Back to work
Tuesday 5 August, 2014
I can't believe it's two weeks since my last diary entry - so much for daily diary!
So we're into August now; Dan went back to the office yesterday. With the Festival only seven weeks away and Christmas being his busy period in his own business, he's going to be pretty flat out between now and December.
We did manage to complete a good number of things on "the list" and at the end of last week, we sat down and reviewed it. We took some things off - like slabbing round the henhouses, which we decided to do two years ago, bought the slabs but now think it's probably not a great idea - and added a couple, like repairing fence at Astwod and pointing the wall in Sheepfold. We've now programmed the remaining projects into the monthly plans for the rest of 2014 and it doesn't look too deadly - but of course, it won't GO to plan :-)
What Storm did next
Monday 11 August, 2014
We brought Storm home on 22nd July to run with the four cows. There was much "actvity" when he went out and he seemed to spend a couple of days with each of the cows pretty much in turn, starting with Breeze. I never saw him serve any of them - I saw him try to mount Breeze but she wouldn't stand for him. I'm not worried about not seeing him work as we didn't see him last year either, and he clearly did :-)
You'll recall that the three cows calved on consecutive days in May this year - our vet said that in small herds, oestrus was sometimes synchronised naturally.
Sheep gathered
Monday 11 August, 2014
All our sheep are now at Astwood - twelve ewes, seven gimmers and twenty one lambs - ready for weaning. We're planning to do this next weekend. The ewes and gimmers will run together; tup lambs will go in with the bullocks and the ewe lambs are coming home to Dalmore.
We have fourteen ewe lambs thsi year, so I've sold six and am keeping eight, so I want to have a good look at them before I decide which to keep and which to sell.
I'm culling two ewes and retiring two this year, so I'll have fifteen going to the tup in November. We're collecting our new tup, High Edge Taylor, in September.
2014 Hubbards
Monday 11 August, 2014
We killed the nine Hubbard cockerels this weekend - combined freezer ready weigh of 40.4kg, or an average of 4.67kg per bird; smallest birds (2) at 4kg. We've got eleven hens to do next weekend. They're much smaller. Full results posted next weekend.
2014 Hubbards Part 2
Sunday 17 August, 2014
We killed the eleven hens yesterday and cleaned them today. The total cleaned weight was 36.6kg. average 3.33kg with a range of 2.9kg to 3.9kg.
They were quite fat and two were on the point of laying. In comparison, the cocks had almost no fat.
Sometime this week, I'll look back the invoices and see how much feed we used but I wanted to get this written down before the grubby bit of paper was lost or thrown out.
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