Looking Forwards

With Christmas and the New Year all done, dusted and packed away we start to feel like we should be looking forward to the new season, Spring, new stock and all the fruit, flowers and veg leaping into action. In the previous post, I wrote that we were waiting on the splatter of tiny feet with a batch of 7 duck eggs in friend Sue's incubator. That has all now happened with three lovely healthy ducklings hatched over the 6th and 7th, collected by us on the 8th and now going through the first "brood box" week.

We use a semi-transparent plastic crate for this (well, a series of crates of increasing size to suit the growing babies) and our "electric hen" (warming plate) and we feed chick-crumb with plenty of water on the side (as these are ducks and they prefer their food dibbled in the wet) plus, for the first week, finely mashed hard boiled egg with the shell finely chopped and mixed back in.

Curiosity might not kill the cat in this case!

We are reminded each time we do this, that ducklings do not naturally creep under mother's skirts (if she is swimming, they'd submerge!) but climb instead onto her back. The ducklings are the same with the electric hen and you can generally find them all hopped up on top in a huddle. As I write this they are 3 days old and thriving. They have good appetites and have quickly learned about food, water and keeping themselves clean. You can not let them out onto the water properly till they are about 3 weeks old, as their preen-glands have not yet developed or started to produce the water-proofing oil for their feathers. In nature their mother would have oiled them up in the nest.

Hopefully the parents of this years piglets, pregnant sows
Iris and Plum.

I may also have mentioned that we had been in contact with our piglet-breeder, a guy called Adrian who farms over near the town of Boyle. You may recall that although last year's piglets came from a chap called Dermot in Wicklow, 3 hours drive away, we did not have to make that drive ourselves. Dermot was coming most of the way here and if we'd meet him in Boyle, we could get away with a half hour drive and a bit of piglet-wrangling in Boyle's market car park.

Half grown piglets at Adrian's place.
These are about 5 months old

The reason Dermot was up here was to collect a sow from Adrian and take it 'home' to get it pregnant by one of his boars. That sow and another have now produced a couple of litters each and are pregnant again (pig-people like to keep their sows in pig as much as possible because if you 'rest' them they can be a devil to get back on heat). One is due this month and the other in March. We hope to take 2 gilts from the January litter, which will be weaned after 8 weeks, in March. Sue is hoping for the same. Obviously it is all in the lap of the gods at present - as with humans there is no telling whether they will successfully 'farrow', or when or how many piglets might result and how many survive to weaning. Litters can be as big as 15 piglets or down in the 5s. All we can do at this stage is wish them all luck and pray hard.

Polly with last year's twin lambs in March (2016)

In the sheep department I had been getting a bit concerned at a stiffness or lameness I had seen on a couple of cold damp mornings in our oldest ewe, Polly. At 9 years old, Polly is at least 5 years older than any commercial 'serious' sheep farmer would keep a breeding ewe. They are allowed a couple of seasons and then generally turned into mutton at 4 years old. Well, every day is a school day with livestock and I now know a bit more about shepherding after seeking advice from Mayo Liz, the person who we are sure knows more about elderly sheep than anyone - she supplied us with Polly (and Lily and Myfanwy) in the first place aged 7 and still has some of her other ewes at 13 years old.

Mineral Lick for sheep.

Every time I see a lame sheep, I have been reaching for the foot-trimming shears and paring away any shaggy edges of 'toe-nail' I found. Well, apparently you should not always do this - restrict foot trimming to 1 or 2 times a year. Sheep get over most foot problems much faster untrimmed. Then, too, I have learned all about "The Mineral Bucket". This I possibly should have known because way back when I was a student doing a bit of milking, I remember the cattle had access to great big salt-blocks to lick. Also I know, in theory, that those goats you see creeping out along the sheer vertical walls of dams in Europe, clinging on by the edges of their toe-nails to the joints in the stone, are doing it to get to the salt deposits encrusted on the wall by water seeping through the dam.

Polly beats Myfanwy to the mineral lick. 

Be that as it may, Mayo-Liz always gives her sheep mineral licks in Winter because the quality of the grass falls away and they might lack minerals in their diet. This might be why Polly is getting stiffness in her joints, especially if she is starting to lose teeth through old age. The 'lick' is a mix of minerals and salts thickened up to a very stiff, clay-like consistency with molasses and is dark brown in colour. All the sheep love it and the older 3 (born at Mayo-Liz's) all piled in with delight. It was like an old friend! They lick and nibble and try to rasp away at the stuff goo with their lips, teeth and hard-pad (top jaw) trying to beat all the competition off till they have had enough. The bucket is now a stop on their endless circuits of the field. I THINK I can detect a new spring in Polly's step but that might just be fond imagination.

Not so chatty now, Mr Fox?

Finally a bit of fun to close off the fox story. We are fairly sure that we have solved that problem for now with our shooting of the boy-fox back in November and our new habits of keeping the birds in if we are both off site seems to have driven off the older girl (plus my man-with-shotgun from Jan 2015 has shot 2 other animals recently on his own place). Well, I thought it might be fun and cathartic to take a stuffed toy fox to our first archery club session on Sunday - we are for ever shooting at coffee cups, balloons and other bits of junk when we get bored with shooting at the official targets.

The only good fox?

So it was - we sat Brer Fox on a little wire hoop in the target at 40' range. I was actually the first to hit him and with a very lucky first arrow (right in the mouth) but he was soon getting peppered by all and sundry and starting to leak stuffing. Ah well. All good harmless fun. I should quickly re-assure my readers who do not know this story or about archery, we would not dream of taking a bow and arrows to the real thing. It is illegal throughout the British Isles to hunt any animal or bird with a bow and arrows. I am told you can still hunt that way in parts of Europe and USA but have to use the very powerful "compound" style bows and even then it has to be under license.

Towser.

So there you have it. 2017. Bring it on.

Somerville and Ross

One of my annual name plaques for the pig ark.

Welcome aboard, Somerville and Ross. No, not the 'Irish RM' ladies, but this year's brace of gilts (female pigs) who came to us at 9 weeks of age, just yesterday. Regular readers will know that our pig-gathering missions are usually a bit epic - 2 hours+ drives down to Kildare where we take Charlotte and a substantial picnic. This year could have been slightly further as we had locked onto a breeder in Wicklow but by happy chance the guy was heading up this way this week and suggested we rendezvous with him and pigs in Boyle market square, just half an hour's drive away.

The new pigs - Ross on the left, Somerville right.

We had not decided for 2016 which variety we would try this year after going with Tamworths in 2014 and Berkshires in 2015, having worked our way thus through the likely varieties coming from the Kildare breeder (FreeRangePigsIreland.IE). We had briefly toyed with the idea of his "Iron-Age" pigs (a Tamworth x WildBoar) but worried that they might be a bit tusky, mean and dangerous. Then our good friend Rob found in Facebook a group associated with and promoting the variety "Oxford Sandy and Black" (OSBs) including in Ireland. I joined the group and put out a shout asking if there were any OSB breeders at all near us.

The piglets in the dog-crate in the back
of our car.

Step forward, Dermot A of Winetavern Farm in Stratford, Co Wicklow who is a little further away from us that even the Kildare guy but hey, we thought, shove a stop at Silverwood's for refreshments into the mixture and you still have a workable mission. We placed our order last 'back end' and then kept in touch with Dermot through the winter while the piglets cooked, then farrowed, then weaned. When I phoned last week to confirm that we were still on, he told me of the plan to come up to Boyle, where a friend and earlier customer needed some boar-piglets castrating and also his breeding sow collecting for bringing back to Dermot's boar in Wicklow. You may have spotted that this could well lead to OSBs from Dermot's bloodlines being available soon as close to us as Boyle. This puts a whole new slant on the 2017 choices!

Dermot's truck signage

Dermot turned out to be a superb bloke, keeper of 100 pigs on 3 acres, well experienced in pedigree breeding and showing, full of helpful advice but also very very practical, relaxed and easy going. He knew that we did not want these gilts for showing or breeding from so he had selected for us a couple of girls with slightly 'wrong' colouring - they are meant to be 'sandy' coloured (from blond through to very ginger) but well spotted with black splotches. One of ours has too many black spots and these joining up into 'patches' which would be a breed-fault at a show, the other not enough spots. If you know us at all you'll know we don't give a fig for 'show standard' (hence our three "nearly-westies"). We are more about healthy animals, meat quality and flavour. I only mention the spotting in case someone reads this who knows OSBs, sees the pictures and judges Dermot, us or Somerville and Ross negatively.

Home now and briefly rested in the sun.

The piglets are utter charmers and already more friendly than either of our previous 'batches'. Previously I have unloaded the pigs and they have vanished into the straw bed from whence you take a good month persuading them (with food and general schmoozing) to come anywhere near you.You eventually manage to get them to accept a tickle of the ear or a scratch of the back and then a tape measure round their 'bust' when trying to estimate weight. No such reticence with these ladies. We dropped them in home at about 3pm yesterday and left them to sleep off the trials of the long journey (3.5 hours all up). I took food into them this morning and never saw them - just rustling straw. Lunchtime I saw them but they stayed (not very well) hidden. But this evening I took them more food and 2 heads popped up out of the straw bed, and they came trotting over to get their noses into the food bowl while I was still holding it. I was able to stroke a back with no resulting protest or scarpering.

Clean straw. new home in our pig ark.

Thanks to Dermot and to all involved in this pig story. Charlotte agreed to come with me despite the lack of long car-ride and one of Liz's picnics and was as superbly practical and helpful as ever, especially at the stage where, in the open of Boyle car park, we had to transfer 2 wriggling piggies from Dermot's 4 x 4 to the crate in our car. C just grabs them by the back legs the way you are supposed to do, and walks over with piggy dangling from her hand head-down, completely subdued, quiet and relaxed. No harm done and no pigs vanishing between the parked cars into the traffic or local shops.

A full house for the village play on Thursday night

While I had C's undivided attention, when we were back here we had a good long chat about pasture improvement (re sheep), I captured Nanny Óg so that she could do a hands-on examination of kid-filled abdomen (they were kicking!), ever bigger udder and tight vulva (not ready yet), and she also demonstrated how to start halter-training our new ewe-lamb Rosie. My plan is to start Rosie this young so that by the time it comes to her first shearing (Spring 2017) she will accept being sheared while standing up the right way as we did last year for Sue's ewe 'Pink'. This is so much easier (on me and the sheep) than the upside down wrestling commercial method we have to use on Lily and Polly and (possibly) Myfanwy. M is quite tame so she may take halter restraint OK.

This is all you can see of Liz in her prompters
'cubby hole' off stage-right if you are on stage.
She is well hidden from the audience, obviously.

In a busy week, the only other thing we have had time for has been the village play, where Liz has been co-opted as 'prompt' as well as costume-seamstress and a variety of admin functions (tickets, booking, obtaining props and raffle tickets etc). I have become the official photographer. Final night is tonight even as I type this but if this showing is anything like the Opening Night and Thursday, then the whole will have been a huge and delightful success. They played to 3 full houses (It seats about 110). It has gone down enormously well and is much talked about as being a very enjoyable night well threaded through with loud laughter and audience members snorting into tissues or cheering with joy as a popular character from an earlier act comes on stage again. The actors (3 are complete novices) have had to learn fast how to pause while laughter dies down before continuing with their lines and Liz has had to learn that they have stopped for a good reason, and do not need prompting, not because they are frozen in fear! It has been a good thing and everyone is quite tired and looking forward to tonight's final performance - there are solid plans for the entire cast and crew to adjourn to the pub for a wind-down drink. More on the play and stuff on the Lisacul website, as ever. I am off down there soon to watch the end of it and join in the celebrations.