Polar Vortex

I'm not a meteorologist, but I don't think the polar vortex has come over as far as Wales. However, we woke up to the coldest morning of winter yet. No snow, but the frost hasn't lifted all day. I had to bucket warm water to all the lambing ewes, chickens, dogs and horses. Even the little birds got some warm water in their bird bath. Dehydration can be a big problem in the cold, for livestock and wild animals alike.

Motivated by the cold weather, I spent a few hours restocking our wood piles. The boys log it and bring it back to our already crammed full barn. I use the log splitter on the back of the tractor to split it-

If you don't know, a hydraulic log splitter is almost as luxurious as a lambing barn. No swinging an axe, no problems with tough gnarly logs either. The axe head is pushed down by hydraulic, tractor-driven force and pops open even stubborn wood. And it has safety measures so you don't pop your fingers off your hands.

With a good audiobook in my ears and a mug of hot chocolate, it is one of the more rewarding jobs. Definitely better than hauling buckets of water, that's for sure.

The underkeepers' cottage is heated solely by wood, so the boys go through quite a bit over winter. You can always see smoke chuffing out of their chimney. Mike and I have a log burner in the living room, but we also had a Rayburn put in last year.

It burns solid fuel, so wood or coal. It has two hotplates on top, a hot oven for cooking and a lukewarm oven, which farmers' wives traditionally used for warming up hypothermic lambs. I used mine last winter when a ewe delivered an unplanned lamb in weather much like this-

He survived and had a sister.

It's only a second hand one that came out of an estate cottage, when they upgraded to oil heating, but it has been a godsend. It's in the sunroom which was previously uninhabitable after October. She's like another member of the family, so we gave her a name: Bernie.

I can leave a kettle on the hot plate, and there's always hot water for tea (or defrosting troughs). If you put the hotplate covers down, you can warm your folded pyjamas on top, so they're toasty when you put them on. A bottle of red wine can be warmed up for drinking if you stand it on the corner of Bernie. And a sheepskin in front of the Rayburn is a dog magnet -

Send more sheepskins!!

Mike just checked the weather update, and it seems that we're expecting snow overnight. The milkman seems to agree - he brought tomorrow's milk delivery this evening as snowy lanes would be treacherous for him in his milk van. Tomorrow is the last day of shooting season,  but inclement weather may stop the day. I'm not sure the dogs will mind much if I keep Bernie full of wood.  And the milk's arrived so, with a hot chocolate at the ready, neither will I.

OK, So. Where Were We...?

It's been over a year since I've written a post. So. Where were we?

We are nearly at the end of shooting season, and our last day is the 1st of February. After a hot, dry summer in England, our birds grew well. We introduced a new strain of pheasant - the Byzanty.

Byzanty is actually the Polish word for pheasant, but it's also a strain of pheasant that's darker and has a bigger body than our usual type, and it's a stronger flyer. We needed a stronger flyer as the ground in Herefordshire is flatter than Dorset, so the birds need to take off and propel themselves, rather than just drift off higher ground.

The downside is that this strain wanders more, and we have to work harder to keep them at home. We use a combination "carrot and stick" approach: we feed them their favorite cut maize (carrot) and chase them back when they stray with a dog (stick). The shooting clients have been very complementary about our new breeding. We only introduced it to half the flock, in case it didn't work, but we will hybridise the whole flock this season, after a successful trial run.

I'm trialling a new ram too. Meet Bertram.

He's a Freisian - a  milking or dairy type sheep that comes from Holland / Germany. Mike bought me a proper milking machine for my goats, and it got me thinking about how delicious sheep's cheese is. My Dorset ewes are perfect for crossing with a dairy breed. Insomnia and scrolling through a livestock sale website at 2 a.m. led me to find Bertram. My first Dorset x Friesian lamb was born this morning -

It's a ewe lamb, and what I hope will be the first of my future milking sheep flock. She was born to my ewe called One Tag, for the (probably obvious) reason that she only has one tag in her ear, having ripped the other out on some wire fence while reaching through to eat the waaay better grass on the other side.

The first lambing of the year has not been without its drama already. One Tag has mastitis so I've had to defrost some frozen sheep colostrum (the first milk with all the energy and mum's useful antibodies) and tube the little lamb, to make sure she had a full belly and necessary antibodies. One Tag looked as if she could be having twins but hours passed and there was no sign of contractions. When I checked on her a couple hours later, there was a cold, dead ram lamb in the pen. 

Well, that sucks. I'm already at 50% mortality on the first day.

Breeding a milking flock is an experiment, like Mike's Byzanty pheasants. I chose Dorset ewes from my flock which were not great examples of their breed - maybe a bit masculine in the face, too woolly, pigmented eyes - or that were related to my Dorset ram. A cross could potentially improve them. I'm only lambing 7 or so this month, which are in lamb to Bertram. I won't know for 18 months to 2 years whether or not this crossbreed will succeed. 

Not to put all my eggs in one basket (or lambs in one pen?) Horned Ram has covered my best ewes and those are due in April. Sadly, Prick my stock ram died in the summer.

Staggered lambing also helps me to spread out my lamb crop so that any lambs going to market will go throughout the year. If they all go at the same time and the market price is low when the lambs are ready, that's a big financial hit to take on a once a year crop.

Last year's lambing was excellent - 200% return, no lamb deaths, and lots of replacement ewes. Yes, of COURSE something went wrong. The growing lambs got a virulent worm that was resistant to the medicine programme I was using. The lambs crashed in a week, and by the time the vets identified the cause and treated it, I lost 3 ewe lambs, including my only horned ewe lamb.

While the lambs recovered I kept them inside the barn, and I had to feed them on concentrated food to bring their weight and condition back to normal. The extra feed wiped out any profit on my lamb sales last year. It was tough. I still have some of last year's lambs not yet fit as "finished" lambs and I will hold them over the winter, requiring yet more feed and care, to be sold as hoggett (young sheep) in the spring market.

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It's 4:22 am and I've been lambing for the last hour. Horned ewe was in the throes of delivering a big ram lamb when I did my early check. Thank goodness I did, as the lamb had its head out and was still in the water bag. I found his front feet, broke the bag, checked he was breathing and helped the ewe deliver him. A trick for delivering a big stuck head is to put your hand inside her bottom and push the head down. Works great, just wash your hands before making a cup of tea.

Writing is a great distraction while I wait for Horned ewe to lamb again. I didn't have them scanned so I have to use a combination of experience (limited) and observation to decide if there are going to be multiple births. She's restless and pawing the ground now so I've turned off the light in the barn to let her settle and get on with the job.

Oh yes, the barn!

I had a barn built, with electricity and plumbed in water, for lambing and kidding (goats). It is the absolute height of luxury! No more wandering around a dark field shining a torch, hoping to catch sight of reflecting eyes to find a sheep in labour. When I described this scenario to my sister, she said "That is how every horror movie starts."

Now, I walk 30 yards across the lane, turn on a light and lamb in a dry room on a bed of straw. All my meds are in reach. No more trying to time contractions in order to catch a ewe in distress, in an open field. No more being rained on while I tend to ewe and lamb.

Can you tell I'm excited about this?

It's not a huge barn, so I have to bring in batches of ewes, and turn them out on grass when their lambs are big enough, clean down, and bring in the next batch. There's another half, but at the moment it's filled with logs waiting to be split and a big bale of feed hay.

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It's 6.30 am now. Horned ewe hadn't delivered within the hour, so I went in to have a look. She had nearly loaded the lamb into the birth canal, but she just got too tired to push. The lamb was in distress and had a front leg pointed the wrong way. A bit of manoeuvring and a lot of pulling on my part (she wasn't having contractions to help me), and I managed to get the ram lamb out.

He swallowed some fluid during the birth and his breathing is laboured but improving. Barring infection, he should be OK. I learned my lesson from yesterday's long delivery and intervened earlier. So, mortality has gone down - to 25%. I'll take it for now.

I won't relax until Horned ewe passes her placenta. I had a feel inside the birth canal, up to the middle of my forearm, and nothing else was in there. But, a placenta dragging along behind is a sure sign it's over.

Time for coffee. After I wash my hands.


P.S. I owe Kristen W and my family a big thank you for the encouragement to start writing again. I guess I have a year's worth of stuff to catch you up on.