Summer Work

It's been a busy summer, but a good one overall. Here's a quick run down so far:

Mike and Ian put about 60,000 eggs through the incubators, and produced about 45,000 pheasant and partridge chicks. Our breeding pheasants are back in the woods living their lives. Some have even hatched their own chicks, and we've seen moms trailing strings of cute fluffies. A partridge family took up residence in the garden and yes, of course I called the mother Shirley.

I also adopted J -

He's a jay bird that fledged too early in a thunder storm. Mike rescued him, cold and wet after crash landing in a puddle. I warmed him up and I hand fed him on meal worms and cat food. His feathers have finally grown in and I give him free run, er..flight, of the conservatory to strengthen his muscles. I have to cover the kitchen table with newspapers for easy clean up. On the other hand, J has eaten all the dead flies from the ledges so I'd call it an even trade, cleaning-wise. He's ready to be released when the next bout of good weather arrives. If he hangs around, I will keep feeding him. It's been a pleasure to care for him.

There are other wild chicks in the garden: the swallows are on their second brood in the lean-to porch, and the parents attack me every time I try and sneak in to get food out of the freezer. The blue tit family chicks fledged from the bird house in the cherry tree. We have no chicken chicks this year, but Tina the turkey hatched one single turkey chick, and I fostered another 6 turkey chicks from a neighbour under a very old, very broody, Buff Orpington hen.

Hen and foster chicks are happy together. I put together a little maternity unit in - where else? - an empty dog kennel.

The dogs are another story. Pip ruptured her cruciate ligament and had an operation to remove her knee cartilage, and break and reset the bone with a screw, to negate the need for the ligament. She should make a full recovery, but will suffer from arthritis in her later years. So Pip is sidelined for any summer dog work, and likely most of this winter.

Just out from her operation and still a happy girl.

Molly the new springer pup is a dream to train. However, she's developed a luxating patella, so her kneecap slips in and out of position. No operation is needed but both Pip and Molly would benefit from hydrotherapy to build muscle to support their joints. There's no centre near us so I'm improvising with a cattle trough and dog flotation aids I bought though the internet. Hey presto - Hillbilly hydrotherapy. I will of course post pictures as soon as I start their treatments.

Pip modelling her new lifejacket and post-op shave

I've been focused on the sheep side of the business. I took my first lot of lambs to market in Wales.

I love that all our signs are in English and Welsh. Just don't ask me how to pronounce it.

In fact, it was my first time to market too. Some friends who are Welsh sheep farmers not only held my hand though the process, but used their influence on the big buyers to bid on my sheep. Like everything in this world, it's who you know that helps! The lambs got a good price - second best for mid-weight lambs - and I was mentioned in the auction round-up leaflet. That's great for my business.

Sheep unloaded onto the weigh platform. An average of their weights classifies them. I had heavy and mid weight pens

My lambs penned and awaiting sale. By law they all have electronic ear tags that can be read by computer. 

My midweight lambs are being checked and logged. Heavy weight lambs in front.

It also turns out that sheep farmers in the UK are indebted to the ethnic communities for keeping us solvent. Light lambs, and cull ewes are preferred by the ethnic communities whose culinary traditions have relied on old and thinner meat animals. In these cultures, the meat is the final by-product from animals which have produced lambs, milk, and wool for human consumption over many years. Only when the ewes are too old to produce is the whole animal eaten. When fat lamb prices are down (the kind of lambs that the white European market prefers) the cull ewe prices remain steady. And light lambs can be sold rather than kept and fed expensive grain, while the farmer watches the market price for lamb go down weekly.

So my experiment using a Charolais ram worked well for me economically. I've sold half this year's lambs and already made a profit from those. I have half again left to take to market and the slowest growers will go in my freezer. I was concerned that the lambs would be stressed in a market environment. You can see by the photos that they're not worried. I was also worried how far they would travel, but found out they go from market to abbatoir in under two hours.

Going to market with a hybrid meat lamb was more profitable overall than direct customer selling of my purebreds.

Saying that, I just bought my very own Dorset ram.

I bought him from a Dorset farm, sight unseen, for his bloodlines, and it took two big farmers to wrestle him into the back of my pickup. I collected him while waiting for Pip to have her operation. Our friend and favourite vet Terry did Pip's op in his surgery in Dorset at a hugely discounted price, which left me money for the ram. I drove both a recovering Pip and the ram home to Hereford.

The big farmers weren't there to help me unload the new ram, and he was having none of it. I had to crawl in the back of the truck with the ram and try to get a rope around his neck to drag him out. He kept charging and trying to head butt me. I just kept thinking of how more people are killed by rams than by bulls. So, initially his name was "Stop head butting me, you asshole" but at my sister's suggestion I've shortened it to Rick - the "P" is silent.

I will use (P)Rick to cover my best Dorset ewes, and keep the best ewe lambs as replacement stock. The ewes that aren't good examples of the breed I'll put back to my neighbour's Charolais, and take the lambs to market. When those ewes are too old to breed, they can go to market as cull ewes. Who am I kidding? If their teeth and weight are good, they will be retired and left to graze away their old age.

And, for the first time, my check from the wool board for my sheeps' fleeces actually covered the cost of the shearer, with a leftover profit of £25! The profits from this year's sheep operation have helped keep the wolf from the door.

Saying that, we can't live on sheep and game bird profits alone. Certainly not when dogs require expensive operations. So, I've got a new job as deputy manager at a lovely local gastropub. I manage to cram in 30 hours a week at the pub, and the bonus is the pub will buy all our partridge, some pheasant, and any lambs or hogget I wish to sell.

And because I still seemed to have a few spare hours, I am working towards my APDT qualification. It's a way to give the dog training work I do every day some accreditation. I hope to specialise in gun dogs eventually.

Here's to shorter days and fuller bank accounts. And healthy stock. And no head butting.