Hello and welcome [member=215565]patrickr[/member]
I'm not interested in the beekeeping but would be interested in what breeds of sheep and poultry you keep, and some more about your donkeys.
We keep Hebridean Sheep (Ancient Type), general laying hens and Shetland geese, and do our best to look after the native Bumble and Solitary bees here in Scotland.
Hi
Thanks for your reply. We've got 10 Shetland ewe lambs which we are planning to put to the ram in November, lambing next year. They are great, but frequently have foot issues. Interested in Hebridean as well. How many have you got? Geese are interesting... Hens are a mix of rescues, hybrids and a lovely Sussex Light who must be 6 or 7 years old now. My son is planning to breed bantams and has just got a Polish Smooth Gold Laced Bantam! Struggling to find hens for him though. Perhaps it's too early in the season. He's keen to get Silkies to act as brooders and is looking at some other breeds as well.
Donkeys we found locally recently. We have 3, ranging between 8 months and 14 months. As they are young, we are hoping to train them to pull / carry things but we've never done it before and it will clearly be require a bit of work and empathy. We think they are VERY bonded so the challenge will be taking one away to do anything at all. Must go out for their morning training.
Cheers
Patrick
We have kept Shetlands in the past and found that the white ones tend to have poor feet. It helps if you can give them rocks to play on, or at least some hard standing to keep their feet dry and worn down.
Our Hebrideans are the Ancient Type - multi-horned mostly with variable coats of black/dark brown/dark grey/ silver mantle/ topknots etc as opposed to the jet black, two horned 'modern' type. We had a white one once but very few left as they are not recognised by the breed society. We are lambing just 9 this year then selling off all our breeding stock and just keeping the oldies as pets and fleece sheep (I am a hand spinner)
Heb feet are usually pretty good although they don't get on well with long grass, but then which sheep feet do. So best for them to have rocks to play on too - we have a big pile where they play king of the castle
I used to long to keep donkeys but eventually had to agree that they were likely to outlive us by a long way. I had thought to train them to carry baskets like ponies do to humph stuff around the smallholding, even perhaps a donkey cart
I hope you keep us updated with your training progress and perhaps some piccies too. Not enough people in the UK keep donkeys.
Topic: Hi All (Read 1947 times)
