Cull-a-Cock Curry

Some lovely sunsets. This taken by a friend on the Facebook
"Ballaghaderreen" account yesterday and used with permission.

Rather pleasingly our 2018 which started out with that long, cold wet Spring where no grass grew and we were all feeding our livestock with hay and supplements, has now given us a lovely Autumn. You will recall we also had that humdinger of a heat wave in May/June so it has been a bit of a weird year for the weather.

Full moon - pic blagged off Internet

So the last few weeks have featured no wind, clear skies (lovely and blue by day, big bright moons at night including the 'Beaver Moon' full moon on 24th this month), some light frosts and minor freezing of the big pond. More importantly there has been no rain so we are nice and dry and mud-less. A lot of the beef animals are still outside on the grass, to the delight of the local beef-men. Indoor housing means more work and more slurry to spread from the tanks under "slatted houses". After their tricky Spring, that will come as a lovely relief.

Blue sky, green grass, white geese and a
rather black-ice frozen pond.

For us,with our sheep, it is already the 26th Nov, less than a month to Christmas and Elizabeth is only today having to buy the extras for the ladies; a bucket of their 'salt lick' mineral with molasses and a bag of their "crunch" (mixed grains, again with molasses). These give them plenty of energy, minerals and trace elements to keep their bones, feet and guts healthy as the grass starts to be exhausted. It is especially important if they are pregnant but Friends of the Blog will know that we are not 'doing' lambs this Winter, so that, at least is not a concern.

Frozen pond. Good news for Brer Fox, bad news for ducks.

The cold, dry sunshine has also been a good opportunity for the 'staff' to polish off a few jobs out of doors (we could have made good use of a couple of last Help-X-ers after all!). The Woman of the House decided to tackle the privet hedge out front.

Elizabeth goes 2 feet back into the hedge prior to taking the
top out of it down to about her shoulder height. The daffs in the
verge will love it and we will be able to see out as we nose the
car into the laneway.

This hedge had grown thick (4'?) and tall (8'?) and since we had been here it had only been shaped/trimmed by any passing Council contractors we could flag down and then picked at by us around the gateway 'splay' when we couldn't see to poke the car's nose out of the driveway. Elizabeth decided to "go for it" carving 2-3 feet back into the  front of it, exposing an old cutting-level at about her shoulder height. She will then cut it off at that height - we will be able to see into the windows of passing cars.

The downside of this, of course, is the MOUNTAIN of prunings that have to be coped with, gathered from the verge and disposed of but this is not, in fact a big problem. Just beyond where the lady is standing in the picture is another gateway - that through to our "Primrose Path". Nip in there and on your right is a cleared patch of ground under the trees (scene of much nettle pulling by Help-X-ers (and myself) this Summer). From here the prunings (after the leaves have fallen) can be tossed over the sheep fence and easily dragged across to the fire-pile ready for Bonfire Night (23rd June in Ireland).

Latest 'time-suck' for the heart patient, Mahjongg (solitaire)

Of course, I am chatting away here describing all this hard work as if I am involved. I can only sit and watch, longing to be fit enough again to help, lobbing in the odd "helpful" suggestion (Sorry, Boss!) and killing time with Mahjongg, Card Patience or some such. This is all Elizabeth's doing at the moment and I am extremely grateful. The daffs in the verge will definitely enjoy the extra light and people (including us, of course) will be able to see over the hedge even from normal-height saloon cars. I was holding off the job while we thought about buying a proper power-tool but Mrs C did this with normal secateurs and loppers. Fair play.

Sometimes just a tomato soup and tea
will do.

The frost and ice have unfortunately brought Brer Fox back out scenting around for sources of food other than the mice which are presumably now retreating under ground. We had our first strike since 3rd Sept. It was broad daylight (they all are!) and I was home alone but wide awake. The Guinea Fowl kicked off and I let the dogs out. They went fast a furious making that bee-line for the hole in the hedge through to the 5-acre field, that tells us that this is probably no false alarm. They were gone a good 20 minutes, so presumably chased the scent a good distance. I went to check the birds and found, sadly, only 5 ducks. A female (inevitably) was missing. Why can't they take the drakes?

I guess that the ducks, which have been used to racing out to the middle of the pond for safety whenever Brer Fox's nose appears through the hedge, were snookered this time by the pond-ice and may have been confused and indecisive, long enough, for the fox to nip in and snatch one. Ah well. Down side of full free range. I read subsequently that mine was not the only "first-in-a-long-while" fox strike that day. An Internet friend who small-holders in Derbyshire had a strike and our friends Sue and Rob over by Ballenagare had a turkey-stag taken. It's that time of year.

Processing the roosters

And talking time of year, as we run into Christmas, all those Spring-hatch baby chickens we were enjoying are now reaching the 21 week stage, which is 'Point of Lay' if you are a female, but time to issue those first Cock-a-doodle-doo calls and start bothering the hens if you are a 'bloke'. We hatched about 30 babies this year so the Law of Averages says we are looking at 15 probably roosters - way too many! These guys need culling out, or you end up with cock-fights and the hens getting too harassed. I watched one poor hen get 'trodden' by 3 roos in quick succession. She did not get up off the ground after #3 for a good 5 minutes, till #4 grabbed the back of her neck and tried to climb on. It's not pretty and is horrible to see done to your gentle, lovely ladies.

We chose 4 likely 'roo's and offed them on Thursday. It seems a shame - they are gorgeous birds, bright of eye, clean of leg and beautifully feathered, with their gold flecking flashing in the sun and their black tails glowing iridescent green (think magpie or head of mallard duck). They have had a good, free-range life and theirs was a quick, stress-free, painless respectful end. They are delicious and still tender - only 6 months old, so no need to go down the slow-cooker, coq-au-vin or "cull-a-cock-curry" routes; normal cooking is fine.

We are always a bit sad by how "scrawny" these big magnificent roosters turn out when plucked - you are pulling a good 2" deep 'pile' of feathers off legs, breast and cape and these are only range-y young adolescents of 'multi-purpose' breeding. (Dung heap specials, basically!)  We are more used to the 'designer' 'Hubbard' meat birds which will go 4 kg carcasses even at 120 days age but our source of Hubbards dried up a couple of years ago, so we are now more than happy with these 2 kg 'babies'.

That, I suspect, is enough for this post. Look after yourselves, till next time.

50 Rainless Days

Met Éireann got bored with publishing pictures of the cloudless
island and started commenting on how not-green the latest pic
was compared to previous pics.

By my reckoning, we have just racked up 50 days without rain and, without a wet one between our two batches of sheep shearing (21st May), this figure would be 61 days. Driest blah blah for 42 years. The poor farmers are really starting to struggle now coming out of a long, cold wet winter which used up all the silage and hay reserves. They lept on the chance to cut early silage when this hot spell started if they had any growth, and then enjoyed a bit of unprecedented hay making but are now looking at all this close-shaved aftermath and wondering will they have to start feeding 2018 silage already, still warm off the baler! Who'd be a farmer.

For most of them, the only hay making gear they have is kit bought 40 years ago to go with what are now lovely vintage Massey tractors. It is the same kind of equipment I would have used in my student days baling and hauling small "bricks" of hay. It is lovely to see trundling round slowly clearing fields at way below 2018 rates.

The 4 new goslings in their paint roller-tray

At risk of harping on some more (woe is me) about my own health, I will just give you an update for the record. I am still knocked sideways by this breathlessness and getting poked and prodded by the local Medical Fraternity. Top culprit seems to be some kind of chest infection associated with a 'hard' kind of phlegm which might need steroids to give the lung tissue back its flexibility.

4 baby turkeys being shepherded around by their 'Mum'

From MY point of view the main thing I notice is the lack of lung volume. We 'Care' blokes are known for giving a good trumpet when want to blow our nose - fill your lungs and let her rip. The ceiling lifts an inch or two and everybody in the building knows you have blown your nose. PARP! Best I can do at present is a little quarter-full in-breath and a delicate ladylike 'perp'. It is 3 weeks now and I just want a good lung full of air deep down to my diaphragm. Unfortunately on one of the work ups the doc found a possible heart murmur, so now I need to go for some 'echo' tests on that before they dare give me anything like steroids for the "asthma". I am currently using (to brilliant effect and relief), a 'Ventolin' inhaler which is a new one on me. More on all this when it pans out.

Bit easier to see the babies here.

2 good things have saved me from despair. One, already mentioned is the superb timing. If you are going get kicked out of your normal work ethic by such a disease, then it is good to do it just after your recent Help-X volunteer has made the place as neat as a new pin. The grass is mowed (and the lack of rain means it is not growing back), the sheep sheared, the dogs clipped, gutters cleared. There are no heavy livestock jobs imminent and it is so hot that no-one wants to work, so you don't feel THAT left out. Also (Sorry Sue), my good friend Sue came out in sympathy with a similar set of crusty chest problems and breathlessness. Can't bend down to lift a tin of dog food? No! Me neither! Meanwhile, a HUGE 'nother Thanks to Elizabeth who is still hanging in there picking up all the livestock rounds, car jobs and shopping etc. Better news soon, I hope.

Home made chocs from Sue

Oh, and Sue also turned up with a box of homemade chocs, coffee truffly ones and ones filled with fruit 'cheese'.

Finally, in the livestock Dept, just some newer, better pics of the clutches of which you have heard already - the geese came off the nest(s) yesterday with 4 goslings and Elizabeth put a paint-roller tray of water down for them. The new turks were brought off by both the 'Mums' and we have another "2 Mums, one chick" group too. Donaldina managed to nearly lose one 3-week old chick into a full size bucket yesterday but I rescued it, dried it and then warmed it down my 'cleavage' for an hour or so while it recovered. That is now back with 'Don'.

Appleyards and Cayugas

Cayuga duck. They lay black eggs. 

My title for this post includes, for the unfamiliar, 2 varieties of duck, but time enough for ducks further down the post.

Laura's legacy. Our ground is as neat as manicured parkland.

At the time of last writing, I was about to post our wonderful Help-X volunteer, Laura-D, onto a train at Castlerea station, bound for Kilkenny. Kilkenny is a lot further south in Ireland than here, and Laura's last few weeks were going to be spent in that part of the Island, doing a week's work in Kilkenny, then one in Cork and one in Tralee (Co. Kerry).

I don't mind admitting I was sad to see her go. She is a lovely person and brightened up the place as nicely as the heatwave she brought with her. We both wish her all the best in her future weeks, we hope she finds nice friendly people 'down south' (I'm sure she will) and she knows she is welcome back here any time, working or not.

Figs this year? It is a very young tree.

I have had a couple of texts since, saying that she was delighted to have found a direct bus from Tullamore to Kilkenny, that she was a bit sad over the weekend to have left us, to say that she thought of us as she was given a mower for her first job Monday in Kilkenny and that, no, she had not yet tried porridge (!)

Normal for here. 2 geese gone broody in the same nest. 

With no Laura and with Elizabeth away house-sitting for Mum, I was back on my own but with a healthy list of 'just jobs' to catch up on in the garden. I had a rake of stuff to re-pot and move on (cherry tomatoes, chervil, salad onions, basil, night scented stocks and shasta daisies, fennel and horse radish).

I had to 'coppice' out an ash which I'd planted too close to neighbouring chestnuts and oak and a 'Golden Hornet' crab apple which had been badly ring-barked by the geese. This tree had struggled on with its main trunk for a couple of years but never got enough water aloft to give it proper expansion of leaves (or much fruit), but had then shot out a back-up 2nd 'trunk' from low down. I have now cut the old tree down at 3' high and used the old trunk as a tree-stake for the new whip. Should work. Elizabeth's rescued peach tree is currently doing the same, so may get the same 'repair'.

Breakfast does not come with fewer food-miles than this.
Our own eggs and our home grown, home cured bacon.

The sunshine had brought the local silagers out but I was delighted to get a text from a friend locally who had managed to make hay. Now THAT would not be at all common here-abouts, as the correct grass stage (full grown but not over-grown) rarely coincides with a reliable 7 days of sunshine, so fair play to our friend for managing to make 400 bales of good, fresh green hay. More important, fair play to him for texting me to see if I would like some. Yes please! 5 bales.

Golden Hornet crab apple cut down and
re-started from a low down 'coppice' shoot.

He tells me that he put the hay up on "the Internet" for sale but the word went round the village so fast that he sold it all in a couple of hours and had to take the web-ad down again un-used. Then, cherry on the cake, while he was delivering my hay he asked did I know anyone who might want some young ducks.

Landing the new Appleyard family.

Readers will know that we are exactly those people, so the next day saw me round at his place with the dog-crate collecting a Mum-duck of the 'Appleyard' variety, plus 5 half grown but well feathered ducklings. Appleyards look very much like the wild mallards from which they are derived - green head, narrow white collar, purple chest for the boys, flecky brown 'camo' for the lasses. However, they do come in a range of bred colours right down to 'silver' (aka white!).

The grass is a bit too long for ducks in the Hubbard pen but
they will surely sort it out. 

The only sensible place I could think of to 'land' these newbies, was our old "Hubbard pen", scene of several rearings of the meat-chickens we have done in the past. The grass was very long in there and, unbeknownst to me, down among the brambles at the back, there was a hole in the fence, but in they went and promptly vanished into the forest of grass and new trees. They (especially Mum) are a bit wild and have not been handled at all so they tend to sprint for cover as soon as a person appears.

Mum duck is in there somewhere, watching me warily.

This is not usually a problem and we always allow a good bit of settling down time but on this occasion I needed, that evening, to persuade them back out of the long grass and into the fox-proof house. I set up a series of fence panels as a 'duck-blind' to guide them in. It nearly worked. The five babies went into the house as good as gold, but Mumma at the last minute took a left turn and vanished into the long grass UNDER the house. She then (horror of horrors!) reappeared outside the pen. She had found the hole I did not know was there.

'Shtumpy' teaching her 4 baby chicks to dust-bathe. The chicks
are close in to her chest here, not clearly visible. 

There followed 3 hours of trying to coax her home with half a dozen near misses. Every time she tried to come back she would quack to the babies, who would set up loud 'peep'-ing from the box, but she could not work out that she needed to go ROUND the fencing to get back in. Eventually I managed to corner her and grab her as she frantically tried to squeeze through the chicken-wire.

7 turkey eggs currently being brooded in a corner of the Tígín
but by a hen. She has nipped off for a toilet break. 

She was "home" and re-united with her children but I was definitely the Bogey-man. I had stolen her from her home using a dog crate, given her her first car-ride, dumped her in a grassy forest and then, several hours later, chased her back out, split her from her babies for 3 hours of run-around. Then finally I had unceremoniously grabbed her and man-handled her into this new, unfamiliar house through the roof. It may take her a while to learn to love me! You will be delighted to know that there was no repeat of this drama tonight. I set up my 'duck-blind' more carefully and the family shot into their house in seconds. No wrong turns or escapes tonight.

The bees are very busy in this hot weather. Ignore the ash seed.
It has just fallen from the tree above and landed there. 

While I'm on ducks, as well as these Appleyards, I had put the word out with our friend and ace stock wrangler, now back from Dublin, living at home and starting to accumulate stock, Charlotte. She currently has ducks, both Muscovy and the black variety Cayuga, which lays black eggs. She is hatching some of both varieties and will have some for me shortly. More on these when they arrive.

Waning, Weaning and a Good First Night

A bit swampy round the gate in the East
Field but at least the sheep can stand in
the dry to eat the rescue hay. Many sheep
keepers are suffering way worse.

I'm not sure how you, at the reading end of this blog, are doing for weather, but here in Ireland, our appetite for this rain and wet is waning fast. I was off collecting straw today for a beef farmer friend who asked me last time to just get half a dozen because he was sure he'd have his animals back out onto the grass "soon" and he'd not need the full load of 15 bales in my small trailer. Now he is more "they'll not be out to May Day at the soonest now". Another guy at the straw dealer was bemoaning that we'd need a good 2 weeks to dry it out even if it stopped raining today.

At least the sheep can have dry(ish) feet while they eat their
hay. I have spread a lot of gravel into this bit to stop the ground
chopping up so much in winter.

As a whole, Ireland is looking down the barrel of another Fodder Crisis like the one in our first year here (2011) as saved hay and straw start to run out. For luck, I slung a couple of hay bales onto my load - there is precious little grass yet in my sheep field. There is a little movement but the sheep are very pleased to get their crunch and hay each day so they can at least have that full belly feeling.

It's not all rain. I managed to get this complete line of post-visit
table linen through the system.

Which brings me to a related matter - weaning the bottle fed lamb. Little Bábóg is three weeks old now and starting to look very burly. We noticed that all the other lambs have started sneaking their noses in between the adult sheep to snatch a bit of the 'crunch' (like muesli with molasses) or the hay that we are feeding to the ewes. They are weaning themselves off the milk as Mum's milk starts to peak-flow and their ruminant guts start to work as proper grass-fermenting chambers. I have even seen Polly's two lambs (5 weeks) sitting in the shelter cudding.

Our flowering cherry, just starting.

It was back to the books then, for us, and the label on the 'Lamlac' packaging, plus a discussion topic opened up on Twitter to see how you go about this on bottle fed lambs. The consensus seems to be to wait till Day 35 at least and then, if you think (or know) that your lamb is taking at least 250g of solid food per day, you just do a "hard wean" taking the bottle away in one go. No messing about with watered down milk or small measures; the lamb's gut cannot happily do both food types at once unless they are coming little and often.

You are being watched. The ever-hopeful pigs keep an eye.

Readers may know that the sheep liver fluke is a complicated parasite which spends only part of its life cycle inside the sheep, chewing away at its liver and creating a good range of 'unwell' symptoms. The rest of the life cycle is spent in a mud-snail which loves the wet Irish bog-land soil. In normal years it seems to stay away from our, higher ground and we get no fluke problems in our sheep. Every time we send a lamb to slaughter, we get the butchers to slice through the livers and check for any damage. They are always 'clean'.

Silvergirl's thriving and surviving 5 chicks, 3 weeks old here.

This year though, you will know, that one of (ewe) Rosie's post-natal problems was early stage fluke damage. Vet, Aoife, told us that it is such a bad year that pretty much "everyone" has the problem. I can imagine. I look out across those sheep foot-print sized puddles in our field and I can just see the little flukey snail bas***ds thriving and doing a population explosion across the acre.

Sporting their new ear tags. Three of the lambs with one of
the mums.

We got all the flock into the cattle-race on a rare dry day yesterday, fluke-drenched all the ewes and took the opportunity to ear-tag all the lambs. The drench is 5.25 ml of chalky bluish gloop given by mouth using a syringe (with no needle obviously). Legal and healthy all on the same day. There's shepherding!

Meanwhile a minor miracle happened in the never-ending fox saga. The hens won a point back for their score board. The Guinea fowl alarm went up at 11 a.m. and we jumped to, and let the dogs out. They shot off with their "it was a fox" focus and speed. When there is no fox they amble about looking for a scent-trail and soon lose interest and return. We declare it a false alarm and move on. While they were gone on this one, I was able to walk round the far side of the poly-tunnel and spotted the sad slew of grey feathers. I was sure the fox had nabbed a hen.

Young love? The turkeys displaying to one another.

Ten minutes later and still no dogs, so I walked down to by the bee hive to look for distant white shapes meandering back to me between the rushes (that field, which is not ours, is more rush than grass!) and was amazed to see a grey hen walking back towards me from 50 yards out. She was very much alive, chuntering in an upset kind of voice and looking a bit shaken and ruffled. I can only think that the dogs caught up with the fox for some reason and the fox was forced to drop the hen in his flight. The hen rejoined the main rooster (Gandalf). What he said to her is not on record, but they spent the rest of the day as if nothing had happened. Go the grey hen.

Turkey egg.

Of course, you will know that the main story at the moment is nothing to do with rain, weaning lambs or the fox's antics. It is THE PLAY. You'll be pleased to know that the Lisacul Players nailed it on their first night, delighting a capacity crowd with a superb, very funny, enjoyable performance. Everyone is relieved and delighted. There are now two more performances, tonight and on Saturday, so I will give you a more thorough account in the next post, when it is all over and debut Producer (The Lady of This House) has had a chance to recover. If you are going then do as the printed programme says and "sit back and enjoy the mayhem". It is great.