Swift and the sheep

Swift has just done his first job on the farm. About ten days ago I rode out over two separate days for short rides and at a ridden walk quietly moved some sheep around the fields. He seemed to like this which I found encouraging.

Since then over the last week he has been spotted from the house playing games by moving the two sheep who share his grazing around by walking, and occasionally trotting  after them, making faces and generally calling the shots.

This week, I had to pick out a lamb to send tomorrow for an order for a restaurant for next week. As we still have no useful sheepdog I decided it was time to see if Swift and I could get quietly gather them to the gate to save time and effort.  We went through the three fields to the far end to collect any stragglers and found a ram, on his own. Luckily for me the ram was more scared of us and after turning once to look at me and stamping his foot he scarpered off to find his ladies. So we gathered up the little group of stragglers and set off across the next empty field.

Swift gave a little squeal and mini jump half way across this field and I carefully calmed him back down not wanting him to do a bronc act or anything remotely risky. He settled once more and we very gradually at a sedate walking pace pushed all the sheep to the gate and then I rang Jethro [ the wonders of mobiles] to say time for reinforcements please and the gate to be opened.

At just the wrong moment a power walker, talking loudly on a mobile phone, went past the gate scattering the sheep and making them run, completely in the wrong direction. By this point, in order to save the day and actually get the sheep in, I decided I would risk a trot so we set off in pursuit of the scrambling sheep. I was very aware that a canter would be better from a strategic point of view but I am not yet too sure of our brakes [with the Dually halter]  and I did not want to set off any sudden hi-jinks from Swift. Anyway at a steady trot we managed to get behind the sheep, turn them and bring them back to the gate.

Once on the road we had to trot down the lane to turn an escapee while avoiding the van that had also stopped. After this final dash I jumped off and led him from the ground to push the last few lambs in. Jethro was flapping his coat and everyone else was shouting and I felt that Swift had done really well and we needed to end on a good note.

We will see if he continues to play games with the sheep out in his field. He knows he can easily move the cow so we need to build his confidence with larger groups of cattle. He has got quite used to the cattle in the sheds, and even accepted the  calves who were weaned from their mothers only 48 hours ago and despite eating barley and silage are still mooing for their Mums.

the long walk to life

Clearly I spoke to soon when I wrote yesterday about the lack of problems in the cows. I tempted fate. After all this time in farming I should know better!

We were checking the livestock and tagging the latest lambs out in the fields when we noticed one of the heifers calving. She appeared to be in no hurry, which is normal for a heifer, and as we meandered about the four fields nearest to her catching lambs and tagging  and tailing them we realised she really was not progressing in the usual fashion.

It is hard to explain how, after a lifetime of stockmanship, exactly how we know there is a problem, but we did. Maybe she just looked wrong, and she certainly was not getting on with the job – walking around and standing rather than lying down and pushing. Further checking at closer quarters showed we could only find one foot, a front foot. The normal presentation for a calf’s birth is two feet and a head, although almost every year we get a breech [backwards with back feet first].

Jethro and I were a mile and a half from home in a very large field with no means of either catching or restraining the heifer in a small enclosure. There was only one thing to do. Walk her gently and slowly back to the farm. We did this and she was very good and very quiet, six fields we crossed, as gate by gate was shut behind her and then we had a good half mile of open countryside and wheat fields to cross. Every so often along the way she would stop at a trough for a drink and perhaps manage a a few contractions before setting off again but her progress was good. Eventually Jethro ambled her across the last wheat field on the diagonal as I buzzed round in the vehicle to get all the right gates either open or shut back at the farm to get her straight into the yard and in to our cattle handling pens.

The heifer was very amenable to our handling of her which was fantastic and quite remarkable when you think that we bought her as a yearling and she has lived out in our fields for two years since then and she is not really used to close handling excpet for the occasional treatment for parasites and vaccinations such as bluetongue. And receiving extra  rations to supplement the grass in the winter.

The heifer did not want to go in the cattle crush so we kept her in a pen and put a rope halter on her and tied her to the gate. Jethro rolled his sleeves up and put a long veterinary glove on and we poured the lubrication gel all over his hand and arm.  It was not hard to discover why she couldn’t calve herself. The calf’s right leg was pinned back on the the far side of the cervix, and with some careful manoeuvring between contractions Jethro tweaked it forward. We now had a normal presentation for birth, however the heifer was getting tired and the calf appeared to be quite big.

The next step was to attach calving ropes to the two front legs just above the fetlock [ankle]  joints. After doing that and holding them firmly every time the cow pushed we attached the calving aid. This is a very clever machine that fits the rear end of a cow very neatly. The ropes are attached one each side of the central pole on a rachet. As the cow pushes and the calf emerges millimetre by millimetre the rachet is gently tightened. This allows the heifer to give birth naturally without the calf slipping back in every time the contractions ease.  As soon as the calf’s head is out in the outside world the ropes are taken off the rachet and the calf’s weight is supported as the heifer naturally pushes the calf out. This way the calf has the best chance to breathe on delivery and the heifer has the best chance of not being damaged internally during her first birth.

In our long farming careers Jethro and I have both seen these calving aids used on other farms in a very cavalier manner whereby the calf is forced out a  very fast rate and the potential damage done to the cow is almost unimaginable, and we think that this is a most terrible practice and one that needs stopping. We firmly believe it is a balance of helping the cow and keeping the calf alive but we also reckon that using nature and the contractions to our advantage is the best way.

If we can’t ever calve a cow, which happens occasionally, then we ask the vet to come. I think we have only had 2 or 3 Caesarians in all the years we’ve farmed, and all these cows have eventually gone on to give birth normally the next year.

The calf arrived and was laid gently on the clean concrete while we untied the cow. Although it was her first calf, the young cow immediately knew to lick the calf and loved her instantly. We fetched a thick pad of straw, peeled off the outside of a large round bale, to lay under the calf to give grip and padding for when the calf tried to stand, which would only be a matter of minutes.  Then we had a much needed cup of tea. We’d first arrived in the field at at 2pm and now it was 5.30pm

When we came back out, full of tea and biscuits, both mother and daughter were curled up, resting together on the improvised straw island. Later, after checking the other groups of cows and sheep on we found the calf had suckled and received the vital colostrum so we tucked them up together for their first night in a clean, newly strawed byre with a feed of crushed home grown barley for Mum. 

Some tasks in farming are hard work and difficult but very, very satisfying. 

Tomorrow they will go back out to grass and eventually be taken back to the herd by trailer. However, as this cow is such a sweetheart and so very placid we have decided to have her on display in a pen on Open Farm Sunday so that all the visitors can see a cow and calf, really close at hand.

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…

short days

Short days must be the reason we never seem to catch up fully. I meant to post here again on Monday but now find it is Wednesday night!!

The housed cattle are much better and the shed is calm and quiet with contented cattle chewing their cud, and the ram is a wee bit better too. He might be usable next season which would be better than nothing at all which is how it looked last week.

Naughty Ruby, the pet cow, will have to be moved out of the big shed as she just hoovers barley up from the trough at an alarming rate taking it from the younger ones. She can have a different sort of winter, out in the field by day and in at night, it will be easy to do she will follow a bucket anywhere, but we do have to watch out for her cheekiness if she doesn’t get her way.

The pigs are all doing well, we have had one case of joint ill in a piglet, which affected his shoulder, but he has responded well to antibiotic treatment which is another very good thing otherwise he would have been a loss. If it wasn’t for his particularly gimpy ears and big splash of red spray on his  small bottom it would be hard to know which of the 10 had been ill and it is very important to finish the 5 day course of treatment, so the last injection is tomorrow. As a fully operational livestock farm it is hard not to have the odd case of this type of bacterial infection in youngstock. We did spray the navels of the piglets at birth and use iodine on the lambs too, but there is always the occasional case to treat.

We have finally moved some of the pigs outside into their new houses. They are delighted to be out and Dory, our newest sow is especially thrilled. She shows her delight by sidling up to me and then trying to scratch herself [with her whole weight] against my leg. This morning it was more than I could cope with so I found a twig to scratch her with and she wiggled all over with delight, quietly talking, as the twig raked up and down her back. We are the best of friends now.

The annual tidy up for Christmas has begun inside the farmhouse too, with the Dining Room cleaned today for the first time in months, and even the one piece of silver we own had its annual polish last night. Jethro is delighted, he would like the house to be totally in order all the time but somehow all the animals and endless paperwork gets in the way and it needs a party or something big [like Christmas] to finally get the house sorted.

and then there were ten

Well it is certainly time I updated the blog. 

I can hardly believe it is so long since I last wrote on here but family illness, and the all consuming world of running large farming business in the 21st Century have somehow dramatically eaten up a good few weeks without me realising.

I had a lovely few days away, unfortunately cut short by a family emergency. Since then it has been very very busy.

Yesterday, one of the gilts had her piglets, 12 were born alive, one was a runt and died leaving 11, then in the night a strong one climbed up a mini mountain of straw rucked up by the gilt and sadly fell into the water bucket. So now there are 10 and they are now doing well but are not out of the woods yet as they are so tiny and she is so large and does rather plop down in a heap every so often. They are learning to run under the heat lamp, which is behind bars, to keep them safe. It is really amusing to watch as the mother starts to get restless and tries to get up. This causes a procession of squeaky piglets, each no longer than a pencil, to turn away from their mother and start to walk in single file unsteadily to the safety of the creche. A second gilt is due to farrow at the end of the week.

It is currently very busy on the livestock side of the farm: the rams will be turned out with the ewes this week so that we lamb mid-April when the grass is good. The first batch of cattle has come into the yards and are already tucking into our home grown silage. Soon we will wean some of this year’s older calves and they will join the other young-stock in the shed.

Jethro is doing lots of calculations to work out the total stock numbers and the total feed stocks to ensure we have enough fodder to last right through to mid April. As an arable farm we are able to easily supplement the hay and silage we feed to the cattle with home grown rolled barley and straw. However, Jethro does this scientifically and weighs the animals regularly. Our beef is slow matured so we are only looking for continuous growth and gradual weight gain in the winter so the animals are ready to grow on well with next year’s grass.

“all good gifts…”

Jethro delivered several sacks of grains [beans, wheat, oats, barley, and oil seed rape] and several wool fleeces to the local Church this morning, and a box of garden vegetables. It is the harvest festival tomorrow and while many are giving thanks for “all good gifts around us” the ploughing and scattering continues relentlessly on at Prosperous Farm, and all around the country .

The local school children have their harvest service next week too and we do like to show the fruits of the soil to reinforce the link with the countryside. Historically, the harvest services are held at this time of the year however if it was possible to hold the service a month later would mean the service actually tied in better with the farming year.

Four tractors worked today, and the seed cleaner, preparing seed to be sown for next year’s crop. Currently, all hands are working flat out for a minimum of twelve hours every day. The land is gradually being worked down towards a suitable seed bed but it is an arduous process for both man and machines. Some fields are renowned as “plough eaters” the iron hard ground wearing and tearing at the plough shares at an alarming rate.

Watching the occasional news bulletins from the sidelines I get the feeling that the world’s financial markets are being eroded at an even faster pace. It is not comfortable to witness; instead of ploughshares wearing away it will undoubtedly be homes and jobs.

I, apparently along with 2.5 million others, have a small nest egg with the Bradford and Bingley Building Society. I have been torn, on one hand between instinctively wanting to withdraw it, and on the other hand knowing it is well below  the amount protected by the Bankers Guarantee. I just hope that we will not be the first savers to have to try to claim on this scheme.

Another  sign of the times.

 

rising testosterone

The rams are looking better, after a series of foot bathing [wet summers are bad for sheep’s feet]  and a gradual increase in their daily feed ration of barley as we prepare them for the breeding season. As the days shorten their testosterone levels naturally increase and this leads to bouts of fighting amongst the group.

There are always one or two very dominant rams in a group, but one of the worst offenders in the group for fighting had to be put down after ripping his ear almost clean off in a fight. He was an old ram, and was going to be sold this year anyway but his cantankerous nature obviously hastened his end. Instead of a trip to the processing plant he was dealt with at home, which I am sure is probably preferable anyway.

Any new rams brought in to the flock during the next couple of months have to be kept completely separate otherwise serious injury or death can occur. As Jethro turns them out with the ewes late in the breeding season, in mid November, the daily fracas can become quite serious as the testosterone levels rise even further and their frustration mounts. However, as we lamb the flock outdoors we prefer to start the birthing season around the 10^th April as we hope to benefit from warmer weather and plenty of grass which reduces both the labour costs and inputs (feed).

We only mix the rams together again in January when they come back to a field close to home after a couple of months out with the ewes. At this point they are much quieter with no fight left in them, until Autumn comes again.