porcine rodeo

Our pig saga continues. Having replaced our very rare boar that perhaps had not done as he should with an older, proven close relative of his [his Uncle], we now discover that perhaps he had actually been alright after all. 

A few more weeks should hopefully produce the evidence we desperately need. In the meantime his immediate death sentence has been lifted and he is now amusing himself in the  empty cattle shed digging for tasty treats of old barley that had fallen behind the troughs where the cattle couldn’t reach.

The cattle were turned out this week too and we had a major rodeo as we let over fifty cattle out on to the lush spring grass. Every year is reassuringly the same – the cattle trumpet their joy at being let out as they run down the road kicking their heels in the air. It never fails to lifts one’s heart especially as the task of feeding them twice daily with home grown cereals and homegrown hay or silage is lifted. One old farmer friend used to state: ” The day of bondage is ended for another year”, until November when it all starts again with the next batch of calves to be weaned.

While examining the sows who are very quiet and really quite tame for pigs I made the terrible mistake of stepping over one very friendly girl to try to read her ear tattoo. I had one leg on each side of this chattering supine pig [who always chunters away as if she is having a full conversation] this proved to be a major error. Even with my glasses on I struggled to read the number and she got a bit fed up with me turning her ear inside out and peering at her. So she stood up. As a full grown sow this meant I was now completely astride the pig, with no way for my feet to reach the ground. “Uh oh” I thought “this could be painful”.. and with my hands I pushed down on her back to try to ease myself off her. This extra pressure to her to her meant “go” and she shot off across the orchard to join her friends with me on her back. “What are you doing?” came the cry from across the pens.. “Trying to get off” said I. Shock turned to laughter, both from those on the ground and from me on top of the pig, which made it worse as I couldn’t laugh and get off at the same time.

The sow decided she’d had enough - and gave a sharp turn to the left and humped her back firmly depositing me onto my knees on the hard ground. My pride took the greatest fall, although more than a week on I still bear the bruises, and I definitely won’t being doing that again..

the coming of the spring grass

The sun is still shining and the grass is growing well while all the time the tractors are still rolling on the arable land.

The growth of the new grass is much easier to measure on the other side of the fence as it is nibbled immediately within the field boundaries. The ram lambs still come for their daily feed home grown barley but are less keen for it which is a sure sign of the coming of the spring grass.

The stock work is piling up with vaccinations due, cattle still to be weighed and all manner of sheep to be moved to fresh grazing on previous set aside to give the sheep a natural nutritional boost while at the same time home resting the home pastures before lambing.

There are just not enough hours in the day or enough manpower available at the same time to get through all the urgent tasks at the exact time they need to be done. The pressure we are all feeling, from the arable and livestock sides of the business, is so typical of mixed farming systems in the spring and autumn. After all these years we ought to be either hardened to it or have come up with a better plan but we haven’t yet and everything usually works out fine in the end.

The boar appears much better and will now be used on 3 of our girls.

In the meantime we plough on with the computerising of the accounts and the planning for various access visits including Open Farm Sunday on 7th June, and various other educational access visits.

feeling the spring rise

The cattle can clearly smell the grass growing and know spring is almost here. This morning they are running about in their open sided sheds kicking their heels in the bright, warm sunshine.  Tomorrow we will weigh them and calculate their daily liveweight gain over the winter and for the oldest beef animals estimate their time of dispatch. Our wonderfully patient beef customers are getting a little restless and I promised them an update on when their beef boxes will be ready.

In the meantime I have just weighed and selected another eight lambs to send this week and this afternoon we will be checking on the progress of the fattening pigs, however I am sure they will be a few weeks off yet.  Our fattening lambs are almost gone for another year and come mid April we will be delivering the new crop.

Progress on the arable front is good too with the drilling almost done and the fertiliser application on the wheat making good progress.

In the meantime the hired boar has arrived and is firmly in quarantine. This is not our first experience of hiring boars and we are frequently dismayed to find that some rare breed pigs are apparently kept in indifferent conditions. We are not sure he is even fit for the purpose he came for.  Personally this morning I think he still looks poor, and we are debating whether to even try him or just send him back. He was dosed with Dectomax, an anti parasite injection, before we even took him off the trailer as he has arrived with what looks to us rather like both mange and worms, still his appetite is good and that is always a good thing with pigs. Pigs who are not eating is usually a sign of something terminal.  Keeping these rare breeds going is not at all easy but we are determined to get it right and make a really good job of it, I just wish every other rare breed pig keeper tried to do the same.

In the meantime we’ve found a boar of the same line as our sterile one and can fetch him very soon. This will be good because we really prefer to have a closed herd, which makes us much less vulnerable to outbreaks of parasites and disease. It also means we are totally responsible for the pigs’ management and we prefer to do that too.

I have bad news and good news:  First the bad news – I clearly spoke too soon on the drilling front as the very clever little box of ’chips’ which calculates the correct seed rate has gone on the blink and is causing MAJOR problems for Jethro. The original seed drill was so much simpler.

Now the good news is I just walked past the hired boar’s box and he is shouting for his tea already.

sowing seeds….

Animal or vegetable seeds? 

Well both we hope!

Drilling has started again for the spring sown crops of barley.

And the sex life of the pigs, or rather the total lack of pregnant pigs, has been a talking point here for the last few days. There has appeared to be plenty of action and semen out in the paddocks for the last few months but finally no actual piglets to show for it! We wish we could afford a pregnancy scanner.

A new boar has been collected and hired as we found our boar was sterile… the new boy is now in a loose box ’in quarantine’ away from our girls and he will remain isolation until we have dosed him for worms and external parasites and made sure he is not infected with anything nasty. Then he can have 2 lovely piggy ladies this month, and another two next month.

By then we shall have another boar of our own, and this one will be able to go back. We don’t want all 9 lovely ladies all to give birth at once because it could make selling the pork in one go too difficult.

If we can, with a fully working boar, stagger the farrowing right then the customer list usually seems to keep pace with the production, or at least that is the plan. In the meantime we shall have to buy a few weaners from our friends to keep us going. We have 15 home bred rare breed fatteners coming along niceley outdoors at the moment and they are expected to start to be ready from May onwards.

Time will tell if all these ’seeds’ will develop into new crops of barley and piglets… or whether the sex lives of the Prosperous Farm pigs will eventually become a cult read… watch this blog…

the knackered cow

Well I have just opened a parcel from my dear sister and she has sent me some bath and shower gel called knackered cow… it is produced by a company called cowshed. I shall look forward to my bath tonight!

As I have not blogged for a wee while regular readers may have realised that life at Prosperous Farm has become a tad challenging in the last 2 weeks.

Sadly, Ruby’s calf died, despite our very best efforts to keep him alive so she is now being milked twice a day and providing the house with delicious raw milk.

The day before the calf died found me totally undressed in the house in the middle of the afternoon absolutely terrified that someone would ring the bell. Ruby in her rather zealous mothering fashion had licked me to death as well as the calf and as I had struggled to feed the calf with a bottle of milk and electrolyte mixture and as it had leaked I was rather damp.  As you can probably imagine I was also covered in various other bovine related products. I had had to totally strip off outside the back door and even hose off the clothes before putting them in the washing machine.

The effect of being licked all over my head, my hat and my face definitely gave me the rumpled look and all I could do when I came into the empty house was lean against the closed back door and laugh out loud as I really was quite a sight. Strange though it sounds Jethro is often away when we have these animal husbandry emergencies!

Luckily despite my irrational terror on the day no one actually came to the door or rang up so I did not even have to talk coherently down the phone while in such a state of deshabille because that would have been impossible to carry off without laughing and I was also far too cold.

The land work has started again with cultivation and planting of some of the fields which are now left as overwintered stubbles. It is our second year of this particular regime under our Countryside Stewardship Scheme and we have discovered that we have fewer rabbits on this land and many more birds. Previously the rabbits would live on the boundaries of these autumn sown crops totally devastating the field margins, and some years we even had to try to erect rabbit netting. The evidence of this alteration of rabbit habits was discovered at a recent seasonal rabbit shoot. The night’s shooting produced a much smaller yield of rabbits than in previous years. I think also the hard winter may have had some impact too as along the main roads in this area so many young trees have been gnawed by the rabbits and deer that they have been ringbarked. This loss of young saplings will really be noticeable as the year progresses. This ring barking is absolutely widespread this year and not something I have ever noticed in previous winters.

Our lovely natured young boar has been working hard with the gilts and sows [ the evidence of his efforts was all around] but we realise now that he has been very busy but unfortunately firing complete blanks and none of the female pigs are currently pregnant, and the one sow we bought supposedly already in-pig has been found to be barren also. So we are searching for a new proven boar, and start the production cycle again whilst keeping our customers supplied with their outdoor reared rare breed pork.

We will need to be careful to stagger the breeding as monthly batches of piglets suit the meat sales side of the business much better. A sudden burst of too many births at once could mean major problems further down the line especially if all the pork was ready to sell in January or February next year.  A pig’s gestation is 3 months, 3 weeks and 3 days so we will be awhile getting back on stream and in the meantime will have to buy a few more weaners from some of our friends with outdoor reared rare breed pigs.