Oh I didnt say but we went to see Smiffy and her animals. We spent a great 2 hours looking and stroking her pigs and have ordered 5 pedigree sows for breeding plus Smiffy is getting fresh boars in so I can take my sows back to her for mating.
Im getting the berkshire, mangazila and lop piglets very soon but the Tamworths arent born yet and Smiffy isnt sure whether the sow is in pig.
I know I said I didn't want Tamworths as they tend to be escape artists but I fell in love with Boris the boar as he chatted away to me for ages and I was stroking his snout. Heaven! But OMG they are huge animals!!! Plus I met the new baby Tam boar and we hand fed him grass and he followed us inside his pen talking all the time.
2 Berkshires would make 1 Tamworth!!!
Smiffy's place was well set out with nice regimented fenced areas for the pigs. Each breed was kept separately with 1 boar to several sows. Lol The lop sow was so huge she couldn't be bothered to move her carcass out of her ark so we reached in and scratched her behind the ear.
Smiffy has all rare breed animals, chickens, cows, turkeys and 3 rhea. Ill buy some turkey poults (bronze cross whites I think they are) later in the year for the Christmas market.
Despite hubby saying we would never own a cow he fell in love with a calf that Smiffy had in the barn. She is a lincolnshire red I think but pure white in colour with huge great gentle eyes. Hubby asked how big she would grow and when Smiffy told him it put him off a bit I think, anyway we didnt buy it, although she probably wasnt for sale anyway lol BUT, and a huge BUT, it has got hubby now thinkling about owning a house cow, so thats all good.
I should have sorted out the prices for the piglets when we were there but Smiffy had so many phone calls asking about her stock and I was slightly gobsmacked by it all that it was hard to remember what to ask. I do however remember asking how much her great big barn was as I was dead impressed by it and we need one similar and much smaller going by the price Smiffy paid lol
OH and I have ordered 40 geese, Ex breed geese, so they are not truly babies that I could lose. They are fatteners for the christmas market. I am due to pick them up early July. Ohh I better check it may be early June.
I didnt collect my rescue battery hens cos we had a major problem at home that day (Mum has alzheimers and gets aggressive) and had to dash home, Im sorry that we couldnt even phone the rescue lady to tell her but she phoned us on our mobile the next day and was quite snotty even after we explained!! I understand she now has and extra 20 chickens at her place that she didnt want but she didnt give us an alternative day to take them. Ah well such is life!
NVM a friend of one of my daughters owns a commercial poultry unit and will sell us some chickens for £1 each so Im still rescuing chickens albeit not from the rescue above.
I was hoping by now to be eating our own fresh eggs.
Lucky for me that we bought a rescue place as it has loads of fenced off pens for the animals with sheds already on so all we have to do is put the animals on the land.
We have now started to paint the walls inside of the kennels and bright clean white and the outside walls a warmer cream colour. Even just simple painting makes it look better.
The central heating pipes have been replaced as the copper pipes were all stolen plus the copper tank in the roof space.
A friend of ours came up last weekend and hes a tech genius so we now have CCTV all over the land, we have 6 cameras that are movement censored and can see in the dark too. They are wireless connected to a computer and the info is stored on the hard drive and can be accessed by our mobile phones too. Very techy stuff but needed in this area me thinks.
Anyway Ive just ordered a chinese meal so Im going now.
Thanks for reading.
PS Thanks to the people who added me in Facebook. Annie you looked very glamorous on that cruise.
