[sabrina]

With all this horrible weather my paddocks are just a mess. Mud everywhere. We were told that this winter was to be the coldest for years yet I am sure the grass on the lawn is growing. I feel for all those people who have been flooded but so far have not heard anything about how many animals have drowned, there must be farmers who have lost livestock. My lot are only out for a couple of hours then back inside as there is no point on giving hay outside for it to blow away or get all muddy. lambing has started but inside for my neighbours which is just as well. How is everyone coping ?

[Louise Gaunt]

Lots of standing water in garden and in the hen run but apart from that, the hens are coping. The horses next door are gradually reducing their field to just mud, it just gets no chance to dry never mind recover. And my wellies have developed a leak!

[Bionic]

Its the first time I am thankful we are on a hill. The ground is very wet but there isn't any standing water.
The chickens seem to spend most of their time shelering underneath the trailer.
Luckily we aren't lambing until March/April so I am hoping things will have improved by then.
Sabrina, you are right about the grass growing. Where it hasn't been trodden down it is definitely growing.

[bloomer]

i only have chooks and live at the top of a hill but the garden looks like a battlefield and I have just issued the chooks with scuba gear!!!

[mowhaugh]

It is grim here, ponies nearest the house are up to their knees in mud, and we lost one of dad's cows who were grazing here today as she slipped on the muddy hillside and fell about 100ft - broken leg and neck.  Very upsetting.  In the effort to retrieve the rest of the cows, I also slipped quite a long way, but just ended up plastered in mud, which amused the children, not hurt.

The pigs and ducks seem happy!

[kelly58]

So sorry about your cow  like you say with this weather animals do suffer.
Like the poor farmers with their sheep stuck under snow in Wales.
We have been lucky, just wind  but not too  strong.

[suziequeue]

Bionic - I was just about top say the same thing. We also invested a lot of money in some drainage to the top and middle fields in the summer which I am glad to see is working well.


We are trying to institute a system of paths in the middle field so that we tread as little of the pasture as possible when getting to our various places (allotments, chicken run etc).


Fortunately the chickens are free ranging so don;t hang around in one place too long and poach it but the environs of the chicken coop and the sheep shed are getting quite boggy

[ellied]

My chooks are free range so cope fine other than that their coop leaks down the centre of the roof so a couple go elsewhere rather than pack that central line and I don't enjoy mucking them out that's for sure!

Pony fields are dire around gates and feeding areas, some places it's welly deep slurry and I'm really struggling to get in and out with tonne bags of hay when they're pushing me up against the feeder in the rush so I'm bringing a couple in to the one open barn pen I have free, on a bale there and I put the hay out while there are only 3 at the ring!

30th the field above me flooded from a dip over the banking and ran like a sheet down the back field (5 ponies) and rose to near the neighbour's back door, up onto the 3rd step and a good 9" deep swirling around their new conservatory outer wall.  We were all out with shovels and I had to pay £150 for a JCB to come and dig a huge foot deep trench across my field to take the water away from their house but it's left mine in a mess both where the water was ending up along my wall, the ditch itself, the JCB tracks all across the field, and the swamp left where the flood had been.  I was bordering on suicidal and have a well advanced plan for looking at tenement flats in Edinburgh or Perth when I give up, tho I''d probably hate that too if I actually went through with it!

The silver lining if you like is that the JCB man is paid up and will come and reinforce the ditch with a pipe and some kind of stones when it dries out enough.  He's also going to remove a heap of rubble, mud and tree roots to free up a space for a new gateway eventually, and says he has a wee bucket that will do the strainer holes easier than digging by hand, so tho I can't pay him for that yet, there is at least a plan and he'll scoop all the shifted soil and muck off the gates to wherever I want to have a new veg plot, perhaps I need some concrete blocks to build raised beds and fill them with it so it doesn't go to waste!

I had heard cold hard winter and honestly would like to see one like that over this - council cut all the roadside trees this spring to save their trimming budgets I suppose, which means my breeding field has virtually no windbreak now from the S/SW and I'd already lost a couple of hawthorns on the west fenceline in previous winters.  It's hard to know what to do and what to let alone, let alone what order to try and get the tasks all done.

My pre-Christmas investment in flexothane overtrousers has, however been the best £20 spent in quite a while.  I was washing filthy stinky clothes and legs every single day until I got them