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.

That's a profit of £59.22 for a forthnight - a fortune, no less. If I spend an average of an hour a day on the hens - that's an hourly rate of £4.21. But what would I be doing otherwise - sitting on my bum eating cake and drinking tea .

We're selling, on average, 40 eggs a day which is all we produce - we're only allowed to eat the broken, dirty or pullet eggs that can't be sold . 

We have 35 Black Rocks and 2 White Leghorns in one flock, which produces the bulk of the eggs and about 20 old birds of various ages (Warrens, Black Rocks and other odds and sods), that lay a bit but if I was really serious, I'd cull. The twenty new Rhode Rocks are starting to lay but the eggs are still too small to sell.

The 20 POL Rhode Rocks cost £280 including delivery. To buy a 40 bird house, feeders, drinkers etc and 40 pullets probably isn't far short of £1300 - or 5,200 eggs / 433 dozen or 43 weeks of your £30/week profit. I haven't costed in fencing, veterinary costs or incidentals like disinfectant, louse powder and so on.

Do you know, I kind of wish I hadn't found the calculator now

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.

We've never had Welsummers before, but they have a reputation as a good dual purpose breed and the males are indentifiable at hatching, so we'll know what we've got. And hopefully we'll have some dark egg laying hens to bring into our laying flock.

Despite our cats, house sparrows are most numerous at 16, but we had two new species caught today - a willow warbler and a chiffchaff.

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.

I had a good look at the Stringys but they were both with mum and their tummys were full so, having made sure everyone was mothered up, I went back to bed.

At 7am, it was pouring rain, windy and cold. Jura's lamb and the Stringys looked a bit fed up, so we've brought them back into the lambing shed (not cleaned out yet, just in case). The older lambs were either in the trailer or under it. The Stringys have had a bottle and they all seem fine now - ewes are munching hay - but they can stay in probably until tomorrow.

Off to Forfar now for more milk powder

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.

It's been an interesting lambing. We had our first C section, plus three other visits from the vet. On the plus side, we have nine healthy ewes and thirteen healthy lambs, so no fatalities. (Thus far )

So, six ewes and three gimmers to the tup; all scanned in lamb, the six ewes scanning with three twins and three singles, the gimmers with two singles and one set of twins. Of the thirteen lambs born, we've had four ewe lambs and nine ram lambs. The C section and another of the vet visits was to gimmers with singles - next year, I think I'll not feed the ewes expecting singles (especially if any are first-timers), just hay and a lick.

TBH, I didn't realise how tense I was over lambing time, until it's past. But watching the lambs racing up and down the "hills" in the field makes it all worthwhile. That and the delicious roast lamb we had for dinner yesterday

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".

Bottle-feeding lambs

We're giving them a top up three times a day. I try to make sure they feed from her first, then give them a wee bottle just to fill them up. I'm hoping that this will work out for all of us 

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.

When I went out at 2am to check the in-lamb ewes, the sleet was heavy and horizontal. There was nothing doing in the barn, so I went back to bed but couldn't sleep. At 3.30am, I gave Dan a nudge and suggested we bring the ewes and lambs in. And he didn't even swear, saint that he is.

We were bringing them into the byre - fine, except that we had stacked some stainless steel tabling in there. However, we reckoned that there wasn't anything dangerous so, with me in front with bucket and Dan encouraging from behind, we brought the four ewes, four lambs and two ewe hoggs inside.

Luna, who had lambed twins (ewe and tup) yesterday morning, was in a mothering pen in the barn. When we checked her, the lambs were soaked, so we took them round to the byre too. I dried the lambs with the hairdryer and they were soon quite content.

All the ewes with lambs have been in today; the in-lamb ones went out late morning when the weather improved but are back in tonight. The forecast is OK for tomorrow, so they can all go out in the morning.

The barn, where the in-lamb ewes are, is pretty wet. Over the summer, we will put up boarding and improve the rainwater collection, to reduce the water ingress. One of the problems overnight was that the wind, and therefore the sleet, was coming from the opposite direction to the usual. This also meant that our field shelter wasn't as effective as usual and the henhouses were a bit damp this morning - naturally, we have them sited with their backs to the prevailing wind.

Anyway, I hope that's weather related drama over for a while - ironic that at the end of last week, we were stressing about getting water to the newly planted fruit trees though.

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.

The weather's due to turn on Monday so I'm going to get them out tomorrow morning so he gets a day in the sun.

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.

I think John and LInda are going to put the four apple trees in their garden somewhere. Hopefully, by the end of March