopefully secure the orders and get deposits before they go off. I’ve talked to the butchers about cuts, the food safety officer should be coming around soon to give us our hygiene rating for selling the meat, I’m looking into distance selling as one buyer is quite far away, I’ve applied for our registration to handle Animal By-Products so that we can get the skins and horns back and been in touch with the tannery so they can process the skins. I’m also doing my food safety course, although we won’t actually be handling the meat. There seem to be a lot of different plates spinning with this but it should be a good learning experience. The abattoir is a small one, attached to the butchers and there has been some good feedback about it so hopefully the girl’s last journey will be as smooth and non-stressful as it can be.
So I guess that’s a very long way of saying that despite being quiet on here we’ve been busy busy, and that doesn’t include all the harvesting and processing. More on that in the next post!
We went away last weekend and came home to two chirpy chicks under our broody hen, Aurora. New life is always a joyful event but this wasn’t our best hatch of the year, or ever to be honest.
We started with 6 Ixworth eggs. At about a week into incubation we found all six eggs on the other side of the pen to Aurora, and all cold. We got them all under again and she seemed happy sitting. For some reason Aurora kept pooping where the eggs were, despite us moving her off them daily, and would then move away from the poop but leave the eggs behind her.
Aurora sitting nicely for a change
Coming up to the end of the incubation we again found 3 cold eggs in the pen. We candled the eggs, two looked promising but lacked movement and another looked very very small. We popped the two hopefuls in the incubator and cracked the small one inside a ziplock bag. It was starting to rot and likely stopped developing the first time she left the eggs. We candled the two hopefuls the next day and they were moving. Wahey!
Hatch day came and went without any signs of life. We were due to head away for the weekend so we popped the two eggs from the incubator under Aurora and crossed our fingers. I made a note of one of the eggs, number 3, but not the other. Number 3 was one of the ones that hatched and it is likely that the other hatched chick was the other egg we brought in. There was a rotten smell coming from the 3 eggs and we disposed of them.
So 2 out of 6 eggs, and she needed help from us to do that. Nowhere near as good as her hatch last year (5 white leghorn chicks). But we have chicks so all is good right? The chick was chirping madly all evening that first night and when I went to shut them away for the night it wasn’t under her. We brought it in under the brooder to stop it getting chilled. Back out in the morning as the best place to be is with mum right?
I saw the chick slightly peeping out from Aurora’s wing the next night but left it be. That was a mistake, Sam woke me in the morning with a barely cheeping, incredibly cold chick. We got it under the brooder and it was full of life by lunchtime. Took it back out to mum but in a couple of hours it was once again lying face down, this time not cheeping at all. I gave up on mum at this point, we took the second chick away from mum and turned her back out with the main flock.
Chick peeking out at the start of the night
Both chicks are doing well inside but mum left the main flock and took up residence in the shed that she had been in with her chick. We’ll put the brooder into her pen and give her back the chicks tomorrow, keeping a good eye on everyone.
After being brought back from the brink the second time.
So far our experience with broody hens has been really good (4/9, 5/6, 5/6, 6/6 hatch rates), a nice natural upbringing for the chicks and little work for us. Aurora’s second hatch has really made me reconsider broody hens, she got broody really late in the year so we’ll have these chicks separate from the main flock until Christmas and there’s only two chicks, I’m waiting to find out that they are both cockerels!
On the upside Alice’s chicks are huge, nice meaty birds, and it looks like 1 cockerel and 4 hens (possibly 2 cockerels, 3 hens, the one we hatched inside is smaller). They are joining the main flock at the end of the month. Brienne hatched 4 Derbyshire Redcap hens and 2 cockerels, one of which has a very impressive comb. We might try to find a breeding home for him. They’ll join the flock at the end of October.
Now if I can just stop whoever is eating/stealing my eggs everything would be good with the chickens!
Dans – sorry for the text heavy post. The laptop is on shakey last legs and not up to uploading pictures from my phone.
Edit: Between writing this post and trying to get the pictures in the chick sadly died. I’m not sure if it was something internal or if it just wasn’t eating (showed it the food and it was drinking and pooing to start with). Either way it spent a lot of time under the brooder and that is where we found it. The other chick is doing well, we reunited it with Aurora, who was overjoyed. I know we can’t save them all but sometimes I wish we could.
Well it’s now been a week since our last ewe lambed. Of course we still have Anya and Aelin but we are now just under 5 weeks from the last possible lambing date for them and they are showing no signs at all of being in lamb. We’ve brought them back across the road and onto better grass so we will see what happens.
Sam and I are so tired it’s unbelievable. I’m not quite sure how people go for weeks lambing hundreds of ewes, I think 4 is about all I can manage! We’re starting to catch up a bit on sleep though, it helped a bit that we took the weekend off to spend time with some friends that we hadn’t seen in a while. Although, of course, now the jobs are starting to pile up again.
I thought I’d do a little recap of lambing.
We started on the 6th when Arya lambed. We almost missed it but managed to watch her have a pretty perfect outdoor birth. It was amazing to watch. Nice and quick, no assistance needed at all. She had a good sized ram lamb, weighing 2.85kg, with well developed horn buds. We named him Crichton. There’s a full post on Arya’s lambing here.
Arya with a 7 day old Crichton
According to the raddle paste we should have had 2 weeks before the next lambing. For a recap on how raddle paste works and what it tells us see this post. In fact Aeryn lambed 4 days after Arya, on the 10th. For some reason the tup must have covered her again, even though she was already in lamb. Thankfully, we now knew the signs of imminent lambing from watching Arya and we kept up the regular checks as we thought Aeryn would be early. We settled down to watch her but after watching her struggle for a while with no results, and a chat with a vet, we decided she needed help and brought her in. I had my first experience of pulling a lamb, well two as the second needed a bit of help too. The end result was good, 2 healthy ewe lambs, not as big as Crichton but still a good size (2.5kg and 2kg). We named them Celaena and Caitlin. There’s a post on Aeryn’s lambing here.
Aeryn with 4 day old Celaena and Caitln
We had some nervous moments surrounding the first 3 lambs getting enough milk and Aeryn’s mothering abilities but we managed to stand back and let them get on with it. We learnt a lot with those 3 lambs about how the early days go and how our breed of sheep manage compared to the commercial sheep you seen on TV.
Alanna and Arha were actually due on the same day, they were tupped morning and night of the same day. I was a bit nervous of managing that but we kept an eye out. Arya had lambed 1 day before her due date and Aeryn 2 days before. I’m pretty sure I didn’t sleep at all the night before the due date just in case someone lambed.
Alanna went into labour in the afternoon. We kept an eye on her and she had her lamb on her own outside no problem. Then I noticed a water sack hanging down from her. She scanned as a single but I had joked to Sam that she was looking bigger than Arha (scanned singled possibly twins). I spoke to our vet friend and she also suspected a second. I kept an eye and sure enough a second set of feet appeared. The first lamb was up and feeding but Alanna wasn’t pushing at all. She stayed like that for quite a while, not pushing but the second lamb slowly but surely appearing. It dropped out and it looked as though Alanna hadn’t noticed, then she turned. She gave a little lick, thankfully around the nose, but then went back to the first lamb. I could see the lamb was breathing so stayed back. She wandered away from it a bit whilst it was still down so I ran in and checked the nose was clear, it was so I backed off again. I suspected a ram lamb as I could see the horn buds. Half an hour later, although the lamb had lifted it’s head it still hadn’t stood and she hadn’t properly licked it down. We penned them up in the shade so that the confident lamb couldn’t lead mum away from the struggling one.
Second lamb coming
Second lamb still coming
Alanna focusing on first lamb
The books say you want colostrum in the lamb in the first 2 hours, everything I have heard about Castlemilks says you want to not get involved as much as possible. We decided to wait until 1hr40 after birth then get involved. We made up a bottle of colostrum and went out. Lamb was still down whilst the other one was starting to bounce around. Restrained mum and tried to get lamb to suckle but it wasn’t successful. Turned mum over (and got a headbutt to the chest for my efforts – I’m not very good at turning sheep) and managed to latch the lamb on there. It drank a little which was good but it seemed quite tired and struggling. I let mum go and got the bottle. Offered it to the lamb who had some, but it had cooled a lot in the time it had taken us to get to that point. I went to warm it but when I got back the lamb was feeding and Sam said it was doing well. We left well alone.
Nearly 2 hours later and second lamb not up yet
The lamb was indeed a ram lamb, we called him Crais, he weighed 1.3kg. So small. The other lamb was a ewe, we called her Caprica and she was a bit better at 1.6kg. I think something must have been wrong with Alanna’s placenta, she and Arha had more feed than the first two to lamb and these lambs were so tiny. Crais did better over the next few days but he doesn’t have a great relationship with Alanna. Caprica stays with Alanna but Crais wanders away. When he starts bleeting for mum she sometimes calls back but rarely goes over and he doesn’t respond to her calls. We kept them penned for the longest of all our lambs.
Penned up outside but feeding well
Arha was the last to lamb and decided to break the new tradition of lambing by the willow trees and settled down in front of the polytunnel. I think she wanted to be closer to Alanna. Her lambing seemed to be going quite well, we checked back on her regularly and all seemed fine. The feet and nose appeared in the right position. Everything came out a little more but then things seemed to go wrong. She was pushing and pushing and the legs came out further but the head stopped coming out. I had read about Castlemilk ram lambs getting a bit stuck coming out if the horn buds are well developed so after she started to get a very uncomfortable looking bulged I intervened. Things were incredibly tight but I managed to run my fingers round and use them to help the horn buds out while I pulled. It was a huge ram lamb, the horn buds were well developed and you could tell it was a boy from quite a distance! He weighed in at a whopping 3.2kg and we called him Cisco.
Newly born Cisco
Up and doing well
Happy to be out
That was us done with lambing. I ummed and ahhed about giving Crais a bottle as he seemed to be so slow to get going but the biggest thing I have learnt from this lambing is to step back and let the sheep get on with it. Obviously I ended up getting involved for three of the lambs so I didn’t stay back all the time but those times I waited a long time before I first felt the impulse to dive in. It’s hard to trust in the process but with them being a primitive breed it’s better that way.
I had felt awful about approaching lambing with my only knowledge being lambing live and my reading. I had hoped to go on a course but it just didn’t work out. The ewes were kind to me, giving us an easy introduction into lambing (no limbs to untangle or lambs to turn around) and it all worked out.
All the lambs are now together and running around. It’s taken me a week to write this so the youngest lambs are now over two weeks old. I’m quite proud of us, ewes and humans, 6 lambs from 4 ewes and no losses. If we can keep that up each year I will be really happy!
From left to right: Caitlin, Crichton, Cisco, Celaena (behind), Caprica and Crais
As it turns out, we didn’t have to wait long for Arya to lamb. On Saturday morning we noticed her vulva was looking really pink and swollen. Then, as I was doing the washing up, I noticed her lying down and standing up repeatedly in the triangle, she was separate from the others as well.
I had however been thinking she was going to lamb the night before, so we weren’t putting much faith in my guesses. We desperately needed to make a trip to the local tip – trailer full of dog rose – so I went out and studied her for a bit. She was very interested in a particular spot and looked like she was licking the ground. I actually walked around her just in case she had a lamb in the long grass but there was nothing there. She wasn’t pawing the ground to make a nest, she had stopped the lie down – stand up routine and she wasn’t raising her head to the sky or showing any other signs of pain (possible contractions). Our plan for lambing was to do 2 hourly checks and the tip run should take us about an hour and a half so at 2:45 we decided it was safe to go. I now know that was a rookie mistake and she was actually licking the ground to clean up from her waters breaking.
We got back at just coming up to 4:15, to get home we drive past the area the sheep are in. I looked out and said to Sam ‘I think Arya’s lambing, or maybe I’m just seeing the tree behind her. It looks like something is sticking out of her bum.’ Sam parked up and I left him and Chi and legged it up to the field. Sure enough she was lambing. Just as I got there she was lying down and doing the classic star gazing. Sam came up shortly and asked if I was videoing, of course not, I was just standing there in awe! Sam got a little video.
It didn’t take her long at all. She put her head down to graze and the lamb popped out. She kept eating for a second and I panicked thinking she might just not notice it, possible with a first time mum, I ran to grab something to clear the nose just in case but she turned around and started licking the lamb. I’m pretty sure I held my breath at that point but then Sam heard bleeting. I have to admit my knees went really weak, it was so amazing to just watch her give birth and this new little life start moving around. I had to go and start getting the pen ready for them and check on Chi (sleeping in the car) so Sam stayed to watch them.
We have a nesting pair of crows who having been scavenging and killing things left right and centre all Spring. One of them got very interested when the lamb was born and came and sat on a fence post right by her. Crows can be really vicious and take a lambs eye or even tongue
Arya was so smitten with licking the lamb she kept jumping over him when he tried to get to her teats. Again I worried, I think it’s my superpower, that she wasn’t going to let him but within about 30/45mins she let him. The other possible danger with her lambing outside is another ewe either getting aggressive with her and/or the lamb or it going the other way and another ewe trying to steal her lamb but not having milk to give it. The other three did approach once the lamb started bleeting but as soon as it moved they scattered. I think they were actually scared of it.
Not sure what to make of the new arrival.
We gave them an hour to bond in the field. We kept watch in that time as the crow was showing a lot of interest. By then it was starting to get nippy for the evening and we had seen him feed so crossed our fingers that the bond was ok. I did my best interpretation of what I had seen on lambing live and dragged the lamb slowly whilst bleeting to encourage mum to follow us.
First feed
The lamb had not been watching lambing live and was not as placid as the ones on tv, he wriggled quite a lot and I had to pick him up a few times. I did get to see that he was a boy though! I discovered that the ewe gets very confused if you lift the lamb past thigh height. She just starts looking elsewhere. She also got really confused when we went past the other 3, she turned to go to them but when I bleeted again and put him on the floor she came running back. That was the longest it has ever taken me to walk that distance but we got there in the end.
Sam had set up the pen with fresh straw, hay and water and we penned them up for the evening. I gave his navel a quick spray to avoid infection as we had brought him in and had a go at weighing him. I need a better set up for the next lambs as he was a bit precarious in the bucket, but he weighed in at 2.85kg. No idea if that is good or not but it’s the start of our record keeping. I was really happy with how everything had gone. One of the things I had read was that humans jumping in to ‘help’ with lambing too soon was one of the biggest causes of issues to do with bonding and ending up with bottle feeding so I was really proud of myself for keeping my distance. She passed the afterbirth about 5 hours later and all was well.
Having a feed inside
Already interested in what Mum’s eating
My attempt at weighing
Of course I soon found something else to worry about. Whenever he went to the teat he would faff about and then you’d see the teat beside his mouth and he would give up. I had heard a couple of tests to check if a lamb is feeding ok so I tried them all. The first was, when the lamb is sleeping stand it up. If it is full it will stretch and have a round belly, if it is hungry it will stand with all four feet in one spot and its sides will be sunken. Well lamb did neither of these. He stood for a moment, wandered to mum and did the faffing then lay down again, and his sides weren’t rounded but they also weren’t sunken.
Just after a feed
The second trick is to hold lamb up by it’s front legs supporting it’s back with your legs. Again you should see a round stomach if full and sunken if hungry. But no, his sides were pretty flat. The third trick was to see if he pees when he stands up, like in human babies, weeing and pooping is a sign they are drinking. He peed but it was a drip drip affair rather than a stream. I then checked that mum actually had milk, she had a good sized udder (in my inexperienced opinion) but maybe there was an issue. No hard spots, lumps or heat (signs of mastitis), but I also couldn’t really get any milk out (two spots on my hand) did she have no milk or was I just rubbish at milking?
It was getting late by this point, and I had read that lambs should have colostrum in the first 6 hours so I made up a bottle. I offered it but he flat out refused. I went to bed very worried we would have a dead lamb in the night. We got up and checked regularly, ready to bring him into the house or tube feed him if he went downhill. Morning came and he was still with us but much the same as the night before. I messaged a local smallholder with more experience to come and have a look. He did and said lamb was doing ok. He got lots of milk from the ewe as well. I found out from the lovely people over at TAS that primitive sheep aren’t the same as the commercials I’d have seen on lambing live, they don’t tend to be as rounded with milk and as long as they aren’t sunken will be ok. I probably interfered with them a bit too much at this stage but thankfully the bond seems to be strong with them. I will know for next time and be able to be more hands off.
The polytunnel started getting a bit warm on Sunday afternoon, our main concern with using it for lambing. We decided to close off access to the polytunnel and let Arya and her lamb out of their pen. They would have access to the whole lambing space, including a penned off area outside where they could feel the breeze and cool off. We moved them down to the polytunnel doors and had to go collect some muck so off we went. When we got back it was getting a bit nippy and the lamb seemed a little unresponsive. I carried him back to the pen with mum following and headed inside to deal with Chi. We had a look on the camera and sure enough the lamb had been running up and down the polytunnel the whole time we were out. Not at death’s door at all! I was finally able to stop worrying about his eating.
Enjoying the cool breeze outside
Looking so big already
We let them out into the post-lambing area on Monday afternoon as Arya was getting really depressed and not eating anything but the ewe nuts we offered. She just wouldn’t touch the hay. She got straight to eating and her lamb followed behind. They are out in the day and in at night at the moment as the nights have been a bit nippy but from tomorrow they will be out full time.
Out in the grass
We named the lamb Crichton and he is just so wonderful to watch, running around and nibbling grass already. We are looking forward to him having some little friends. No-one else is due until the end of the month, but Aeryn’s bagging up already and is quite huge so she may have been caught on the first tupping as well.
Crichton at 5 hours old.
Dans
PS I think I have fimally worked out Youtube, so have a look on our channel for more videos from the smallholding
Wow, looking back I haven’t updated about the sheep since early January. In a way not much has changed. They spend most of their time munching away, including eating any bushes and trees they can reach. However we are in the run up to some big changes.
If I stand on 2 legs I can reach higher!
At the start of February we took Akbar back. He served us well covering all the ewes in the first 2 cycles and, as far as we could see, none in the third cycle. We only had the orange and green raddle paint though so we mixed it to a brown, and as we didn’t get any covering in the first half of the cycle we didn’t top it up. I was quite daunted by the prospect of loading him up, but we made a makeshift race and Sam loaded him up no problem. We did the drive and unloaded him easily. It’s another one of those smallholding tasks that has worried me, it’s a short list that is pretty much built around the places we could really go wrong in animal welfare. It includes loading and transporting animals, killing our first chickens and all that follows, lambing and booking an animal in for the abattoir. We’ve now done two out of that list.
Our makeshift race
Lovely weather for loading up
Back home with his flock
A week and half after Akbar left we had the Scanning Lady come to scan our girls. It was a couple weeks earlier than the suggested time for when Akbar went in with the girls but it was the best we could do due to her availability. She made quick work of the girls and we scanned as 1 twin (Aeryn), 2 singles (Alanna and Arya), 1 single that might have a second (Arha – the lam she was certain of was still small) and 2 empties (Anya and Aelin).
Scanning
Post-scanning
The plan when we were first thinking of getting sheep was to get 3. Then we thought maybe get more and eat those that don’t get into lamb. When we found out we had 2 empties we thought ‘great, we’ll be eating lamb (well hogget) before 2018 ‘. Then we looked at when Akbar left we got a bit worried that the Aelin and Anya might be in the very early stages of pregnancy. Unfortunately there’s no way to tell now until they go past the latest possible lambing date (5th July) and I would feel absolutely awful sending them off to slaughter only to find out they were pregnant. So we shall be keeping them and sending them off in July if they haven’t popped.
Twins on the right ’empty’ on the left.
I’m feeling pretty certain that they aren’t in lamb (pregnant) though. The two of them are hopping and skipping around the field and picking fights like teenage girls. I took a little video (well it’s a bit long in places) that shows their behaviour standing out. They are starting to really butt the in-lamb girls though so we may have to separate them if they don’t calm down.
Of the girls that are pregnant, Arya is due at the start of May followed by Alanna, Arha and Aeryn all at the end of the month. I am both terrified of lambing and utterly excited. Hopefully we shall soon have some happy tales to tell and lots of pictures.
The lambing schedule
Dans
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Aside from the usual festive season and a late tupping, December had the added surprise of bird flu, which although we had known about it being in the continent we were hoping it would pass us by. For those that don’t know bird flu was spreading through Europe in November and a Prevention Zone was set up in the UK on 6th Decemeber. That basically means that everyone with birds had to do everything they could to keep wild birds away from thier birds. At the bare minimum that meant keeping the wild birds away from your birds food and water as bird flu is spread through contact with bodily fluids. Cases of bird flu were reported in December, in wild birds, in a turkey farm in Lincs and in several backyard flocks, mainly where there were ducks and chickens together. Waterfowl can get bird flu but don’t show symptoms very well. Chickens drop dead quite quickly though. If you want to read more about the current bird flu situation in the UK the DEFRA page is up to date.
As it affects waterfowl differently we started by getting the geese into the shade tunnel. It’s a large polytunnel with butterfly netting over it and weed proof fabric down but no doors. We cleared out the left over plants from the last owners (we haven’t used this tunnel for anything yet), patched up some holes in the netting and nailed some tarp to the door frame. We also set up a small shelter using an old door and some chairs so that there was a dry spot for thier food and somewhere to get out of any heavy rain. Netting isn’t ideal as wild birds can still poop on it and it gets washed in with the rain, but it is better than the birds using the goose baths or drinking water as a bird bath or hopping all over the ground they graze on. The geese made it into a slippery muck bath pretty quickly so we had to shovel it all out and threw 3 bales of straw down. That seems to have done the trick but it’s starting to get mucky again now so will need to refresh.
The goose set up pre-straw
Geese are grazers though, and grass is the bulk of our geese’s diet. There was some grass growing over the weedproof fabric in the polytunnel but they ate through that pretty quickly. We tried them on some hay (with grit available to help them break it down) but they weren’t interested. They did pick at grains from the bales of hay though. They were having corn each night anyway as the weather had gotten cold and they kept eating that but seemed to have little interest in the goose food mix we bought for them. I saw an oppertunity and switched them to the flubenvet worming layers pellets in the hopes of getting them wormed before the breeding season hits. They weren’t interested at first but are eating it now. They are still looking in good condition (apart from April who has alway had a very prominent keel, even after they were wormed with an ivermectin injection), so I guess they are getting enough to eat. I’ll be so very glad to let them out again when the time comes though!
Happy geese post-straw
The chickens were a bit more difficult. If we put them in either of our other polytunnels there would be nowhere foxproof for them to perch. After losing Bellatrix to what I suspect was a goose attack I really didn’t want to put the chickens in the shade tunnel with the geese, even if it was partioned off. They also don’t do as well in the wet as geese do. The best option seemed to be to keep them in thier current house, but even though it is a shed rather than a coop it still isn’t big enough for them to be in there 24/7. We ordered some aviary panels the night the prevention zone was announced with a 3-5 delivery. We wouldn’t be complying immediately but at least we would have something in the works. Unfortunately the seller was awful. I emailed on day 3 to find out if there was tracking and was told the parcel would be with me on day 5. I emailed again on day 5 as it hadn’t arrived (after cancelling all our plans on days 3-5 just in case it came) only to be told it had been dispatched that day and would be with me in 3-5 days. Ebay were awful and just said I could refuse delivery and get a refund if I wanted. They arrived on day 8 and as soon as the chickens went to bed I set about building a run with cable ties, tarp and some scaffold netting. It was pretty tricky building it as the light went, without a torch (because I was too gung ho and just rushed into it), especially when I dropped the black cable ties on the floor!
The finished run. It was just a tad dark!
The chickens seemed to be a lot happier in there than I expected but slowly the layer of fallen leaves and bits of grass poking through started to turn into mud and they started to look unhappy. I didn’t want to use straw as I had heard about that harbouring bacteria and giving the chickens respiratory problems. I took the plunge and threw some of thier indoor bedding down. It’s schopped straw treated with pine oil and isn’t the cheapest but they were over the moon with it. Scratching about and nice clean feet again. It’s lasted about a week and what I put down went further than I thought, so I’ll get some more down tomorrow.
The hens were surprisingly ok with the confinement
The chicks were the easiest to deal with. I used the estimated 3-5 days before the run would arrive to intergrate Aurora and Buffy into the flock (our last broody hen and her 15 week old daughter). Buffy was a bit younger than I would have liked but I didn’t want to introduce them into the pen as there wouldn’t be much space for hens to hide before the pecking order was sorted. I had been thinking of killing the boys before Christmas so they wouldn’t be in too long and the coop they live in comes with a run so we just threw some tarp over it. That was fine until I went out one day and was greeted by 3 cockerels running around. I thought I must have left the side door unlocked when I put them to bed, or the wind something open. Well the wind had blown something open, the roof off the coop had been ripped off it’s hinges and was over the fence in the goose area. We had a rush job of herding them into the big polytunnel then moving the house and run and getting them inside that. They would be ok in there as we could still open the polytunnel doors for ventilation with them being self contained. It’s the last time I buy a commercial chicken coop though.
The roof flew straight off the coop
The prevention zone was due to be lifted on the 9th Jan but instead it was extended until the 28th Feb, which is very depressing. I think the chickens will be ok but I am not sure how the geese will cope with the breeding season whilst still in there. I was hoping to get them back out on grass before then, and I don’t know where they will lay as it is all so open in the tunnel and they like to be under bushes to lay. I’m now trying to come up with some sort of additional housing in there so that they can lay inside. Any suggestions are welcome.
On the upside we are getting eggs again finally. One of the Brown Marsh Daisies is giving us the odd egg which is nice. Buffy and Brienne (the two female chicks we hatched last year) have started to lay as well. Brienne is laying nice >60g eggs whilst Buffy is laying <30g eggs. I have no idea what breed Brienne is, the egg was advertised as Copper Brown Maran x Rhode Island Red, but she is pure white. Either way I think I might hatch some of her eggs this year, as she is a big bird producing big eggs, and a cross with Aramis (also breed unknown) could produce some nice chicks.
A Brienne egg vs a Buffy egg
The chicks weren’t very happy in the polytunnel though and had started to fight each other, so when the news came that they would have to be in for another 2 months we decided that d-day was upon them. We killed them the other weekend and got ok weights from them 1.2kg and (Bifur), 1.4kg (Bofur) and 1.6kg (Bombur).
The boys
It’s still not a task I relish doing, and I was a bit grumpy and stressed out leading up to it, but I was able to give them a quick end and we now have food in the freezer. Serving up our roast chicken and veg to my family for Christmas dinner was a really proud moment. Next year our own goose! Looking at how long it takes me to process them though, we may end up sending them away in future. We reckoned about an hour to pluck and then another 40 mins to an hour to process in the kitchen. That isn’t too bad if you have the time, and I am sure I will get quicker as I get more experience, but at the moment, with a toddler and still trying to get everything to set up here, it may well be a better use of time to have someone else do them.
I had another butchery task this month. We were gifted two phesants, shot the day before. Unfortunately, this was a few days before Christmas. They got hung up and I stressed about them until I could see to them after Boxing Day. I skinned these ones and I hated it, I do definately prefer plucking. I was quite shocked to see that they had full crops and gizzards, and that they were full of corn. Then I saw how much fat they had on them and how yellow it was. I had thought that with phesant shoots they were released and then you went huting them, but these birds can’t have been released much before they were shot and were fattened up ready for the shoot. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about that, but I’m not sure I will be accepting any more phesants from shoots, fresh roadkill may be ok.
My first phesant
The last achievment of December was that I finally braved facebook. We have a page! Pretty much just random updates from the smallholding but hopefully interesting enough to people. I’m trying to get some advice from trading standards as to what we need to do to start selling our produce and hopefully get this smallholding somewhat productive in 2017!
Dans
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