Spring Time 'where there is live stock there is dead stock'

Another of the major lessons of the spring centered around Mr
Aitkenhead the cockerel. What I learned was that sometimes you have
to do things you do not want to do, but must be done! I had always had
a good relationship with him, we hand feed our poultry and he fed from
me first.
My mother had had problems earlier in the year were he had gone for
her leg, on another occasion I stepped in when he appeared to be
going for her again, two isolated incidents, or so I thought!
Problems started when he went for my legs when I had fed them on
morning and was walking away. A lot of wing flapping and leg clawing,
luckily I had my cut off waders on.
This happened every time I fed them so Debbie took to feeding the
chickens so hopefully the attacks would stop. They didn't in fact he
actually came looking for me.
I took advice from breeders and did what people recommended even
picking him up and cuddling him! Needless to say this didn't work and
he wasn't backing down each time I had to.
I started to worry about the kids, my youngest is only four and he was
attacking about her face height and wasn't backing down he just kept
on coming. I know he was probably only feeling threatened by me but I
couldn't take the chance and could not just stop in the house.
It all ended when we had been to seek our weekly shopping and
returned to find him actually waiting by the front door. Something he
had never done. Anyway I got out he went at me twice so we ended up
having chicken later that night.
I know it sounds matter of fact but I really hated doing it as he was a
beautiful cockerel and I had hoped to have used him for many a year in breeding.
As is generally the case with missed opportunities one of the Light
Sussex hens went broody a few weeks later then another. We ended
up bringing in fertile eggs to hatch our own chicks, whilst also rearing
some New Hampshire Red day old chicks to provide us with a
cockerel.
It seems strange now worrying about getting an incubator when all of
our hens went broody over the spring and summer, especially when it
is such hard work rearing chicks once the novelty wears off! A good
lesson for the future 'leave it to mother nature'.
One last thing we learned during the spring was that grass cuttings
can be fatal! I took delivery of about 10 black plastic bags full of grass
cuttings intending to throw them on the compost heap as a favour to
someone!
I found that the hens enjoyed scratching about in the grass so dropped
a bag near to the chicken house. Unfortunately the two youngest found
three chicks playing in the grass and thought they were trying to get
warm by making a nest so covered them up to keep them warm.
By the time they had innocently told us what they had done two of the
chicks were dead, although unbelievably one was just about alive so
that went straight back under the mother hen, and grew to be a very
nice hen herself.

Spring time 'The miracle of new life'

We were told of Edna and Bandy when we picked up Jake and
Elwood. Edna was a worn mouthed Suffolk ewe. Bandy was her ewe
lamb from the previous year. They had been running with a Ryeland
tup and were due mid March or so we thought.

Over the next few weeks we waited patiently Edna's udders bagged
up and she got larger and larger. Bandy was a big ewe anyway which
was why she was left in with the tup the previous year, she was actually
larger than her mother, although unlike her mother thought she was a
horse!

I lost count of the times we found Bandy out of the field having jumped
over the stock proof fencing, or stone walls. Unless I had seen her
jump the heights she did I would have said it was impossible for a ewe
to do that! Mid-March came and nothing.

Edna seemed enormous by now I had converted a coal shed into a
makeshift maternity unit plenty of straw and protection form the
elements. We actually spent a lot of hours late at night thinking it must
be going to happen tonight but still nothing.
About 3 weeks after we had been told Edna would deliver I noticed
her up at the top of the field whilst working on a greenhouse, and what
looked like two white plastic bags lying near her. Like any good
smallholder I went to get them to put in the bin so the animals didn't eat
them.

We have all been there when you are walking towards something
thinking this isn't right. The bags were two lambs! I shouted on Debbie
but she was in the house which was a fair distance away, so I quickly
checked they were breathing and ran back to the house to let Debbie
know they had arrived we both ran back to were Edna had delivered
her lambs with the kids not far behind.

I was sure that there were two lambs but another form was lying on the
ground must be the placenta I thought very yellow though! Yes another
lamb but this one wasn't breathing!

I tried to clear the mucus away then grabbed the back legs and threw
the lamb forward a few times it gurgled at first then when Debbie
started to rub it the lamb let out a bleat. Another one of those moments
I will never forget and what makes this such a wonderful way of life.

We left the proud mum with her lambs soon after and returned to the
house to find that Debbie had been running the water to wash the
dishes when I had told her about the lambs!

We returned to see if every thing was fine after the mopping up
operation. Unfortunately it wasn't the lambs hadn't started to suckle
even though we cleared the wax plugs, Edna was baaing pitifully and
the lambs looked freezing.

We decided to take the lambs back to the coal shed and after a little
coaxing Edna followed. Over the next week we learned very quickly
how to look after sickly lambs, this involved tube feeding them for the
first four days day and night! Edna was a fantastic mum she would
stand for Debbie to milk her then we used the milk to tube feed the
lambs two rams, Donkey (he was the biggest) Lucky (never name
any animal Lucky) and a ewe April (she was the lifeless one).

We also learned an important lesson in that you can put so much into
caring for animals and this still will not be enough, as for some reason
we found Lucky dead a week after he was born. He didn't look right
the previous night but they all three had looked much worse and had
improved so much.

After a week or two the normal guilty feelings fade and you realise that
you do what you can but sometimes it is not enough no matter what
you do. The phrase 'were there is livestock there is dead stock' comes
to mind.

It amazed me how once they had lived through that first week the two
remaining lambs just seemed to thrive, we had taught them to suckle themselves now and boy did they. One day they were defenceless little
lambs needing to be fed the next they were massive jumping around
the field playing together.