[Pocagranja]

Hi, we found this forum by accident & it seems really interesting so we have just joined.

We moved to Spain 6 yrs ago after running a business in the UK in recruitment, we wanted to escape the rat race & live the good life! We have learnt everything out of books, the internet & from mistakes!  At the moment we have pigs, sheep, chickens, ducks & geese which we breed for meat.  We slaughter our own animals & butcher them.

Living here is very different from the UK & it has been very hard to start a smallholding. We have no farmers markets, nowhere to buy livestock & generally it is hard to purchase anything here!  The first animals we acquired were 2 goats.  We have only 1 elderly Spanish neighbour who sold us 2 goats for 200 Euros & they were that old & in poor condition we had to get them put down 1 year later!

All the sheep here look like goats & its hard to tell the difference. Spanish have 2 types of pigs, black (for expensive hams) or pink.  Chickens have to be ordered from a pet shop by colour, you can have a brown one, white one or black if you are lucky! Forget about breeds, you ask for a certain breed & they just shrug their shoulders & look at you puzzled! When we first moved here we ordered 6 hens for egg production, so we thought, they turned out to be males & we had to slaughter them.
Most of our animals we saved from ending up on the butchers block by replying to adds in papers & the internet, to re-house pets when people went back to the UK. (They are our breeding stock).
So we are happy to be able to ask questions on this site.  We have no neighbours to ask & haven't found any other English people who are farming nearby!

[Mel Rice]

 friend of mine brought live eggs over to start off her flock....I know there are loads of rules about inter-country animal transport but does anyone know about eggs?

[Rosemary]

Hello and welcome from Carnoustie 

Sounds like a real challenge out there - well done, both, for sticking at it and making it work.

Illustrates how hard it is for the EU to implement a "one size fits all" CAP though 

[MAK]

Hi and welcome from a sunny Limousin 
My first reaction to your "intro" was "O poor s-ds"   But I now say "wow - what an achievement"

By contrast having a smallholding here in France is more the norm and I guess we have had it easy. We can buy anything from the big markets and local market sell birds and pigs once a month. Angloinfo.com allows us to network with other Brits ( 8000 of us in the Limousin) - so it was easy to buy our first ducks and pigs from Brits down the road. People give goats away sometimes when they discover that they can not keep them off the veg - but the markets have goats in all shapes and sizes ( not for us though), we just buy the cheese.

Certainly sounds like you have had it tuff but congrats!!! and welcome.

[chrismahon]

Hi Pocagranja and welcome from Staffordshire. Sounds like a great adventure. Don't think the French know that much about chicken breeds either. They still have Rhode Island Reds for free ranging -good birds, but seriously outperformed by the 'modern' British hybrids. Can you access Angloinfo in Spain?

[Lesley Silvester]

  Hi and welcome from chilly Shropshire.

[lill]

hi and welcome from central scotland

[PetiteGalette]

Hi and welcome Pocagranja,

Here in France I find the quality of chicken breeds pretty poor so I bring over all my eggs from the UK.
You can bring over any eggs you want (watch my lips)................ to eat! I buy my 'eating eggs' from breeders I know/trust and, from now on, this site........................... I have never had a problem bringing over fertile eggs on the ferry on foot or in the (usually loaded-to-the-hilt) van.