Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Winter 2006-2007

Time has past so quickly and thankfully so as the winter really did seem to have a negative effect on my mood. How warm it was, yes the ever present wind seemed to be the same but temperature wise it was uncannily hot as far as winter goes. From a practical point of view it meant a great deal of mud around the place which tends to get even the most positive person down after a while. Trying to keep the animals in warm dry bedding was a nightmare and at one of the lowest points I was going to sell them all as I just didn't see that we could carry on like that for any longer.
Thankfully though just as the winter had been warm and so very wet, spring seemed to come early and the land dried out quickly much to our relief. It showed us that at winter time we really can only afford to keep the breeding stock and no others as the land just cannot cope. On the positive side the weather for game keeping was very nice indeed. For the first year in three I can't think of a time when I was standing thinking what on earth am I doing here in this weather. The only down fall was that with winter weather clothing on it was hard going in the heat.
Overall the shooting season went very well although it did take a lot of time up and didn't leave a great deal for spending time with the family once the holding work was done. Thankfully I have managed to rearrange the hours I work to make sure that I have a good amount of time to spend at home with the family whilst hopefully managing to keep the game birds on the estate.
The gilt weaners from Lady's litter late last year were sold as breeding stock and the others are now getting very near to going to the abattoir. I think I may have to wait until the beginning of May because of the limited space in the freezers after they were re-filled with the last of the boars from Bonnie's third litter earlier in the year.
Both Bonnie and Lady are again due litters but we have decided to try to have one litter from each per year now and that will be early in the spring and means we will have no fatteners to feed over winter. That will mean trying to keep Bonnie and Lady away from Malcolm for around 5 months. We will just have to see if it works out as I am not sure that it is going to work for them to be by themselves for that long? The girls I think will be fine as they will generally have some of their weaners with them for a good while but as for Malcolm I don't really know as he hasn't been by himself for any length of time.

Time for the pot

From a poultry point of view we need a good sort out as we have far too many of most breeds. The Norfolk Bronze turkeys worked very well and we enjoyed one of the stags for our christmas dinner having hung it for 10 days. It tasted fantastic although I must admit I thought initially that 10 days was a little long. Now I think I will take the view of why change the wheel if it isn't broken and do the same with future turkeys. Unfortunately the stag that we decided to keep for breeding was aggressive towards Debbie so he had to go which now leaves us with our pair of slate turkeys. The stag seems pretty laid back so we will see how he performs with his hen.
Eggs are starting to mass up now and are regularly being fed to the pigs. The main problem will be the feeding which is rapidly rising in cost even though we buy only wheat now. As they are all free range we haven't bought layers pellets for over a year as we found little difference except in our pockets. Over the next few weeks I will start sorting out the younger cockerels and drakes and see what we have but no doubt some of the hens will need to be either sold or put in the freezer.
The sheep and cows have settled together fine although at feed times the cows Hope and her daughter Glory have a distinct advantage with their horns which they use to nudge into the barley. Nothing serious just a little poke to get into a better position. We are pleased with the way the sheep have gained in condition and also the lambs from last year. We should have plenty of mutton and lamb for the coming year as we want to reduce the flock back to 4 for breeding this autumn which will mean 6 lambs and 4 ewes need to be sorted for the freezer at the back end of summer.

Mother Hope
and daughter Glory

The cows I am still undecided upon but am leaning towards processing them for their meat. For our set up and not having the time to be here full time because of work commitments I feel that breeding could potential cause a great deal of problems for us and that would not be fair on ourselves or the animals so again later this year I will make a final decision on what to do. There is the other option of them being grass cutters but realistically they would be very expensive to keep like that so I don't think that will be an option we will take.

Sassy full to bursting with pups!

Lastly we have had Sassy our Springer Spaniel mated with one of the local studs. The idea is that Debbie would like a bitch pup to train to retrieve birds on the shoots and help with rounding the pheasants up during the summer. Sassy has performed really well over the season and has such a keen sense of smell for the birds combined with her calm temperament it became obvious that she had good qualities to pass onto some pups. She is due next month and it remains to be seen as to whether she has her litter first or Bonnie!

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