Diary
Egg sales
Sunday 6 May, 2012
Since I've found the calculator on my iPhone and I was doing the egg money, I thought I'd do a few wee calculations.
Over the last two weeks, we've taken £141 in egg money - at £3 a dozen, that's 47 dozen or 564 eggs.
An 6-egg box is 7p, so that's a cost of £6.58, maximum, as we do re-use clean ones that are returned. At 125g pellets / day, each hen costs 34p per week in pellets to feed; for 80 hens, that's £53.20 for the fortnight. On top of that, there's mixed corn at £10 for the period; a bale of Hemcore at £12 as well.
Broody Orpington
Friday 4 May, 2012
Our Black Orpington has gone broody, so Dan picked up 13 Welsummer eggs from TAS's "cooped-up" on Wednesday night, so instead of two wee cream pullet eggs, she's now mum to 13 large, dark brown eggs. She doesn't seem to mind though 
.
We haven't put eggs under a broody for a long time and I donated our incubator to a school project, so we're hoping that we'll get a half decent hatch.
Today's birds
Wednesday 2 May, 2012
Peter was here today from British Trust for Ornithology, ringing birds. He caught 37, including 4 retraps, from 11 different species.
Despite our cats, house sparrows are most numerous at 16, but we had two new species caught today - a willow warbler and a chiffchaff.
Too close for comfort
Tuesday 17 April, 2012
On a small property like Dalmore, nowhere is very far from the house, but this year, the sheep nursery is in Home Field, which is directly in front of the house and our bedroom window. This morning at 3.30am, when I thought the broken nights were over, I wakened to the sound of Jura bleating like mad.
Since she was just turned out yesterday, I thought I'd better go and check that all was well - I suspected that she had just "lost" her lamb. And so it was that I was out in jammies and wellies, in the dark and the rain, with a flashlight, looking for the "lost" lamb. To be fair, it was pretty horrid - windy and sleety - but Jura was soon reunited with lamby.
Well, that will be lambing over for another year
Monday 16 April, 2012
Well, that's lambing over at Dalmore for another year. The last two ewes and their lambs went out this morning, although Nellie's twins (the Stringys) are still getting a top up from a bottle.
The lambing box is cleaned out and out of date stuff discarded; flock register is completed; lambing pens are down, although the lambing shed has been left bedded just in case the weather turns and I want to bring the littlest lambs in.
Read more on Well, that will be lambing over for another year
The Stringys
Monday 16 April, 2012
We have a gimmer (Nellie) with twins and she doesn't seem to have much milk. She's got a lovely udder, no heat, nice placed teats and her lambs do suckle away. She loves her boys and tucks herself up so that they get latched on easily.
Nellie's lambs
They suckled quick so have definitely had whatever colostrum she had - and they are nice bright lambs (we've nicknamed them "the stringys" as they are quite bid framed but, well, stringy".
What a change in the weather
Tuesday 3 April, 2012
Last week, the Met office was forecasting snow for this week. As we sat out in the sun in shirt sleeves, I thought "no way" - but the bods at the Met office were right.
Our first lamb is now 12 days old - hasn't seen rain. Well, he saw it last night. We house our pregnant ewes at night but once ewes have lambed and the lambs are well mothered, we leave them out. Yesterday, just in case the forecast was right, I asked Dan to put the livestock trailer in the nursery field to afford some shelter, if not in it, then around and under it.
Niamh
Saturday 31 March, 2012
Niamh had a white tup lamb at midnight last night. He weighed in at 5.1kg. I was concerned about her, especially given Nova's experience, so I called out the vet, since she didn't seem to be making much of it. I thought I could feel one foot and a big head but it was very tight and I didn't want to damage either ewe or lamb.
Millie managed to get the second foot and, with much effort on both her and Niamh's part, lambed her normally.
As might be expected, Niamh was a bit shellshocked, as was the lamb, but she had plenty milk so once I was sure the lamb was OK, I left them in the mothering pen for half an hour. When I came back, she was giving him a good lick and was chuntering away to him. He was almost up on his feet, so I gave him a hand to feed. This was 2am; by 4am, when I checked again, he was up on his feet, dry and full of milk.
Getting in the last fruit trees
Friday 30 March, 2012
We had set ourselves a target of planting all the fruit trees by the end of March. This morning, all that remained of the 70 trees we bought were four pear, to be trained up the west wall of the West Range and four "spare" apple trees.
John had cut wooden battens to take the wires a few days ago and I had applied wood preservative; John put them up yesterday and this morning, Dan planted the four trees. Tomorrow, I'm going to prune them and tie them in. We're going to espalier train them rather than fan train.
