Monday, April 23, 2007

More risky business

I guess it could be said that we are well and truly into 2006. The festive season is but a distant memory and as usual work carries on.
Since writing mid January Bonnie did produce her second litter of Large Black Tamworth cross piglets. Three boars and three gilts. As seems usual with her it was textbook again although this time due to the time of farrowing around 6pm and the atrocious weather we shut the door and left her in peace. Checking in a few times to make sure everything was fine I discovered the placenta passed around 9pm. Although initially only seeing 5 we found that six had actually been born when we went to see the proud mum next morning.
Bonnie has again taken to motherhood well and all 6 are thriving to the point that at less than two weeks old they are trying to steal Bonnie's rolls at feeding time. We had hoped for a small litter as we have found that our paddock system really cannot support large numbers of pigs. Combined with my solution to boggy areas of throwing straw onto the affected areas this just added to the problem resulting in around 2 full weeks of work trying to remove all the wet straw from the living areas.
From springtime we will house Bonnie, Lady our new gilt and Malcolm our boar in an acre field and use the paddocks we have been using purely for the litters to grow in. This should give us plenty of room to rotate as and when required because the other important factor we have found is that the Large Black breed does grow what seems a great deal slower than the Tamworth breed. At times the two remaining Tamworth gilts look about twice the size of the Large Black gilts even though they were born within a week of each other, so even the negative affect of winter months on their growing rate can be put aside and more of a breed issue seems to be the case.
We don't mind this though as we have never been to strict on when the time is right to send them to the abattoir rather we judge by what the condition of the pigs are at the time and what is happening in our lives. We would much rather that they grow slowly and produce good quality pork rather than trying to force them to a weight quicker and eating joints of fat.
The ram has been returned after his holiday with our six ewes and hopefully we should have some new arrivals during May and June. We are planning to keep another two ewe lambs and probably use two of our ewes as mutton having recently been very impressed with the quality of meat from one of our older ewes. Ram lambs hopefully will be born and again be reared for the freezer along with any remaining ewe lambs.
I have thought about selling our lambs but to be honest I would rather that they were in the freezer for our own use as we as a family eat a very large proportion of meat products in our diet. To the point where even if we were lucky enough to have six excess lambs we would quite easily consume those over a year period as well as the pork, mutton and poultry. The thought of having to buy this kind of meat from elsewhere is just something I don't want to contemplate.
I think I should hang my head in shame for forgetting to mention Coco our new Jack Russell pup. We bought her from a gamekeeper before Christmas as a present for Amber our daughter. Amber has always asked for a small dog as she is on the petite side herself and can at times be overwhelmed by large dogs. I remember the first time she opened Dipsticks kitchen door to be confronted by Henry who is some size! Needless to say she closed the door pretty quickly.
Coco has settled into life here very quickly and from the first night has slept with Sassy and Flossy our other two dogs. To see them playing is a real treat and Coco gives as much back as she takes and has even taken to the taste of game birds I have finished breasting. If she would just stop piddling in the kitchen all would be bliss but being only 3 months at the moment there is still a lot of time to go and with the longer days coming more of her time will be spent outside anyway.
Work here has been just as busy as ever. Have nearly finished digging over the area in the polytunnel and I have also managed to move plenty of pig manure onto the out door beds. Our seeds have arrived and the seeds allocated in a plan. Must keep reminding myself sow small amounts and often. Watering or lack of was a problem last year and the year before so work has started on the water trickling system. I will leave this until later as I will write an article in the hope it is of use to others.
Finally to the new job. Beating season has finished now and what glorious weather we have had. Warm days up to a staggering 5 degrees and little wind to talk of. The keeper's days saw the departure of new and old friends for a few months anyway. Now it's time for the serious stuff!
I start my new game-keeping job next Monday and I would be lying if I said I was not apprehensive about this change. Nursing has meant I have really had a steady income and a secure job for many years but the challenges I found have gradually lessened to the point that I just don't feel any enthusiasm towards nursing anymore. My manager did however express a very good point in that by changing jobs now it may give me a good rest from the profession to evaluate how much it actually means to me.
For the new job I am going down the self-employed route, which is something I have no experience of and to be honest web site information leaves a lot to be desired. However I must admit that talking over the phone to people in the relevant Government departments has eased the financial worries I had. Never the less it remains to be seen whether this risk will work out in the long term.
Many rumours fly around the various countryside groups of shooting being banned, the current avian flu problems, which to many folk would make this career change, seem like lunacy. All I can say is that the opportunity to live and work in the countryside is just too much of a draw, just as smallholding meant we left a very good city lifestyle behind us over two years ago. We haven't looked back since moving and I hope I can say the same about game keeping in the future. I do though take a little reassurance from the fact that I could get a nursing job pretty quickly if the worst scenario did materialise.
Well I think that will do for January and I get the feeling that even though the last few months have been busy this is only the start. I just hope we can fit everything in!

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