Diary

May 2012RSS feed

Today's birds

Wednesday 2 May, 2012

by Rosemary at 8:35pm in Wildlife Comments closed

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.

Broody Orpington

Friday 4 May, 2012

by Rosemary at 9:44am in Poultry 4 comments Comments closed

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 smiley.

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.

Egg sales

Sunday 6 May, 2012

by Rosemary at 6:05pm in Poultry 7 comments Comments closed

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.

Bye, bye Leo and hello, Nemo

Friday 25 May, 2012

by Rosemary at 9:24pm in Sheep 2 comments Comments closed

It's been all change on the tup front this last couple of weeks.

Leo (Fetternear Lionheart) has been our fabulous tup for two years, but as his daughters are coming into the breeding flock this year, we had to find a new home for him. He's only three this year and a healthy, happy boy who throws great lambs, so we hoped we could find him a good home privately.

Leo's farewell teaLeo having his farewell tea

George, our first Shetland calf

Friday 25 May, 2012

by Rosemary at 9:36pm in Cattle 7 comments Comments closed

Our Shetland heifer, Breeze, was due to calve today - and she did!

When I fed them at 8am, I noticed a wee bit of fluid on her back end and she was very pauky - raising her tail and asking for a rub. Although today was her due date, I didn't really think she's go bang on time but I decided to check her at 10am, before I started work in the office. When I went into the field, she was flat out at the far end, with her back to me. I wasn't sure if she was just sunbathing (it's been glorious here today), but as I approached, she stood up and I could see the calf. I ran back for Dan and by the time we got back, he was born.

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