One Out, One In

The 'Wimmin'. Left to right, Cousin Cathy, Steak Lady and Lizzie

It is a bit like hand-over day at a guest house here today with one guest vacating the spare bedroom and, following a quick blitz by the 'Housekeeping' dept, a 2nd installed. On the way out was Mum in Law (Friend of the Blog, known as 'Steak Lady' here) who'd been up for a couple of nights and was now off home.

Cathy and Liz (snr.)

Creature comforts - Deefer lying in a patch of sunlight while
leaning her head on the warm lit range. 

Fuller's London Pride.

Collected from her Knock Flight at lunchtime today was Liz's cousin Cathy, a first time guest. Cathy was Liz's closest cousin when they were all young children together and 2 families briefly lived in the one house in Portmarnock. They are still the best of friends but Cathy is a busy lady (all that taxi-ing teenagers about that all Mothers are familiar with) and had not, till now, been persuaded to make the trip to Ireland to visit us in our new abode.

Regular visitor Danielle (as in Dan and Dan, recently wed on a cruise ship) is Cathy's eldest and Jacob, who visited recently (April 15th) is her 2nd child and oldest son. Cathy recently had a Birthday and Danielle plus Jake conspired to arrange her flights over here and time off the home duties to spring us on her as a nice surprise present. Cathy only found out yesterday that the true destination was here and the rest is history.

Bee hive.

We love that when asked by her children what she'd do here she said, quite simply "I am going to Stop!" Not stop as in stay here (though I think that is even a possibility!) , stop as in take your foot off the accelerator, stop fussing, stop worrying about anybody else, stop with the child-taxi service and all the demands of busy parenthood. All that stuff is catered for by the kids' Dad or the older 2 'children'. We love that we can provide the sort of accommodation where guests can really relax, no demands on them, lie in if they want, sleep during the day and so on. Cathy is surely a deserving case. It will be interesting to see whether she really does slow down. Liz is currently showing her how to make Mayonnaise. I guess that's a form of relaxation.

Part of Liz's Birthday 'haul', this metal and glass owl (and a
frog) for the outside walls. 

Less relaxing and rather more alarming a story comes to us from a friend and nearby smallholder (no names, no pack drill and some 'detail' redacted to protect the innocent and guilty. No pictures, obviously). This lady went out to milk her goats a couple of days ago and was attacked, badly and without warning by her Billy-goat. She was badly hurt - rammed, knocked down several times, stomped on and bitten.

Mum on the phone.

The boy intended to do her some serious damage. He managed to bruise her all round the arms and chest and gave her some bad scratches by slamming her into sharp edges. It started when she unbolted the door to go in for the first milking-Nanny and he slammed the door back past her so that he and all 3 Nannies got out into the yard. It was during her attempts to round up the Nannies that he kept coming at her. It seemed to go on for an hour, she says, though she has no idea really how long.

An interesting birthday present - a DNA testing kit.

She talked me through what she could remember - they'd gone all round and about and between a car, trailer, 2 wheel barrows, pallet sized water butts, stacks of tyres and a fruit cage frame. The Billy had moved the trailer in his efforts to get at her and banged it into the car. Eventually, scrabbling back up from lying on her back between two water butts on the gravel with the goat towering over her with "mad eyes", she was able to grab a pitchfork and manouvre him back into the shed door. There he went all quiet.

While we're looking out, these guys are
often looking in. 

To cut a long story short, Billy goat is no longer living at that address and our friend swears she will never own another male goat. On the plus side, dozens of people have raced around to her with sympathy, help and offers of cover while her partner is currently out of the country for a few days. Liz and Liz went round yesterday and me today. She is now recovering from the shock and is able to tell the story without the tears welling up.

Soldier. The shiny redness is a reflection off Mum's car bonnet,
 on which he was sitting

It is one of those things that all we live-stock folk have at the back of our minds - even if it is only roosters, stag-turkeys or buck-rabbits rather than the bigger, heavier, more powerful rams, boars, bullocks or protective females of these species with calves/lambs/piglets to protect. They can and do turn vicious and have enough teeth, jaws, hooves, horns and claws to do a soft-skinned human plenty of damage. Stay safe people. It's a jungle out there.

Houdini Duck

There's always one. Houdini Duck is out AGAIN. 

There's always one, isn't there? Ours at present is one of the ducks who, unlike his 5 colleagues, is refusing to be contained by my attempts to ban ducks from the big pond. The 5 just went into the 'new' pen (the orchard) on the day we decided to move them, whinged for a while walking up and down the wire fence, but then settled down, uncomplaining, to a life with the geese. They may have tried to nip through the fence and the sheep hurdles a few times but when they couldn't break through at ground level, they relaxed and stayed put.

I was trying to get a good "It's lashing down!" pic for 365.
I was happy with this one.

Duck #6, though, had other ideas. Every time we ran the ducks into the orchard, you'd hear him a few minutes later quacking loudly in the yard or on the front drive. The escapes quickly earned him the name 'Houdini Duck' and we had to keep an eye on him to see how and where he was escaping. He's not that subtle, bless him, and brazenly escaped again while we watched. He had realised that while the bottom 'rungs' of a sheep hurdle were close together (to stop baby lambs), the gaps got bigger further up the hurdle, and if he hopped up to rung #3, he could squeeze through there.

We are getting some striking sunsets with all these storm clouds.

I covered all the hurdles with 1" square 'aviary mesh' to stop his little game, but the lad sussed out that the same size changes also applied to the sheep wire as a whole. He could get out anywhere around the orchard perimeter with a simple hop up to a foot from the ground and a slither down through, but so far only does it nearest to the big pond. My next step is to run 2" chicken wire all along that fence line. This bizarre psychology is one of the good things we have learned about containing poultry. Chickens, for example, will happily fly up and over a 6 foot solid, opaque wall, but do not think they can do the same flight over a transparent, chicken wire fence. They walk up and down the fence looking through it and bumping off it with their beaks but it never seems to occur to them to fly up and over.

They might look pretty in the slanting evening sunshine but
they are still thistles and need clearing

Actually he is not a natural 'free bird' and does not do anything with his freedom. He seems rather upset that his 5 colleagues do not follow him and he hangs around sadly just outside the fence, quacking at them. He does not even go onto the pond much on his own, so the pond is, in fact, recovering slowly. He is, though, a nuisance (as well as an affront to my fencing ability!) so he needs to be contained by this next plan or he is going to find himself 'ate' if he doesn't watch out. I am talking 'He' here, of course. He may not turn out to be a drake but if he is and he is not the only one, then he may be first against the wall come the revolution. [I am hoping here that my readers know me well enough to know that all this may not be 100% serious. We do not, in fact, make 'harvesting' decisions based on how annoying the livestock are!].

Lamb

In other harvesting stories, we were booked to nip down to our butcher in Castlerea on Monday to collect and see cut up, our two ram lambs, Ebony and Ivory. It is fascinating to talk to the lads down there and we wondered how our lambs would fare especially as the slaughterman always has a bit of a light hearted chunter at our lambs being too big or, sometimes being black-wooled and therefore less likely to grow as well. The guys have been at it for a long time, so they should know, but I have to admit to a bit of 'pinch of salt' at the 'black wool bad' thing.

First fruits for 2016. Some nice lamb chops for Monday supper.

This time they were spot on - the white wool boy was definitely fatter and bigger. There is not a lot we can do about this, however. Our #2 ewe, Polly' is half 'Jacob', a bicoloured mountainy breed, which is almost certainly the reason for the black wool and less heavy shape of her lambs. What ever the case, we saved 4 chops from the freezer and had them as our 'first fruits' of 2016 meat. They were a tender and flavour-filled delight.

Thistles for the compost.

The remaining 6 sheep are currently mowing my front lawn for me while I get a chance to nip round and pull the thistles in the East Field. After the rain, it is a good satisfying task as a vertical gentle pull will give you all the stem and leaves plus a good chunk of taproot. The field is not too bad because I do this every year - if you pull the root the sheep can straight way return to graze there. If you mow or cut the shoot and leave the top or any leaves still there, the sheep will avoid the grass and your thistle will just re-grow. I guess there are about 3-4 man hours of work at it and 3 towering wheel barrows of thistles for the compost.

The Hubbard poults spread out across their new paddock.

My only other news is that the Hubbards, at 50 days old are now well settled into and enjoying their new run and have learned to take themselves off to bed in the correct place (in the coop not under it!) as it gets dark. . This was not an immediate thing and I had an abortive day when I'd got 9 of them in, all calm, when Blue the Cat decided to 'help'. That day I had to hire the 'assistant chicken wrangler' to help round up the upset, scattered poults and steer them back towards their (now cat-free) home for the night. It's never boring with livestock.

Choosing Ewes

Mayo-Liz's lovely hill.

Off on a mission on Tuesday (28th Oct) to look at some ewes with an eye to buying some 'keepers' from which we can produce our own lambs. This will mean leaving behind the simple, calm waters of "store lamb" rearing, and venturing forth into year round sheep, a whole new ball game. Store lambs you plan to get in already healthy, dosed up for liver fluke, trimmed of foot and dagged and your job is to keep them healthy for the 4-5 months while they grow up to slaughter weight. You hope to incur no vet bills or any need to do anything serious in the way of husbandry. Year-round sheep keeping, on the other hand, brings you round each year to the need to do that dosing, get them sheared and foot-trimmed, lambing them and so on. I was definitely going to need some help and advice.

"Our" two potential mums, the Jacob x Hampshire Down
on the left, HD x Suffolk Down on the right.

Step forward, then, Mayo-Liz, good friend of Carolyn of the Mini Horses who farms around 20 ewes on a beautiful hill in Mayo, near Kiltimagh (pronounce it Kill-cheh-mah, you have to pick up on the 'Kilti' bit actually being the Irish for forestry (coillte)). She had mentored Carolyn when they had their sheep and happily agreed to help me through my early stages as well as being a possible good source of some 'in-lamb' ewes and help when it came to lambing time, shearing and all the rest. She is only about half an hour from here, so it will be easy enough to load up and nip our animals over there at all the various stages.

Same again.

Mayo-Liz turned out, as we'd hoped and expected, to be a lovely lady, expert, knowledge-able and generous with her advice, as well as no-nonsense, practical and serious and passionate about her sheep. She was not going to let me anywhere near her girls till she'd checked me out, but I think I 'passed' and I hope this will be the start of a good and productive co-operation

Little cutie - a pure bred Hampshire Down ewe lamb, born
this year. Our optional third choice.

Mayo Liz has had sheep of various breeds and up till recently had two rams, one a Jacob but more recently she has bought a whole gang of pure-bred Hampshire Down ewes and a pure bred ram. Hampshire Downs are quite rare these days and she had to drive all the way down to Cork to find these, and they still cause surprise and amazement when ever she takes them to shows; the locals have never seen such a sheep! So the ewes I could see and choose from that day were mainly Hampshire Downs and crosses plus one last Jacob cross. After a good deal of advice taking and weighing-up, I chose the (5 year old) Jacob x Hampshire and a three year old Hampshire x Suffolk Down. Charlotte also nudged me in the direction of a little cutie, a pure bred Hampshire Down looking more like a teddy-bear x alpaca. I was only meant to be buying the two, but I could see the sense in getting the third to companion my two Mums and to watch and learn ready for her turn in the spring of 2016. I penciled her in as an option but needed to get 'sign-off' from my own Liz. That's now done. so we will be collecting all three.

3 year old Hampshire Down x Suffolk
Down ewe. 

The two intended in-lamb ewes now get separated from any clingy 2014 lambs, so they can dry off (finish their lactations) and come back into heat. They will be put with the HD ram who should be able to do what's intended by early December. Mayo-Liz uses strap-on chalk-block tell-tales to check that the ewes have been mounted by the ram, so we want nice big chalky blotches of colour on the rumps of these ewes, Mr Hampshire. The plan is that we collect them, 'with child', in early December. They are then pregnant for 5 months, round till April-ish where upon we start with the fun and games of lambing. We hope this all runs smoothly and to plan but it is good to know we have Mayo-Liz at the end of a phone or a half hour drive. It's going to be an interesting project.

Of Beltex Sires

We have already posted that this year's lambs are standard white, not the deep chocolate brown of last year's Jacob x Texel cherubs. These are from the same Mums, Kenny's Texel ewes but this year he has used a 'Beltex' sire, he tells us, which should produce a meatier carcass which the butchers will love. He is way more experienced and knowledgeable than us but happily admits to not knowing 'it all' and keeps trying different combinations of sire and dam to see what works best for his Irishtown (Co Mayo) farm and the grass and weather conditions.

We just get some lambs from him which have fallen a bit behind and not 'finished' as quickly as his best lambs. It is up to us to lavish what attention we can on them to catch them up or let them make the weight (or not) at a slower pace as suits us. If he chooses a Beltex ram (this year he borrowed him from a friend) then that's what we get. I had never heard of Beltex, so was reduced to googling the breed on the internet where, of course, there is more information than you can shake a stick at.

Interestingly the best website we came across was one covering a Connemara market close to us,

http://www.maamcrossmart.com/historysheepbeltex.htm

If I can shamelessly plagiarize for a few minutes, I now know that.....

" Beltex sheep were first introduced to Ireland from Belgium in the 1980 s. They originated from hybrid sheep bred in Belgium. The breed's main characteristics are double-muscled hindquarters, coupled with fine bones, which ensures maximum killing-out percentage of the finished lamb.Beltex is primarily a terminal sire to cross with Irish sheep and half-bred continental sheep. Beltex-sired lambs are born with ease and are thrifty.Conformation is the breed's main main attribute in producing prime lamb.Finished lambs yield a high killing-out percentage and a carcase with well-fleshed legs, good eye muscle and a long loin. The finished lamb is sought after for its superior conformation both in the home and export market.Breeders have found that quality prime lambs can be produced economically at 18 to 26 kg carcase weight, killing out at 60 per cent. Crossed with smaller ewes they are also suitable for the lightweight export market".

I have to say that 'double muscling' is not anything I really wanted to get involved in. I find the cattle which feature this trait, like Belgian Blues, slightly obscene. They have the extra block of muscle on their rump and down each hind leg like some pumped up, steroid-loaded weight lifter. They fall into that category of things which are bred TOO MUCH by mankind, along with most double and treble flowered plants and too-inbred show-dogs like those funny looking slouched-at-the-back German Shepherd dogs and, ultimately, GM food plants. I am much more comfortable with simpler flowers and traditional breeds and varieties of animals. This might be a half-baked situation which needs some thinking through

Anyway, I am pleased that our lambs are only 'sired by' a Beltex, not pure bred Beltex. They have picked up some of the meat-producing genes but do not show the 'pedigree' double muscling.

Our job, as last year, is to teach them to love us and persuade them to put on lots of weight eating our grass and a feed mix known as 'Fast Lamb Crunch'. So far the 'love us' thing is not going spectacularly well. Last year's lambs came to us straight off their Mums, and their Mums had been fed every day with 'Ewe and Lamb Nuts' which meant that they were used to racing towards Kenny expecting a feed when their Mums heard the rattle of the bucket. We just took over the process and quickly had them feeding out of our hands and hand-held buckets. Once you have done that you can confidently lead them out for a graze of the un-fenced lawn, for example, knowing that when you have done you can lead them back to their field by rattling the bucket.

[Ducklings get a first bath today]

These lambs have been separated from their Mums for three weeks now and seem to have forgotten about buckets and racing to the nearest human. If I go into the field they eye me suspiciously. They wait till I have put down the bucket and retreated and then, at some quiet point between then and my next visit they sneak over to the bucket and eat the meal.

Even that is new - they did not even eat it for the first few days. They would move off if I approached always keeping 50 yards or so between us. That, at least, is getting better. They are getting used to me and let me get to within 10 yards. I am moving the bucket a bit closer each day, hoping that soon I will be able to bring it to the gate and call them over. I am also amazed by how quiet they are. Last year's lambs seemed to be always baa-ing, greeting us as we came home, asking for food, shouting to each other. You never hear these guys! Maybe as they get more used to us and start to enjoy and want the feed, they will start talking to us. Funny little things, sheep.....

Here was a curious thing. I noticed that a couple of the large white caterpillars feeding on some nasturtiums in the yard appeared to have climbed up onto the leaves of a young Kniphofia (red hot poker) and stopped by a pale yellow 'egg mass' each. The masses were attached to the leaves by a web of silken threads and the caterpillars looked for all the world like they were standing guard. They never moved and were not eating, but looked intact and 'healthy'. I photo'd them and posted the picture on the Kent Wildlife Trust pages of Facebook asking what this was all about.

It turns out that they are not healthy or standing guard. Insect expert Jill Ireland tells me that these are "cabbage white butterfly caterpillars which have been parasitized. The larvae of the parasite have crawled out from the host and pupated themselves after eating the living insides of the caterpillar". The caterpillar is just a drying husk. The culprit is a solitary wasp called a 'braconid' known to his friends as "Apanteles glomeratus". This is a wildlife garden, so we are actually delighted that this gruesome event has been played out here - we have an ever more complex food web building up. We find it fascinating.