At this point, I’d like to move on to a more cheerful subject, but instead, I’m going to share a very sad story. In August’s Diary last year I described the various tests that our vet had carried out on a 6 year old ewe, “Meggie”, that had been loosing condition through the summer months since her lambs were weaned in mid-July. We always put the ewes onto poorer pasture to help them ‘dry-off’ quickly after weaning – it helps prevent mastitis occurring and they usually recover condition quickly. Meggie gained a few kilos and started to look much better, and in every other respect she appeared sound, and our vet gave her a clean bill of health with instructions to ‘flush’ her well on some good grass prior to tupping (mating) in November. True to character, Meggie scanned for twins in February and sailed through her pregnancy with consummate ease. Her strapping twin lambs, born in April, had a combined weight of 9.6kgs and thrived on her rich milk (ewe’s milk is more nutritious than either cow’s or goat’s) – but whilst in the lambing shed I’d noticed her ‘quidding’ – dropping partly-chewed hay from her mouth, a clear sign of a problem with her cheek teeth, meaning she was unable to chew properly. At shearing in late April we realised just how skinny she had got – she was quite literally feeding her lambs off her back, despite a daily ration of mixed grain, beet and corn with added minerals and vitamins. In early June I found her in the field, unable to rise and, uncharacteristically, she had little interest in feed offered. I knew there was no way back for Meggie, and called our vet to euthanase her.
If you have ever kept animals, you’ll understand that, every once in a while, one animal catches your eye, stands out above the rest – Meggie, the only ewe in our flock to have a name – was that sheep.
Back in March I wrote about our decision to survey the badger sett on our land with a view to vaccinating the resident badgers against Bovine TB. The vaccination programme has now been in place for some time, during which the badgers have been enjoying a regular generous peanut supper, placed by Lucy of Badger Vaccination who is undertaking the baiting, trapping and vaccination. Every morning the peanuts have gone, and – thanks to the wet weather (!?) we can track the badgers’ paw prints around the site, giving us a fair idea of their numbers and activity. All was going well, and ITV West wanted to do a news story about badger vaccination, so we scheduled their visit to coincide with the date the humane traps would be deployed ready to catch and vaccinate the badgers. Following a foul wet and windy night, we all assembled at 4 a.m. on a beautiful dry late June morning, and, quiet as mice, we tiptoed our way to the traps … and every one was empty! Don’t they know what’s good for them!
They say never work with children or animals, but we were keen to promote vaccination as an alternative option to culling to as wide a farming and countryside audience as possible, so it was disappointing not to have some real live badgers for the TV crew. The likelihood is that the awful weather persuaded Brock and his friends to stay indoors that night. So, the programme continues, waiting for some finer weather to entice the badgers into our traps! By the end of our 5-year programme, we should be very familiar with the habits of the Green Farm badgers!
And finally, we have another hatch of chicks this month: 6 Speckled Sussex and just one Light Sussex; sadly, the 5 other Light Sussex eggs failed to hatch. After leaving them in the incubator for a further 4 days after the last hatch, we broke them open to see what had happened: one was fully developed but dead in the shell, and the other 4 were infertile.
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