Quincy's Big Day Out

Quincy and I competed in our first Gundog Test today. We completed a series of 3 tests: field retrieves, water retrieves, and hunted retrieves in cover. Quincy struggled a bit with the first, I let her down on the second, but once we got over our nerves we achieved a perfect score of 20 on the last one.

This is my Noble Canine pose...

Doesn't she look proud? She should - she earned a 3rd place in the Puppy Retriever Class, with a respectable score of 46/60.

I think she's smiling in this picture!

If I'd not made a mistake at the water retrieve, it would have been 2nd place. I think Quincy forgives me but, just in case, I've made her a conciliatory dinner of scrambled pheasant eggs and pasta.

We move up to the Open class, and will compete again in July. Quincy has plenty of time to train me between now and then.

I'll have to ring you back...

Retrievers are wonderful dogs. In fact, I have three: two Labradors and a Flat coated Retriever. To say that I both love them as companions and rely on them as workers is a fair statement. They live up to their name, and will retrieve anything.

Spud, the Flat coat, in particular feels compelled to share all her treasures with me. Spud can be counted on to find anything and bring it back. A friend once dropped her favourite faux-fur hat without realising it, but Spud knew. Spud must have gone back for the hat. She came galloping up behind us, hat in her mouth, and presented it to my friend.

While Spud is fantastic at retrieving almost anything from shot game to ladies' accessories, mobile phones are not her best retrieve.  My phone fell out of my pocket when we were out walking. Spud sniffed it out in the long grass and even brought it back -

Well, what was left of it after a short time in her mouth. Why she's so gentle with game and so hard on phones is a mystery.

My "dead phone count" now stands at three: run over with mower, drowned in trough, eaten by overenthusiastic Flat coat. Who's got a great story to share about how their own phone died?

That's how we roll..erm walk..'round here

Bugs, Bellies, and Bags

We've been feeding the freezer over the holiday season. There are only 3 more weeks left to harvest pheasant and partridge, and this winter has been so mild that even the January birds are in good condition, still with a yellow layer of fat to buffer them from a cold snap.

The warm weather hasn't been a blessing all around. The dogs were hit hard with a stomach bug, possibly from bacteria in muddy puddles or cow pats (both are dog delicacies). A harsh winter would normally keep the bacteria in check. The illness only lasts 24 hours per dog, but as one recovered another came down with it. I think it's passed through, so I guess I can rub off the red crosses from above their kennel doors.

I've had bacteria on the brain - figuratively speaking - after a chat with Peggy, who teaches me butchery. Her pigs had a porcine version of IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome) and we talked about treating them to restore their gut balance, rather than bombing them with antibiotics. After all, the pigs were healthy otherwise, and drugs are expensive and not without side-effects. It gave me an idea for treating Matilda.

Poor Matilda.

Our orphan lamb, who has survived just about everything in her short life, was not thriving. Most noticeably, she had the 'pot belly' common to bottle-raised lambs. But her belly was bigger than most, and tight as a drum.

Compare and contrast: that's Matilda in the foreground (obviously)

As she's been weaned for awhile, bloat was unlikely. I took her to the vets to talk about an experimental treatment: get her guts moving again, then add a pro-biotic to help re-balance the flora. I went away with metaclopramide injections to kick-start her gut motility, plus a B-vitamin injection (necessary vitamins which won't have been synthesised without a good, working rumen), and followed it with a week's worth of Pro-Rumen, good bacteria in powdered form that I added to water and got her to drink from a syringe.

(FYI - Pro-Rumen is both sticky and smelly. If you get it on your iPod touch screen, it actually coats it enough to stop it responding.)

The treatment is working well, so I related the boring technical details above, in case anyone else can benefit from our experiment. Her belly size has decreased and she's much livelier now. But the thanks has to go to Peggy and her pig expertise for the initial idea.

A commercial shepherd would probably question my approach in treating individual lambs. It's not always cost-efficient and it does affect our profitability. But, I have a deep-seated reason for wanting to save them all, which I'm going to whisper to you now (don't tell anyone..): When Mike and I got caught in the gas explosion, I was wearing a 100% wool sweater. Wool (or more correctly the lanolin) is naturally flame-retardant and protected my whole torso from being badly burned. I sort of feel I owe one to the sheep. In fact, there is a line across the middle of my right hand where the extra-long sleeve stopped, and a v-shape of scarring at my throat, an outline of the sweater's edge, marking how much worse it could have been.

Anyway, sheep traumas over for now, it was back to wild foods for the freezer. Mike, Underkeeper Pete and I have been walking the margins of the estate, to harvest some of the outliers - those birds that never go over the gun line. They find a quiet copse like this one and try to sit out the shooting season -

Mike and Underkeeper Pete survey the landscape

The birds in there are more clever than we thought. We walked through the whole copse and fired at least a box of cartridges. Neither Mike nor I seemed to be able to bring down a single bird. If it wasn't for Spud, our irrepressible Flat-coat, catching a hen pheasant herself, we would have gone home empty-handed. Underkeeper Pete shot one, and his terrier-mix Wigeon caught the other.

Spud, Wigeon, and their bag

So that's Dogs 2 - Keepers 1, then.

We had better luck on the duck ponds later that evening. Pete bagged a mallard and I had this little hen teal -

I shot it, but I would never have found it without Spud. She winded it almost immediately in the thick grass, nowhere near where I thought it had fallen. That's one more for the dogs then.

Mike prefers fishing to shooting and left us for another pond - the trout pond. A local landowner keeps a pond stocked with trout and kindly issued Mike an open invitation to fish. Mike caught a brown trout and a rainbow trout -

The rainbow was stuffed with eggs -

Our flock made short work of that unexpected bounty -

Mike and I even managed a day off to go fishing together. We drove to a fishing lake a few hours away and fly-fished for trout, undeterred by the gale force winds blowing our lines in every direction except towards the fish. Mike lost one, and caught one - both rainbows. Water Bailiff Stu (who happens to be Underkeeper Pete's brother) helps Mike net the trout-

I've started to keep account of how much food we're catching or producing ourselves, inspired by Tamar at 'Starving Off the Land' charting her own year in calories. I'll keep a running list of ours in the sidebar of the blog, for all to see. If our shooting doesn't improve, it could be a short list and a hungry winter. Perhaps some kind soul will send us a care package - I'm partial to Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, but we're set for trout, thanks.

Easy Sunday Morning

It's perfect Sunday morning weather: grey, foggy, a bit of drizzle on the windows. I don't need much of an excuse to drink a pot of coffee and read. The weather is a sign.

Still, livestock has no respect for my lazy tendencies. Eudora is limping so after coffee and a few chapters, I checked the sheep and caught her up to trim her feet and jab her with an anti-inflammatory. I'm not sure what god has against sheep, but he's cursed them with every disease going, and the propensity for having only three working limbs at one time. The lambs have stopped dying - for now - though Matilda had a bad case of bloat that kept me up one night on lamb watch. She pulled though but I weaned her the next day. She's got to make her own way in the field now, with an evening meal of lamb nuts and barley of course.

The weather hasn't turned cold yet; in fact it's been so mild that I'm still finding ticks on the dogs, a week before Thanksgiving. Most of the dogs were still in their beds this morning, with their noses poked up their bottoms, when I brought them breakfast. We've been shooting most days, though it's illegal to shoot on a Sunday so all are guaranteed a day of rest. On the last drive yesterday, I watched Spud excavate a little sleeping nest for herself and lay down to nap, while waiting for the action to start. She's getting experienced enough to know to take a rest when she can get it.

I'm also learning to maximise my time. On shoot days, there's a lot of time stood waiting for guns to get ready and birds to move, so I now keep a small knitting project in my coat pocket. I'm knitting Mike's Christmas present: a hat knit from our own sheeps' wool -

Still life with 3/4ths of a hat and footrot spray

Living in my coat pocket means there are a few feathers that have accidentally been knitted in with the wool, but I can extract those later, or leave them in and tell him they're part of the design. Poultry chic. I'm working on a pair of socks too, but those are my evening project, as they take more concentration than a knit 2, purl 2 hat.

Shooting season means means a glut of meat. The dogs are eating so much now to hold their weight that I ran out of dog food. So did underkeeper Pete. I'll breast off a load of pheasants from yesterday and cook them up with rice and oil - that can double as our dinner, as well as the dogs'. I know it's shooting season when I open up the fridge and find pairs of legs poking out between the butter and the bacon -

Giving Quincy her breakfast this morning, I noticed spots of blood in her bed. Quincy is having her first season, which means she's no longer a puppy. It also means all the loose, male dogs in the neighborhood will be pining outside our kennels for the next fortnight. I'll have to protect her maidenhood during our training sessions in the field. Quincy is doing so well. She's passed her Gun dog Puppy certificate and is moving up a grade.

Quincy and her partridge dummy

She's just shy of a year old now, born Christmas week 2010. She is going to be a happy, talented little worker. She'll take Pip's place next year. Pip was always going to have an early retirement with her dodgy hips. I'll take Pip and Quincy out together, so Quincy can gain a bit of confidence following a more experienced dog. So far, all Pip has taught Quincy is how to make a dent in the couch.

Speaking of making a dent in the couch, Christmas movies have started on TV and I have a crop of dried beans to shell for next year's spring planting. I don't feel guilty watching TV if my hands are busy shelling beans or knitting. I love schmaltzy Christmas films because of the themes of hope and redemption. It's the same thing I feel when I think about the vegetable garden. I can visualise a whole crop in a tiny seed. I plant all my hopes that a successful harvest will come to fruition, even though I know there are bound to be some failures.

I hope your Sunday is equally as restful - accompanied by the sound of snoring dogs, and next year's seeds.

6pm last night, two tired workers.

A bird in the hand

November is a prime sport shooting month. We're shooting pheasant and partridge three times a week on the estate. I work three dogs per day, in rotation, so each one gets enough exercise balanced out with enough down-time to recoup physically and mentally. On non-shooting days, the dogs nap in their kennels or enjoy a knuckle bone each from the butcher's.

I'm equal parts proud and amazed at the stamina and drive of working dogs, most of which is bred into them. Training simply directs their natural instinct towards something that, hopefully, benefits both dog and handler. I thought a short video might show this better than a wordy description from me.

Here, Spud, Dulcie, and Pip are searching for a wounded partridge. I know it came down in these woods, but I can't see where. However, their noses are perfect for finding lost birds in thick cover. The 'Get On' command means go forward. The 'Get in!' command means hit the cover and have a look - something none of these dogs need much encouragement to do. Spaniels especially are happiest rootling around in the bushes.

Spud's delivery isn't perfect but she makes up for it with her work ethic. She never leaves anything un-picked and always returns to me with every treasure. And that's a red-legged partridge for the bag.

Lest you think we're into shooting and completely over the sheep dramas - how does a maggot-infested scrotum sound? The lamb didn't like it much either. The foster ram was laying down too often and starting to walk with a stiff-legged gait. I caught him up and when I turned him over, saw that the castration ring wasn't doing its job properly, and there was a hole in his groin teeming with maggots and infection.

As an aside, I think it goes without saying that you should never read this blog when you are eating.

My recent failures experiences in lambing left me well-prepared. I removed the maggots one at a time with a pair of pliers, worked surgical scrub into the wound, and gave a heavy dose of strep antibiotic injected into the lamb's breast muscle (IM works faster than under the skin). I phoned our friend Terry the vet who happened to be on call that night. I drove the lamb to his house and, while I held the lamb on the workbench in his shed, he surgically severed the spermatic cords to finish the job, gave lamb a shot of painkiller, and praised my administered dose and method of antibiotics. A small but much-needed salve to my ego.

Two days on and foster lamb looks great. He's getting more nimble and therefore harder for me to catch him to finish his course of injections. That's where I'm headed now, right after I put our partridges in the oven for dinner.

First Casualty of the Season

It was Lily versus wasp nest. And it was bad.

Mike has been taking Lily and Pip to chase the youngest pheasants back home every morning. The pheasants wander from their wooded safety to chase the sun and warm their backs, which is fine, except they forget to stop wandering. Being disturbed by the dogs helps the birds define the edge of their boundary; they don't like to be bothered any more than we do when we're enjoying good weather.

The dogs were working away when Pip appeared from a bracken-covered hillside being chased by a few wasps. I guess they were dogging the dogs, reminding them where their boundaries should be. Mike heard Lily screaming and said she emerged blanketed in wasps. He met her halfway and wiped as many wasps off her as he could, getting stung himself.

When they returned home, Mike was carrying Lily. They were both already swollen and lumpy. Mike called the vets while I proceeded to remove yet more wasps from Lily, and check her over. Inside her mouth was stung and swelling. I was worried her airway would close.

We got her to the vets, and they put her on a drip of antibiotics, painkillers, and fluid. Poor dog - when she heard the clippers start up to shave her leg for the drip, she thought she was under attack again and tried to do a flying dismount from the examination table.

The vets kept her for observation this morning, but the triage was in time. I picked her up and she was well enough to hop into the Land Rover to accompany me on my now well-behind morning chore round, checking lambs, pregnant ewes, horses. She mooched about while I collected more field mushrooms.

I'm not saying she's not milking it for attention and maybe an egg in her breakfast bowl -

But I'm sure glad she's alright. And I'll put dog antihistamine in both trucks, just in case.

Phew.

Oh, and Mike's fine too.

And now for something completely different

If last week was all about death, then this week is all about sex. Sex and birth. I suppose you can't have one without the other.

Most of my recent conversations with Mike involve which animals are pregnant, and which animals ought to be pregnant. The ewes are looking like they swallowed a football sideways and the pointy ends are lodged in their midsections. Eudora in particular. (Who else, right?) Their due dates start less than two months from now.

The 'which animals ought to be pregnant' discussion centres around the spaniels. Dulcie, Jazzie, and most especially Podge are in season. Podge is ready N.O.W. When I fed her this morning all she wanted was a cuddle, then she cocked her tail over her back and fixed me with a mad, hormonal stare. Poor thing. She's not made the cut for motherhood, at least not now, because she's our main 'dogging in' dog - chasing young pheasants home every morning and night until they remember where they live. Podge has got a heavy work load until mid-September. We can't afford to have her sidelined.

We have wanted a pup from Dulcie, a dog Mike bred from his own 30 year-old line of springers. She's getting older but after missing last year's shoot season recovering from a ligament repair, I worried it wouldn't be fair for her to miss another season of what she loves best. However, if the dog visits her next week, she could have pups and still be fit for November 1st, and the majority of the winter. It will be Dulcie's first litter, and mine. I've never bred a litter, I've only had secondhand dogs up to now.

Until then I have the orphan lambs still to care for, and a few hens guarding clutches of eggs. I've tried putting quail eggs under a bantam hen, but I'm not sure if they'll hatch. The hen's had some commitment issues and she seems to lose track of the eggs when she gets off the nest, remembering to cover only a few or half when she sits down to brood after a wander over to the feeder.

I came home from work to find this baby in a Tupperware pot, in hay, in my sink-

I think it's a baby bullfinch chick. It's got a worm stuck to it so I think Mike tried unsuccessfully to feed it. My mother taught me the hamburger trick for feeding found fledglings. I must have brought home dozens as a child, though few survived the trauma and my own inept but well-meaning childish love.

I have ground venison in the fridge and the chick eagerly choked down a few good-sized strands. I've put it in a basket with a light for warmth. Its best chance for survival is if I can find a nest with similar sized chicks in it and add it to the brood. Mike claims birds can't count and a gaping mouth is enough of a trigger to get fed, no matter who your real momma is. It works on me too, not just with birds, but with the boys who work with Mike. I can't resist a hungry creature whether it's got feathers or camo trousers.

If I can't find a nest, I'll keep feeding it and hope it survives in spite of my inept but well-meaning childish love.

Sheep-for-brains

It's a confusing time of year for me. And busy. Confusing and busy. During the day I'm checking lambs, sheep, horses, and pheasant poults, trying to keep them alive and healthy. But in the evenings, I'm out with a gun doing my best to take down vermin, and harvest wild animals for the freezer. I'm a competing member of the food chain, fighting foxes to save my chickens (one took Barbara the Weather Chicken!) and stalking deer to save us from going hungry.

I should say harvesting wild animals for the freezers, plural, as we have two - both of which are only a quarter full. We've nearly eaten all our home grown chickens, lots of venison, most of last year's game birds, plus half a pig I got from Peggy in exchange for helping her in the butchery.

Summer shouldn't be the hungry season, but the main crops of vegetables aren't ready to harvest yet. After a hot dry spring, we're being subjected to a cold grey summer. My hardy root vegetables like potatoes, parsnips and carrots are stalwart growers. My squash, french beans, and sweetcorn are sulking in their rows.

Last winter's lambs are going to the abattoir next week. I have one ram lamb destined for our freezer and the other two are sold to neighbours. I just got my all-clear from Trading Standards to sell our lamb and chickens direct (Milkweed Farm Meat) so I can now supply any surplus meat to local families and businesses. I'm a quasi-CSA of one.

Assuming I have any meat to sell by next week. I have had to bring a pair of wire cutters on my sheep checking rounds. One of the ram lambs keeps getting his fat head wedged in the wire fencing. I've found him stuck fast, dejected and hungry, for the last three mornings in a row. Did he learn his lesson this morning?

Winning at grazing

Nope. Apparently the grass really is greener on the other side of the fence. At least until you eat everything in reach, get stuck, and have to wait for someone to cut the wire and free your head.

Eunice keeps him company, or stands there and mocks him, I'm not sure which.

It's become a daily thing with him. Even the neighbors have started helping to free him when they find him before I do.

I also lost my first sheep since starting the flock. The smallest orphan lamb died in his first week, probably from urolithiasis. I was very upset at the loss, though sheep farmers tell me that rearing all one's orphans successfully is rare. The other four are past the crucial two week period and I'm hopeful for them.

Though the youngest lambs aren't gifted with brains either. There are 5 teats on the bucket but the lambs insist on fighting over two. They have a system worked out, something between a time-share and a dance routine:

Lest you think it's just the sheep, the stupidity is contagious and crossing species. I broke my small toe falling over the vacuum cleaner. It means I've had to walk with a stick for a few days, but chores wait for no man.

Chore number one: an order for freshly shot rabbits. Mike drove the truck; Underkeeper Pete and I stood in the back (me balancing on my good foot) Within an hour we shot a dozen rabbits (and two foxes for good measure).

Freshly shot rabbit on a bed of wet pheasant pellets, with a garnish of empty cartridge cases, served in a flatbed truck

The order came from a British Army officer taking his cadets on a Survival Training Weekend. I understand each cadet gets given a dead, un-gutted rabbit and told not to starve before being left overnight in the woods. I feel sorry for the cadets. If this is their first time catching a whiff of rabbit guts, they may lose their appetites completely.

Chore number two: load up the ram and return him to Mr. Baker, which we did without mishap or injury. For a change. Ram L815 had an easy-going temperament, which I hope he passes on to his offspring. All our sheep are covered, and due to lamb in September. I'm told the ram is getting a week off, before being delivered to another farm for two more months of libidinous activity.

Chore number three: Clear stragglers out of the laying pens. The pheasants we penned in order to collect their eggs were released a few weeks ago. There are always a few that make their way back, and once inside can never remember how to get out.

We don't want them to starve, or be killed by predators (who also find their way into the pens) so I put the dogs to work. They check each pen, and catch any pheasants hiding behind laying shelters, or tucked up in corners. I have to pick the soft-mouthed dogs, or there wouldn't be anything worth releasing by the time the dogs retrieved it. Here's Pip and Spud in action:

That's Ian, our wonderful work experience lad, helping out. There were 36 of these pens to be checked, and with two energetic retrievers, it didn't take us long.

Chores four and five are still outstanding: Take Alan to the vets for an x-ray of his feet, and harvest some of the deer that are eating a newly planted cider orchard, one tree at a time. I will leave those for the next post, which I promise will be less rambling.

I wish I could teach one of the dogs to retrieve my train of thought.

Spring chickens. And quail.

Spring is nearly here, the signs are everywhere. The blossom is falling off the blackthorn trees, and the bluebells are flowering. Vixens have gone to ground to have their cubs. I saw my first swallow this morning, picking insects out of the air. I picked my own insects: the first tick of the season off of Quincy.

Well, technically a tick is an arachnid, but why split hairs.

The weather has been so favorable, from a gardener's perspective, that for the first time ever I'm caught up with my sowing and planting. That's my slapdash comprehensive garden plan for this year, scrawled on the back of an envelope -

And you can put your seed packets and notes inside the envelope so you don't lose them. Genius.

I'm using a four-plot rotation system, and companion planting. The garden is dug, manured, fed, and sown with everything but the late-season and tender plants. I've even remembered to put down enviromesh to prevent a repeat of last year's carrot root fly problem -

I was so on top of things, that I broke out the lawn chairs and cooked dinner in the chiminea - grilled mackerel and pheasant burgers, the gamekeeper version of surf & turf.

You'll have to allow me this moment of almost-smug success. It didn't last long, as you'll see.

Spring sap's not just rising in the plants. The cockerels - pheasant, chicken, and quail - have colored up and are beginning to vie for female attention. And fight. Cockerels love to fight. Even our heavyweight Buff Orpington cockerel was sporting a bruised eye, closed and puffy from a fight with featherweight Lloyd the pekin cockerel, a third the Buff's size. I'm not even sure how Lloyd reached that high.

But the quail seem to be the pugilists of the poultry world. The aviary has turned into Madison Square Garden. The weaker males have bloodied heads, and the females are missing the feathers from the back of their necks from frequent male attention. I knew it was time to put some quail in the freezer.

The sad truth of farm life is fewer males are needed than females. One ram can serve fifty ewes, a pheasant cockerel can easily hold ten hens. If a male isn't good enough for breeding stock, then he's only good enough for the freezer. If you're a male born on a farm, it's either the stud or the abbatoir for you: heaven or hell, so to speak.

When I sexed the quail, I had three hens and eight cocks, which explains all the fighting. I kept one cock for breeding and the rest I've started to process.

In case any reader is interesting in vent sexing quail - and who wouldn't be? - it's very easy to do. Start by turning your quail on its back, and gently push the tail up to expose the vent. If a small ball of foam comes out, it's a boy -

Once plucked, you can see that, just above the vent, the male has a swollen bottom -

It only swells during breeding season, and the foam is only produced at this time too. However, I find that vent sexing is a more definitive method for sexing quail than colour.

I processed three quail this morning, saving the feathers for a local fly fisherman. Apparently they make good fly-tying material. Spud and Lily kept me company through the laborious task of plucking. The skin on quail is very thin and tears easily when plucking. The finished birds couldn't have looked worse if I'd let the dogs chew the feathers off.

Well, I processed two birds and all was going well. I hung them on the back of the truck where they would be out of reach of dogs playing in the garden. I had just dispatched the third when my spidey senses started tingling. Where was Quincy?

Behind the shed eating a bag of rat poison she excavated from a hole, that's where.

She came out with the empty bag on her head.

I didn't waste any time. I removed the bag from her head, bundled her into the truck, and drove straight to the vets, which is thankfully only ten minutes away.

I forgot the dead, plucked quail were still hanging from the rear of the truck until I was halfway through the centre of town and looked in my rearview mirror. There they were - swinging left, then right as I navigated the turns to the vets - completely naked except for their feathered heads.

(I'd put the just-dispatched bird I was holding when I caught Quincy into the nearest recepticle, which happened to be the metal bin we use as a mail box. I came home and found the mail left on top of the dead bird. Thank goodness for country post men, nothing phases them.)

Quincy got the same treatment that Spud got when she ate the poisoned rat. All signs for recovery look good as we got the poison out quickly. With some gentle persuasion from his wife (i.e. I showed him the vet's bill), Mike has agreed to go back to trapping the rats, at least until Quincy gets older.

Quincy found the bag because of her exceptional gun dog nose. I know her scenting ability is already well-developed, even if her judgement isn't.

  Finished quail

Quincy - on the couch and on the mend

Oh, deer...

It's a busy time of year for us. I probably say that a lot, but it's true this time, honest. The weather is warming up and the mud is drying up. Milkweed has been harrowed to flatten out hoof prints. Early vegetables seeds are sprouting in the greenhouse, and the magnolia is in bloom -

 

The chickens love eating the fallen blossoms when I first let them out in the morning. It seems an odd choice for breakfast. I would like to think that the chickens know what they need to eat to lay the best eggs, but I've seen them eating Styrofoam so the jury's out on chicken logic.

I've finished netting over my expanded vegetable patch -

I'm nearly finished manuring and digging the two new beds now. A continuous fortnight of good weather has helped. I had to stop digging after I went to a Zumba class. The class looked like fun and I figured I could use the cardio to balance out my muscle bulk from activities like flipping sheep and digging. My sciatic nerve didn't agree and now I can't sit down without causing a shooting pain up my leg. I'm writing this post standing up at the kitchen counter, and my onions are definitely going to get planted late this year.

The upside of not sitting down is that lots of little jobs are getting done, where I would normally flop down in front of the television and squander that time watching re-runs of 'Columbo'. The dogs get extra long walks, and I even found time to slap a coat of fresh paint on the cupboards in the kitchen, which is also my temporary study until I get better.

The quail have started laying and I have to hunt for their well-camouflaged eggs hidden in the deep straw bedding -

quail egg compared to chicken egg

Susan is broody. I replaced her clutch with five Buff Orpington eggs -

I don't mind hatching a few more dual purpose chickens. A few days ago my neighbor Simon asked me to dispatch Trevor, his Buff Orpington cockerel.  He brought round a bit of the cooked bird for us to try last night. There wasn't a huge amount of breast meat but the legs were large and the bird was very tasty. A bit gamey even. Simon says that was probably a reflection of Trevor's personality. I won't mind so much now if a few boys hatch out in Susan's brood.

The pheasants have started laying in their pens, and we began collecting the eggs this week. There are 32 pens, each pen holds 65 hens and 8 cocks. I'll save you the math: 2,080 laying hen, 256 breeding cocks. The pens stretch the length of the field -

My sheep are currently grazing the grass on the laying field, and they follow me from pen to pen, watching me put eggs in a basket.

I think that the egg basket resembles a feed bucket, if you're a sheep.

Quincy is growing like a spring weed. Lily the chocolate lab has been an energetic and tolerant playmate for Quincy. The more they play together, the more Quincy learns and, more importantly, the less she chews my shoes.

Lily has started spending weekdays at her new home, with her new owner. We all look forward to seeing her back on the weekends. No one more than Spud, who gets stuck with puppy duties when Lily's not here. Spud spends most of her weekends recuperating -

On top of vegetable plots, egg picking, and dog wrestling matches, there are still deer to harvest. Thursday was the end of doe season, and Friday was the start of roe buck season. I still had one more doe to account for, and I went out every night this past week to try and bag her.

A deer ride through the woods - a good starting place

 

I don't think I've ever had such a dry spell. The first night I saw the back end of one disappear into the covert. The second night out, I saw nothing. Third night, I decided to take the dogs for a walk and didn't carry a gun. Of course, I saw two decent cull animals in range. The fourth night, I found this -

A fresh pile of deer scat, still warm (yes I touched it...) I walked on and hoped to run into the beast, but saw nothing. In desperation, I sat above a deer trail with good views and a good back stop (for the rifle bullet, should I miss). I sat until it got dark and the pain from sitting got the better of me -

You can just make out the path - look through the top centre square

Nothing. No does before the end of the season. I will have to tack that one onto next season's cull plan. I hope I have better luck with roe bucks this week.

I did find something else, something disturbing and unwelcome -

It's a home made ball bearing. I found it under a tree where pheasants roost. Poachers shine a light into treetops, to spot pheasants roosting. They use catapults to fire heavy ball bearings at the pheasants, knocking them off their perch, dead or close to it. No gun shot to give yourself away, and minimal disturbance to all the pheasants which can be noisy when alarmed. Poachers can develop frightening accuracy with a catapult.

We've found other ball bearings in the same area, so we'll be extra vigilant now. I'm happy to stand watch. Anything to avoid sitting down.

Flesh and Bones

This time last week I dedicated a whole day to all things horse. The farrier came and put on new shoes, the vet came and gave Kitty and Alan their boosters against horse flu, and the dentist came to file their teeth. I gave them a big grooming session as their winter coats are coming out, which is an indisputable sign that spring is here. Kitty's winter coat is never wrong.

I put all the horse sheddings in a bird feeder and the blackbirds plunder it to build their nests. The birds know when it's spring too.

Today it was the sheeps' turn. Their winter grazing on Milkweed is looking tired, and Tractor Dave is coming to roll and feed the grass so it was time to move the sheep. While they're gathered up, it's a good time to worm them and trim their feet, and generally give them a good once over.

With no outbuilding and ten acres for loose sheep to cavort about avoiding capture, I had to fashion a pen and entice them into it. A bucket of barley was enough to get them to ignore the open horse trailer and walk into the pen

I just picked up the trailer from its service, and I was worried that the truck wouldn't pull it when it was full of sheep. The clutch is so bad on the truck that every night I have to reverse up our sloping driveway, because it won't hold in first gear.

After digging the garden yesterday, and wrestling the trailer this morning, fetching all the metal hurdles was tiring. I can feel my wrists and elbows complaining. I worry that my joints are getting worn out. I try to carry more than my upper body strength allows and I think of those bodies from Pompeii. Archaeologists were able to discern slaves' bones from the scarring at the insertions of the muscles. These scars were most prominent on the arms of young girls. And I've got twenty years on them.

God, even my bones are lower class.

By the time I'd caught and treated the first two lambs, I had to surrender. I called Mike and Underkeeper Pete for assistance, and maybe some moral support. My gloves were ripped, I'd broken my makeshift worming syringe, and my hands were shaking from muscle fatigue. When the work gets physically hard, just some company, someone to hand you the can of antibacterial foot spray, takes the pressure off.



With help, I finished the sheep ablutions in an hour. Their feet were desperately overgrown so I've made a note to trim feet more often, my joints be damned.

The truck pulled the loaded trailer. I began to relax a bit and enjoy the few miles between Milkweed and their new field.

No gloves = purple hands. That will take a few days to wear off

I used what was left of my clutch to pull the trailer up the dirt track to the field. The sheep dribbled out and sampled their new forage. My bones are due a day's rest now, or until the sheep shearer comes.

Hayley (our farrier) and I were discussing joints and bones when she visited. Hayley trained for years, and worked as an apprentice blacksmith. Now she has her own business and a mobile forge in the back of her truck. She "hot shoes" horses, heating a basic horseshoe in a forge and shaping it on an anvil to fit the horse's foot exactly.

She's a good fifteen years younger than me but she's already doing her best to conserve her joints. If clients want their horses shod, but the horse doesn't actually need shoes, Hayley tells them she's not prepared to do it. "I only have a certain number of shoes in me. Every pair I fit takes its toll on my body, and I need to work for as long as possible. If they only need a trim, that's what they're going to get."

Outdoor physical work has long been undervalued. There should be a premium paid if you are earning a living at the expense of your body. In most cases, these are jobs that someone else is paying you to do because they are not strong enough to do it, or the work is too hard for them to even contemplate. But there's a stigma associated with people who labor, outside laborers particularly.  Hayley labors, but she is a business woman and an artisan. I use my back to grow plants and raise chickens, but I also use my knowledge of soil science, plant biology, and animal husbandry. My brain isn't wearing out, at least not as fast as my skeleton.

Mike is also wearing out, though the accident caused a great leap in his demise, and some side effects. Quincy the puppy is teething and tries to use anything or anyone as a chew toy. I saw the puppy playing on Mike's lap, writhing about and chewing his shirt sleeve. Then I saw blood. Mike doesn't have much feeling in his right arm and he didn't notice the puppy had chewed a hole in his skin. I cleaned it up and it's healing fine. Wearing out on the inside is one thing, being devoured from the outside is another.

Labradorable

Thank you to everyone for all the great and funny name suggestions. I will be referring to your list to name our future dogs for years to come. Feeling a bit homesick for New England, I settled on a good Bostonian name: Quincy. I can shorten it to Quince and, with her tiny head and fat puppy bottom, she's the same lumpy shape (as the fruit, not Jack Klugman) -

Quincy is growing by the day and she's already showing working dog tendencies. Beside carrying around a little stuffed pheasant toy, she helps me with the dishes -

Quincy has already worked out that if she climbs in the dishwasher while I'm loading it that she can lick the bowls and mugs on the top shelf above her head. Someone once told me that a labrador only has legs so that it can move its stomach about. I agree that they are easy to feed. Quincy eats everything from leftover oatmeal to daffodil flowers, if I don't keep a close eye on her.

However, Quincy's main job seems to be as a trip hazard. She's ankle high and tries to chew my shoes while I'm still wearing them. I've already got a fat lip from being headbutted by a lamb today (it objected to its injections) but I could do without a concussion to go with it. It's animal abuse, but in reverse. And the animals are winning.

Unless you're a chicken.

The next batch of meat chickens was ready for harvesting. The last batch had a lot of bruising around the breast which we decided was from flapping its wings during the killing process. A poultry killing cone holds the wings into the body, as well as holding the chicken up while it drains of blood. A proper poultry cone is made of stainless steel and costs lots of money, so we decided to make our own.

We upcycled a road cone (pinched from a skip, not the road) which we cut to fit. We banged 3 wooden posts on the ground and the cone sat nicely on top. It didn't even need securing. If you build one, make sure to leave enough room that you can reach in to stun your bird, and that you can fit a bucket underneath to catch what comes out. As always, the rubber dungarees are optional.

I've plucked 8 of the 10 birds already and no sign of bruising. I give the cone a big thumbs up.

It will be hard not to post lots of cute puppy pictures, but I promise that for every picture of Quincy in the dishwasher I will address the balance with pictures of all the less savoury aspects of our life. And if that doesn't put you off, just think of the rubber dungarees.

Pup update

Mike surprised me with a labrador puppy. I wondered why he kept going on about "wouldn't it be nice to have a little puppy again!" and pointing out all the spring babies - calves, tiny pairs of lambs, baby bunnies, even badger cubs waking us up in the middle of the night with their noisy wrestling matches. I think Mike gets broody.

And, sure, it seems like 8 dogs would be enough already, to fill our lives with love (to paraphrase a TV show theme tune). But it's also a matter of filling our kennels with workers. I rely on Jazz and Dulcie, my hardcore spaniel team, but both girls are middle aged. In a couple of year's time, they won't be able to work 50 days a season. Pip the lab will probably have to slow down around the same time because of her weak hips. Podge the cocker spaniel and Spud will be the main team by then. Replacements always need to be following on behind.

It takes anywhere from 18 months to 3 years to train a dog, depending on its individual levels of maturity and ability. Keepers' dogs have to be the Jack of all Trades dogs, doing every job on the shoot: they hunt up any wounded birds after shoot season, 'dog' birds (i.e. chase them) back home when the birds are first released and begin to wander, then put birds over guns or find and retrieve shot birds for 5 straight months of winter. On days we're not shooting, we often help local shoots that are short handed, so 50 days is a minimum.

Of course, the retirees have a home for life, even after wear and tear means they can't work at all. We owe them that. Nellie is our only completely retired dog, but she likes riding in the truck and pottering around the garden. Pretty much what I will probably like when I'm an old lady. I even give her a cup of tea sometimes, if I'm making one for myself and we're taking a break from the weeding and whatnot.

This new pup probably won't be our only one this year. We will look out for a springer spaniel - the monkey wrench of shooting dogs, capable of every job - by summer. After the chocolate lab goes to her new home. The magic number hovers around 8 dogs.

Of course another puppy following on behind this one means I'm not going to get a night's unbroken sleep until next winter.

I picked out our so-far-still-nameless lab pup from the litter yesterday. I had 3 bitches to pick from and this one was by far the ugliest, made worse by a huge bruise on the bridge of its nose (from putting its face in another dog's food bowl). I wanted to pick one of the others but nameless pup was quieter, sat and looked at me, and kept picking up lengths of straw and carrying them over to me. She was definitely a little work bee...uh, lab. Looks don't count on a shoot day.



I took her straight to the vets for a check over and a jab of anti-inflammatory / antibiotics for her nose. Like most puppies, she was car sick and, on the way to the vets, vomited. Right onto the handbrake. Like a labrador, she proceeded to eat what didn't fall through the gap around the handbrake. So goes it sharing your life with an eight-week old puppy.

She's being crate trained in the house, and her crate is tucked the other side of our kitchen table cum office desk. This is usually Dakota's sleeping spot and she's slightly put out. None of the house dogs are thrilled by the new arrival. They're all upstairs in bed with Mike who was on 4am puppy duties. I raided Mike's old hospital supplies and found absorbent pads which make great puppy bedding.

I will try and think of a name, but I could use suggestions. Anything I can easily shout across a field with minimal embarassment will be considered. I keep calling her Bug, but I should have learned my lesson with the flatcoat. Nicknames end up being recognised by smart dogs, by which time it's too late to fix it. Hence Spud with forever be Spud. Help me save Bug from the same fate!