March 2015

Despite the horrible weather during March, our chickens have been in a frenzy of laying – we’ve been collecting an average of 35 eggs a week (too many for us to eat), so I decided to try doing some pickled eggs as a means of preserving them. We found some great recipes that take the humble pickled egg into realms beyond the pub bar snack - see the recipes here. Now is also the ideal time to pop a few eggs into the incubator with a view to continuing the supply of eggs in late autumn when the older birds go off-lay.



We’re always busy at the start of March getting the ewes vaccinated, treating any lame ones (a few this year, mainly due to the mud and wet ground), twice daily feeding and ‘crutching’ ready for lambing. We’re getting ready for lambing in late-April. This is a lot later than most flocks, but it suits us well and means the lambs will (hopefully) go out onto good grass. The ewes are looking exceptionally well, and, with just a few weeks to go. Between 3-4 weeks before lambing we give all the ewes a trace element and vitamin drench specifically to counteract the deficiencies that we’ve identified in our forage and they get a daily ration of high protein feed according to the number of lambs they’ve been scanned for and their body condition score.

The arrival of a bit of sunshine was all I needed to get out onto the vegetable plot and start sowing seeds – so, in the greenhouse we have butternut squash, cucumber, salad leaves and 3 types of tomato, and in the raised beds the broad beans, cabbage, beetroot, carrots, leeks and parsnips – all starting to sprout nicely. We’re still harvesting last year’s crops of purple-sprouting broccoli, onions and garlic fresh from the garden, as well as squashes, potatoes and onions stored from last year.

The Smallholder Series 

 

 

February 2015

The end of the month brought some very welcome warmth and sunshine, and there’s definitely a hint of spring in the air. I often refer to various aspects of our changing climate in this diary, and in line with many recent reports, it strikes me that spring is arriving a little earlier than in the past. My birthday is the 28^th of February, so I have had reason to recall this date going back over a number of years. As a child, my birthday was always quite a wintery affair, and no one expected to see signs of spring for a good few weeks ahead. But this year Twitter was alive with ‘tweets’ marking the new season’s first robin’s egg, the first buttercup, and the first frogspawn – all seemingly marking the remarkably early arrival of spring.

Here at Green Farm we’ve been impatiently waiting for the mud to dry up. Three fairly wet winters in a row have caused the water table to remain high, so any heavy downpour leaves parts of our ground looking like the Somme (ably reconstructed by our two big horses, Georgie and Jamesey).
We can easily measure the height of the water table by simply lifting the stone slab that covers the old stone well; this used to be the sole source of water to the farm kitchen until the mains arrived in the 1960s. It’s only every dried up once in the 12 years we have lived here.

Spring is already transforming our farm and the surrounding countryside, birds are certainly pairing up and seeking nesting sites, and I’m desperately trying to resist the urge to get all my vegetable seeds into the ground, knowing that it’s far too early and we can still expect to see some sharp frosts.

The hens are looking plump and are laying well, though we sadly lost an old, re-homed Sussex-type hybrid to egg peritonitis. This is basically a disease of old age, where the oviduct starts to fail and the egg isn’t expelled, ultimately causing internal poisoning. There really isn’t any cure, as it is likely to recur, so the best course of action is humane slaughter. In the case of a much-loved hen it may be worth having the vet give an antibiotic injection, but as the condition is likely to recur, the prognosis is poor. Our bustling ‘Starr’ is buried beside her sister (who died of the same condition), amongst the snowdrops.

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January 2015

A lovely surprise to start the New Year – our 28-week old Leghorn hens started to lay on 1st January, the most beautiful pale blue eggs!

January is a busy month at Green Farm; the ewes are now just 8 weeks from lambing – these last few weeks of pregnancy account for 70% of the lamb’s foetal growth, so we have to ensure that the ewes’ rapidly increasing energy and protein requirements are catered for. We scan the ewes so we know which ewes are carrying multiple lambs and by keeping a close eye (and hand!) on their body condition score (BCS), we’ll be able to increase their ration gradually to keep pace with both their own needs and those of the growing lambs.

Their rumen capacity for bulk feed decreases as the lambs grow, so, in addition to the ad lib hay we’ve been feeding since November, we start them off on a small ration (0.25kg per ewe) of concentrates, gradually increasing this to up to 1.0kg (in two feeds) for the ewes carrying triplets. Have a look at our article 'Nutritional Management of the Ewe in Late Pregnancy' for a downloadable sample Feeding Chart, to help you manage your own flock at this time. Throughout their pregnancy we condition score the ewes (aiming to maintain a score of 3) – it’s an easy job when they’re all feeding at the trough!

If any are a bit on the thin side, they can be separated for extra feeding. By careful observation and nutritional management, you will hopefully avoid the most common metabolic and deficiency diseases of the pregnant ewe, these are:

• Hypocalcaemia (lambing sickness)
• Hypomagnesaemia (grass staggers)
• Pregnancy Toxaemia (twin lamb disease)

We’ve only once lost a heavily pregnant ewe to ‘Twin Lamb Disease’, or Pregnancy Toxaemia – this is one of the metabolic diseases that can affect ewes during late pregnancy. It’s caused by inadequate nutrition or stress, so it’s wise to be as calm around the ewes as possible – even moving to a new field can trigger a stress reaction. Sheep that are over-fat (BCS >3.5 are also susceptible. Signs to watch for are: reluctance to feed, laboured breathing, foamy mouth and nostrils, facial or body twitching and the smell of ketones on the breath (slightly reminiscent of nail polish remover – once smelt, never forgotten). The condition is treatable if caught early enough; as soon as we realised there was a problem, we gave the ewe a drench of Ketol, calcium (by subcutaneous injection) and antibiotic injections. An internal examination confirmed that she was not yet ready to lamb. We repeated the calcium and Ketol at 4-hourly intervals, but sadly the ewe died during the early hours of the morning. This was an unpleasant introduction to another aspect of stock keeping: what to do when an animal dies. The options are limited: it is illegal to bury livestock on the farm, and there are very few hunt kennels left that have the facilities to deal with fallen stock. Up until a few years ago, the local Animal Health Division would arrange to collect sheep free-of-charge under the National Scrapie Plan, but this has now been phased out. It’s a really good idea to have your local information to hand, for you will one day face this inevitability.

Also during January, approximately six weeks before lambing, we give all the sheep (including the rams and last year’s ewe lambs) a booster vaccination. This will also protect the newborn lambs against Clostridial Diseases for the first few weeks of life.

December 2014

I’m really no Christmas-killjoy, but neither is it my favourite time of year. Short days mean cramming all the extra jobs around the smallholding into scant daylight hours, peering round fields by torchlight checking animals, calming dangerously frightened horses that have been spooked by unseasonable fireworks, and making do with nasty supermarket eggs as ours have given up laying for the season!




Our changing climate seems to have put paid to any ‘deep and crisp and even’ snow here in the south of the country, instead we have soggy fields of ‘brown and squelchy mud’, but for me, the worst aspect of 21^st century Christmas is the unstoppable commercialism, typified by ‘Black Friday’ – to my mind the antithesis of both Christmas and smallholder living!

The ‘holy grail’ for most smallholders is to be as self-sufficient in as many ways as possible, and weather-related events such as flooding bring home to us all just how reliant we really are on the infrastructure of the 21^st Century! I recall writing an earlier diary entry on this subject some time ago (October 2009), pondering the possibility of becoming at least, less reliant on the supermarket, and at best, relinquishing the checkout and ‘loyalty card’ schemes altogether! So, how have we managed? Well, we continue to collect a small quantity of ‘Nectar’ points from the mega-Sainsbury store in Gloucester (it’s convenient, parking is free ‘n’ easy, they stock items you can’t get from the local stores, etc., etc.) – all the usual excuses for failing to learn to be more personally resourceful and socially responsible, and blindly continuing to be an obedient consumer! We do, however, in rain or shine, make our regular pilgrimage to frequent the many and varied independent shops in our local market town, Newent. It’s a lovely trip out, and as well as the luxury of being able to buy a myriad of locally-produced products, we meet friends in the high street and stand for ages, blocking the narrow pavement having a good old chin-wag!

Continuing on the theme of self-sufficiency, we’d love to be able to exist off-grid. We have solar panels on a conveniently south-facing roof, and even on an overcast day between the end of March and the beginning of October we rarely need to heat water by any other method. We would have liked to install photovoltaic panels, but a survey confirmed our suspicion that our 16^th century farmhouse roof would not support the weight! Try as I might, I cannot learn to love wind turbines, and the idea of having one constantly in my line of sight could not be borne.

So, life, as always, is a compromise between dreamy idealism, and what the individual decides he or she can or cannot do without.

www.smallholderseries.co.uk

October 2014

My Scary Halloween: I’m sitting at my computer in a T-shirt. The heating hasn’t been turned on since last winter. The grass is still growing well ahead of the sheep and horses and there are more summer flowers in bloom in my garden than I had in July. It’s 23˚C outside and several peacock butterflies are sunbathing on the buddleia, catching the warm rays of the sun. How lovely! BUT, and it’s a big ‘but’, if this glorious but unseasonable weather is due to ‘global warming’, there is inevitably another, more sinister side to the climatic coin: the threat from seasonal pests and diseases in livestock will persist beyond their traditional timescale.

Just over a week ago we experienced the worst case of fly-strike on a ram lamb that I’ve ever seen. For several years now our ‘fly management’ regime has been 100% effective: we treat all the sheep and lambs immediately after shearing in mid-May with ‘Clik’ pour-on, an Insect Growth Regulator (IGR) that prevents blowfly eggs hatching into maggots and gives 16 week protection, taking us up to mid-September, by which time the threat from blowfly is waning. We also use ‘Red Top’ fly traps to reduce the blowfly population in the area, and finally, but most importantly, we check the sheep twice a day – morning and evening, as it takes less than 24 hours for eggs laid on the sheep’s wool to develop into maggots. On this particular evening I noticed a ram lamb separated from the flock, laying down; as I got closer to him I could see a dirty brown patch on his side, and his fleece looked ‘blown’ – lifted away from his side. The maggots covered about a third of his visible flank and spread across his back. A sheep that is affected this badly will often die of toxic shock.

Clik will not treat a sheep affected by maggots; a product that kills already developed maggots is required. I cut the fleece away from the affected area – in fact a lot of it just fell away where it had been chewed by the maggots – and applied an appropriate insecticide. The skin was severely damaged: maggots secrete enzymes that liquefy and digest skin tissue, allowing secondary infections, decomposing tissue then releases toxins that are absorbed into the bloodstream, causing systemic illness and ultimately, death.

I was determined to save this little fellow, so once the live maggots had been dealt with, I gave him a shot of antibiotic to help him fight off infection, an anti-inflammatory to soothe the pain, and then applied “Summer Cream”, an anti-bacterial cream with a sun-screen to protect the damaged skin and promote healing. Ten days later he’s loosing more fleece as a result of the shock to his system, but he’s alive, lively and doing well – and his new fleece is starting to grow through … but he’ll never win a beauty contest!

The forecast is that our Indian summer will soon give way to autumn, and the signs so far is that it will be a spectacularly colourful one.

And finally, Carole Youngs of The Smallholder Series has written a thought-provoking article for the winter edition of Practical Sheep, Goats & Alpacas magazine, about how to breed and manage sheep in the most environmentally friendly way.

www.smallholderseries.co.uk

September 2014

There’s nothing more satisfying than selling top quality pedigree livestock that will go on to establish new flocks, and this month our Hampshire Downs have travelled to new homes in Worcestershire and Monmouthshire

In the first case, a very well-grown ram lamb, who will initially be tupping cross-bred ewes on a commercial farm owned by a young couple just starting their own farming business – I understand that the ram is to be called Gorgeous (which is our flock name) Gordon (which reflects the new owners sense of humour!). Interestingly, the purchasers, both from farming backgrounds and both having studied agriculture at college, selected their chosen ram not only on his evident good looks, but also on a thorough examination of his pedigree and his EBVs, or Estimated Breeding Values. Firstly, they specifically wanted a ram that was born as one of twins, as this would make him more likely to father twins himself – a very good production trait for a commercial farm. Next, they carefully studied his growth rates, which we record from birth to maturity and from these we can calculate his Daily Liveweight Gain (DLG). Ideally, a commercial sheep breeder wants to fatten lambs as quickly as possible – the longer they stay on the farm the more feed and grass they eat, the more likely they are to be affected by parasites (which will slow their growth rate), and the more likely they are to need various treatments with expensive pharmaceuticals! In addition to these outlays, there is the farmer’s labour to take into account. Adding all these factors together, it’s easy to see how useful it is to keep specific records.

Our next purchasers, smallholders with a lovely small farm on the Welsh Borders, had done their homework carefully and decided on Hampshire Downs on the basis of looks, temperament and, very importantly, their eating quality as they wanted to start a small-scale business selling lamb through a box-scheme. Having done their research, Hamps came out top for the flavour and succulence of their meat! As they were starting the flock from scratch, we suggested that, instead of buying ewe lambs (which are always better if left to their second year before being bred from themselves), they choose 4 shearling ewes, which we could put to our tup so they wouldn’t need to buy their own ram in their first year. So they chose 4 lovely ewes, and 3 lambs to look at in the meantime!

Mid-month we brought our own ewes in to give them a complete check-over, and make sure they were all fit to go to the ram – we checked:

• FEET – ewes need to be sound or they may be reluctant to mate, will feed less so may lose condition which will lower their fertility
• UDDERS – older ewes may have damaged teats, or have lost the function of one or both ‘quarters’ due to infections, such as mastitis
• TEETH – older ewes especially may have missing teeth, and although they may be in good condition following a summer’s grazing, they may struggle during a bad winter
• CONDITION – if the ewes are poor now, after the lush grass of the summer, they won’t gain sufficient condition to rear a pair of twins
• WORM COUNT – we select ewes that have resistance to internal parasites, so a faecal egg count will identify any ewes that are highly susceptible

Thankfully, all my favourite ewes passed this examination with flying colours, and will be put to the ram on 5^th of November, for lambing to start from the 1^st of April.

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And finally, Carole Youngs of The Smallholder Series has written a comprehensive guide to ram selection and management for the autumn edition of Practical Sheep, Goats & Alpacas magazine, which is currently on sale in all good newsagents.

www.smallholderseries.co.uk