You may have noticed that we’ve been rather quiet over the last few months. As my due date got closer I really went into nesting and birth preparation mode. It was quite odd seeing the different fruits come into season and not harvesting them. August should have been filled with harvesting and preserving but instead instead it saw me growing in size, decreasing in mobility, organising and reading. I have to admit to feeling a bit jealous of everyone else’s harvest posts, and even my own from previous years.
We did manage to harvest a little from the land, the beauty of bath apples were first, the wasps got to a fair few but we still got a few bottles of juice from them. We harvested, quartered, froze and then juiced when we had time (and my nephew’s help). It worked well.
The tomatoes were next, not as good a harvest as last year by far, we lost a lot, especially the cherry tomatoes, but we did get a few jars of passata. I also finally processed the last of last year’s toms so my passata stores are looking healthy again.
We had our first experience of blossom end rot with the toms. This was our first year with raised beds but also our first heat wave year. I am hoping that if we add some more nutrients to the soil and keep steady with our watering next year, then we won’t see it again.
One thing that benefited from the heat wave was our attempt at melons. We got a few good size, really tasty cantaloupe melons. I’m really keen to try these again and see what we get when we put some effort in to them. We got a couple aubergines and sweet peppers too.
We lost a lot of the cooking apples and pears as well. The apples were a smaller harvest anyway as one tree barely fruited but the pear trees were laden. We did manage to have our first attempt at pear juice and have enough harvested Williams pears to do some dried pear.
We always knew this year wouldn’t be great in terms of the smallholding, my body doesn’t do pregnancy well and we ended up with an emergency C-section which put me out of action for far longer than I had hoped. We had a go at planting, harvesting and preserving but kept our expectations low.
On the upside we now have our not so little boy. I have just about recovered from the section enough to get back to work on the smallholding. It’s been a little forced as Sam broke his foot last week. It does feel good to be back to doing lots (when baby allows of course) and I’m feeling very motivated to get this place back on track.
As always likes and comments are much appreciated. We have a new Instagram account for all the day to day posts, we are @six_oaks_smallholding
Ok so I haven’t actually been throwing chickens in the air and trying to catch them, but it sure feels like I have! Beware this is a little long, but it does contain pictures of cute chicks. I’ll try enticing you in with a video of our first chick of the year:
Our broody journey this year started with a Derbyshire redcap hen (green right, yellow left or yellow right leg band – we didn’t note it down). We cleared up the shed and popped her in one of the tiny triangle hutches as we hadn’t finished doing the maintenance on the broody coops over winter yet. We decided to provide her with some of our own eggs. A few cream legbar, cuckoo maran and white leghorn eggs with our Heinz 57 cockerel, Aramis, being the father. Despite Brienne being a big chicken and a regular layer of large eggs I’ve decided we won’t be hatching from her again. Her eggs have the occassional wrinkle in the shell but her daughter, Cersi, has awful wrinkles and can be quite thin shelled too. No-one else in the flock is affected so I am assuming it is genetic.
I painted up one of the broody coops (with Chi’s help of course) and gave it a good clean. We also put a panel over some of the mesh to keep it a bit drier and warmer. We had wanted to do some work on the roof, there’s a slightly rotten corner and it needs refelting, but we really needed to get the broody into better accommodation. We set her up in the orchard with a run attached to the coop. We ummed and ahhhed but a few days later we put some more eggs into the incubator. She had 7 eggs under her but we wanted to try and get the most for the work we will put in to raising the chicks so the plan was to sneak her a few extra chicks after hatching for her to raise for us. These chicks were set to be meat birds first and foremost, although if we got some more green or dark brown egg layers they could be added to the flock. Everything was looking dandy.
Then it seemed like Aurora, our veteran broody Daisy, had gone broody. We would only see her for an hour in the morning each day and she wasn’t returning to the coop at night. We caught her and gave her some random eggs that she seemed to be sitting on. At the same time Christie, another Derbyshire Redcap, had gone broody. We rushed to get the other two small houses ready, ordered some pure eggs off ebay (Copper black Maran and Cream Legbar) and set up a broody nursery in the orchard. The eggs arrived and we did a bit of juggling. The first broody hen and her soon to hatch eggs went into the woodland coop, Christie replaced her in the green coop and Aurora went into the blue coop as it doesn’t have a run and we had pretty good faith in her.
The next morning Aurora was gone and showing no signs of being broody at all. No problem, a couple of her eggs went under Christie (we had split them 50/50 3 browns and 3 blues each) and the rest went in the incubator. We had seen a couple of cracks on the Cream Legbar eggs when I candled them on arrival. One started weeping a lot on the first day in the incubator and I discarded it. Having two batches of eggs in the incubator due to hatch at different times isn’t great but it was manageable with the numbers.
Then the worst happened. The first broody was off the nest and pacing in her pen. I’d noticed her off twice the previous day but I was in and out so assumed she had gone back in. Checked on the eggs and they were stone cold. 5 days from the hatch date. We couldn’t physically fit them in our 9 egg incubator with the others (7 already in there). I did manage to get 3 more in with a bit of jiggling. The aim was to warm them up enough to see if they were still alive, I had to do it in batches though. I didn’t hold out much hope as they may well have been cold for 48 hours by now. A post on a smallholding group had a local smallholder offering to pop them under her broody hen if we needed which gave me some breathing space. We had also been talking about getting a bigger incubator and this, plus the faff of turning eggs daily, pushed that up our priority list. We ended up buying the incubator anyway as it should allow us to follow our original plan of adding eggs to a hatch whilst still having the 9 egg incubator as a ‘rescue’ one.
In the end only 1 of the eggs was still viable, a Cream Legbar one. It took a couple extra days to hatch but did so, followed a day or so later by the 4 we had started in the incubator. We ended up with a hatch of 5, 2 Cream Legbar crosses, 1 Cuckoo Maran cross and 2 White Leghorn crosses. Christie was looking a bit pale in the comb so once the chicks had fluffed up we took away the postal eggs she had been sat on and gave her the day old chicks. To start with she didn’t seem too keen to get up and about with them but then we realised she still had a Maran egg under her, once that was taken away she was up and about and has proved to be a great mum.
The postal eggs went into the incubator and another Derbyshire Redcap hen, Carrie, decided to try her hand (wing?) at being broody. Sam had commented that she was a bit crazy, quite aggressive and she looked at him funny, twisting her head back. I didn’t think much of it. We knew we had eggs in the incubator we could give her but had a couple go rotten already so we wanted to keep them until closer to hatching as with her being a bit crazy we didn’t want to be bothering her lots to candle. She sat on a couple of Daisy eggs. When I checked on her one day I saw what Sam meant about her neck, twisted right round when you opened the coop. It rang an alarm bell so I took the internet, wry neck. Varying thoughts online about it but vitamin deficiency seemed most likely so we started trying to get some baby vits in her. After one dose she was doing really well but we’d had another hen, Chickaletta (not named by us), go broody and I was worried about Carrie so we moved her to the blue coop without a run and left it open in the hopes she would graze a bit more when she got up each day. Chickaletta got some rubber eggs as we weren’t far off hatching the incubator eggs. After the second dose of being pinned and given the vitamins Carrie decided it was all too much and left the nest. She is no longer broody thankfully and the eggs under her hadn’t developed. She is much better now she is foraging but she still isn’t great so she is due to be penned up and given the vitamins everyday for a set time. Fingers crossed.
So Christie was happy with her chicks and Chickaletta was sitting, and the postal eggs were doing well in the incubator, although we were down to 5. Then both Brienne (a previous broody) and another Derbyshire Redcap both went broody. I’m running out of housing at this point! We did another shuffle. Christie and the chicks went into the blue coop as it doesn’t open from the top and we don’t need to check them much, we gave them back the blue run which had been used with the woodland coop. Chickaletta stayed in the woodland coop with the woodland coop run and Brienne went into the green coop with no run, again she had been a great broody last year so we trusted her. How foolish. Despite having a nice private suite with a clutch of 9 eggs to sit on she bolted for the chicken house first thing to sit on an empty nest… She did this for two days before we put her food and water inside and locked her in with her eggs. She was still broody but had imprinted on the main hen house. She has the door open today and is still sitting so *fingers crossed* and building a run for the green coop has risen on our priority list. The postal seller has sent us 6 more Cream Legbar eggs to make up for the damage in postage and poor fertilisation rate of the first batch (no development at all on a fair few eggs). Those went into the shiny new incubator and will be transferred to the new broody DRC as soon as we have a house for her, which Sam is picking up today.
It was hatch day for the postal eggs on Tuesday so over the weekend we gave the eggs to Chickaletta to let her hatch them. We noticed the brown eggs pushed out a couple of times and nudged them back under. When they were out again on Tuesday we took them and put them in the small incubator. Wednesday afternoon she had at least one chick under her. Today one of the Marans has hatched in the incubator and the other has pipped, I also peeked at her and she now has two chicks and an unhatched egg. If it is still unhatched this evening (when we will likely give her the hatched chick) I’ll pop it in the incubator.
So yes, that is our 2018 broody journey so far. It’s been a bit exhausting to be honest and we still have just under 3 weeks before everyone has hatched as they should, by which time we may well have more broodies!
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We went away last weekend and came home to two chirpy chicks under our broody hen, Aurora. New life is always a joyful event but this wasn’t our best hatch of the year, or ever to be honest.
We started with 6 Ixworth eggs. At about a week into incubation we found all six eggs on the other side of the pen to Aurora, and all cold. We got them all under again and she seemed happy sitting. For some reason Aurora kept pooping where the eggs were, despite us moving her off them daily, and would then move away from the poop but leave the eggs behind her.
Coming up to the end of the incubation we again found 3 cold eggs in the pen. We candled the eggs, two looked promising but lacked movement and another looked very very small. We popped the two hopefuls in the incubator and cracked the small one inside a ziplock bag. It was starting to rot and likely stopped developing the first time she left the eggs. We candled the two hopefuls the next day and they were moving. Wahey!
Hatch day came and went without any signs of life. We were due to head away for the weekend so we popped the two eggs from the incubator under Aurora and crossed our fingers. I made a note of one of the eggs, number 3, but not the other. Number 3 was one of the ones that hatched and it is likely that the other hatched chick was the other egg we brought in. There was a rotten smell coming from the 3 eggs and we disposed of them.
So 2 out of 6 eggs, and she needed help from us to do that. Nowhere near as good as her hatch last year (5 white leghorn chicks). But we have chicks so all is good right? The chick was chirping madly all evening that first night and when I went to shut them away for the night it wasn’t under her. We brought it in under the brooder to stop it getting chilled. Back out in the morning as the best place to be is with mum right?
I saw the chick slightly peeping out from Aurora’s wing the next night but left it be. That was a mistake, Sam woke me in the morning with a barely cheeping, incredibly cold chick. We got it under the brooder and it was full of life by lunchtime. Took it back out to mum but in a couple of hours it was once again lying face down, this time not cheeping at all. I gave up on mum at this point, we took the second chick away from mum and turned her back out with the main flock.
Both chicks are doing well inside but mum left the main flock and took up residence in the shed that she had been in with her chick. We’ll put the brooder into her pen and give her back the chicks tomorrow, keeping a good eye on everyone.
So far our experience with broody hens has been really good (4/9, 5/6, 5/6, 6/6 hatch rates), a nice natural upbringing for the chicks and little work for us. Aurora’s second hatch has really made me reconsider broody hens, she got broody really late in the year so we’ll have these chicks separate from the main flock until Christmas and there’s only two chicks, I’m waiting to find out that they are both cockerels!
On the upside Alice’s chicks are huge, nice meaty birds, and it looks like 1 cockerel and 4 hens (possibly 2 cockerels, 3 hens, the one we hatched inside is smaller). They are joining the main flock at the end of the month. Brienne hatched 4 Derbyshire Redcap hens and 2 cockerels, one of which has a very impressive comb. We might try to find a breeding home for him. They’ll join the flock at the end of October.
Now if I can just stop whoever is eating/stealing my eggs everything would be good with the chickens!
Dans – sorry for the text heavy post. The laptop is on shakey last legs and not up to uploading pictures from my phone.
Edit: Between writing this post and trying to get the pictures in the chick sadly died. I’m not sure if it was something internal or if it just wasn’t eating (showed it the food and it was drinking and pooing to start with). Either way it spent a lot of time under the brooder and that is where we found it. The other chick is doing well, we reunited it with Aurora, who was overjoyed. I know we can’t save them all but sometimes I wish we could.
Time to talk about something other than the sheep!
The geese are doing well and we are expecting our first goslings on Thursday. We had 3 eggs under April and she was sitting really well but last Thursday I could have sworn it was her rather than Abigail off the nest. The next day I was certain and Sam checked to see that there was indeed a goose on the nest. It turns out Abigail and April have swapped. I don’t know if April was getting worn out and Abigail stepped in (April wasn’t in the best condition to start but we just could not break her broodiness). Or it could be that as we are getting close to hatching day the eggs have made Abigail go a bit broody too. Either way when I looked again on Saturday April was back on and Abigail was off. On Monday evening we got a surprise, a little gosling running around outside with April, Barbara and Athos. Abigail was sitting on the nest still.
When I finally got a peek at the nest today there were 6 eggs under April. It would seem that Abigail was sitting on the nest to lay eggs. Unfortunately, we have no way of knowing which are the new eggs and which are the old ones with soon to hatch chicks. I think we will wait until the end of the week then try to candle to work out what is going on. We may have to take away the newer eggs to stop April from running herself into the ground sitting.
It’s the season for broodiness and Alice, one of our Brown Marsh Daisy hens. went broody 4 weeks ago. We popped 2 eggs from our Cream Legbar hens, 2 eggs from our Cuckoo Maran hens and 2 eggs from Brienne (a hybrid) under her. All fathered by Aramis of course. We candled the week before they were due and all 6 eggs were fertile and developing well – go Aramis! Friday before last we spotted 2 chicks. One from a Cream Legbar egg and the other from a Brienne egg. The next day when Alice got off the nest there were two more slightly damp chicks and 2 eggs under her, another Cream Legbar egg and a Cuckoo Maran egg had hatched. She had a poop stretched her legs and I removed the old egg shells. She went back into the nest box and sat on eggs and chicks, I figured all was fine. Unfortunately, when we went out 3 hours later it turned out she had left the remaining two eggs, they were cold. It could have been from me removing the shells but it may also have been the older chicks being 2 days old now and running about. We had a similar thing happen last year and we lost those two eggs. We bought an incubator as a back up after that.
We dug the incubator out and got the two, now very cold eggs, inside. As I put the eggs in I saw that there was a large bit of shell missing from the underneath of the Brienne egg. You could see the chick’s back and there was no movement at all. I put the remaining Cuckoo Maran egg into the incubator and slowly peeled off the shell of the Brienne egg. There was a fully formed, ready to hatch (yolk sack completely absorbed) chick inside but no movement at all, even on the eye. The only thing I can think is that Alice either stepped on it as she left the nest or crushed it slightly while sitting. As it has been so hot she removed all the bedding from around the eggs and had them on the base of the broody coop. I waited patiently for the Cuckoo Maran egg to show any sign of hatch and my hopes dwindled.
They were restored two days after we popped the chick in when I saw a small crack in the egg. It was pipping! We were away during the day and when we got back a bit more of the shell had been cracked open. We kept checking that evening but nothing. The next morning I heard a cheep and I cheeped back, it got very excited, cheeped at me and rolled the egg! We managed to actually be there for the hatching which was amazing to watch and we got a video so you can watch too. We let the chick dry off, and gave some crumb and water in the incubator. It was 3 days younger than any of the other chicks but we decided to try and have Alice raise it. We went out after dusk the day it hatched and slipped it under. Sam waited to hear any sounds of Alice rejecting it but there was nothing. We left it and crossed everything we had.
The next day we couldn’t see a chick, but we couldn’t see a body either which gave us some hope. Later that evening we finally saw the chick all fluffed up. The chicks all ran under Alice when I approached but when I spoke a little black one ran out, it had remembered my voice! It’s doing fine now, and although it’s a bit behind the others in development it’s still firmly one of the brood. As with the sheep it was another lesson in sitting on my hands and leaving nature to do its thing. If I had intervened too soon and ‘helped’ the chick hatch I could have ruptured blood vessels and caused it to bleed to death.
Just as we thought all the broodiness was coming to an end Brienne went broody. We decided this time to get some pure breed eggs to go under her. The Derbyshire Redcap is a British rare breed that is on the Priority list according to the Rare Breed Survival Trust. They are meant to be a good duel purpose breed and lay a good number of large white eggs. The only other white egg layer we have is Buffy and her eggs are on the small side. They also look very different to any of our hens. I had looked for some Derbyshire Redcap eggs when Alice went broody but I couldn’t find anyone selling them or adult birds. When I went searching for rare breed hatching eggs for Brienne I was very happy to find a listing for Derbyshire Redcap eggs, and not too far away so we didn’t have to worry about postage. We popped them in a new broody coop (needed something large enough for Brienne!) and she sat immediately and has been quite rooted. I do hope she makes a good mum. We will miss her monster eggs though!
It also turned out that the breeder had some pullets for sale. We have been running out of selling eggs quite quickly. When we first started we liked to have 4 boxes of eggs on the gate. We even got a back log a few times and took selling eggs into our own usage. Now we are struggling to keep even 1 box in stock and quite often a box is gone within half an hour of me putting it out. People had said we should advertise on the main road, and I did make a sign but we are selling out without it! It is great but I also hate disappointing people and we certainly have room for more hens. We would have liked POL hens, but finding POL rare breed hens that haven’t been vaccinated seems to be ridiculously hard. I have been searching and searching and finding very little. These pullets are only 17 weeks old so a few weeks off laying still but they should help us out. We bought 3 and haven’t given them any names yet. They are quite skittish at the moment but I am hoping they will settle down.
Right the thread title promised birds and bees. Weekend before last we went to the Rutland show, as a day trip out but also to scout it out as a potential place to show our sheep in future. It was a great day out and at the end we stumbled past a ‘bee tent’. The Leicestershire and Rutland Bee Keepers Association were there and they literally had a tent full of bees. They had suits for people to put on and go and have a bee experience. We have been very keen on the idea of bees, they would be great for increasing our pollination, provide us with some honey (possibly for mead) and would do our bit to help out the bees. We even bought a bunch of second hand equipment from some smallholders who were selling up last year. We have been a bit nervous though as Sam doesn’t think he would have the balance to work with the bees and I wasn’t sure if I would have a panic attack being cooped up in a suit and surrounded by flying things.
It was the end of the day and we were all tired but I couldn’t walk past this opportunity so in I went. It was brilliant. I was very nervous to start with but I found the suit reassuring and felt surprisingly calm in with the bees. It was great getting to see a hive up close and be hands on. It wasn’t a full hive but it was a still a good experience, exactly what I needed to make me think more seriously about courses and our local bee keepers association. The only worry I have now (other than swarms) is how heavy the hives can get when full. My back is such a weak point on me that I’m worried I would have trouble lifting things. It’s still worth further investigation though, I’m over my first hurdle in the journey to beekeeping!
Right I think that is enough waffling for today. Should be some posts on blade shearing and what we are getting up growing fruit and veg soon. If there’s anything you would particularly like to read about from the smallholding then just leave a comment and I’ll do my best to do a blog post on it.
In the end we didn’t have long to wait for Aeryn to lamb. We checked on her before dinner last Wednesday and there were no signs. Went out after, at about 7:15 pm, to put everyone to bed and there was a water bag. I had read that the waters breaking was a fairly quick affair, blink and you miss it kind of thing, but when I checked her again it was still there. You could see that water was pouring from her, but a bag was still firmly in place. She was licking it all up so we waited. And waited, and waited. She seemed quite unsettled.
We decided to keep a close eye on her. When Arya was lambing she stayed in one spot and was pretty calm. Aeryn on the other hand was very worked up and was running all over the place, lying down and standing up. We aren’t very experienced but she just didn’t seem right. After about an hour a foot appeared and I relaxed a little. Over the course of the next 45 mins the foot kept going back in and coming out again, not very far out, just the tip. She kept doing the run around the field and appearing very unsettled. I spoke to a vet and there was the possibility that the lamb wasn’t presenting right and was stuck. We tried to pen her up to have a check but she ended up going into the lambing area with the other ewes (now in for the night as it was getting late). We’d have rather she lambed outside on her own but at this time of night, inside where we can help if needed was preferable.
I gave her a quick exam and could feel the nose behind the foot that was sticking out and the second foot just behind that. We waited a bit longer but she didn’t seem to be making progress. I called the vet and was advised that she may need help. She had been pushing for quite a while so it seemed like the lamb was stuck.
Being our wildest ewe it wasn’t easy getting hold of her but I managed it and managed to pin her and attempt to pull the lamb. I have to say it was one of the most daunting things I’ve ever done. I was worried that the lamb was dead already. Between the birthing fluids and the lube I had covered my hand in the lamb was quite slippy. I pulled the leg that was currently jutting out a bit first, then reached in and pulled the other leg to straighten it up. With both legs straight and out I pulled in earnest. Whilst I was doing so I heard the lamb make a sound which was such a relief! I finally got the head out, but the light had gone by this point and I panicked seeing how big the head was and suddenly thought it was the bum and I was delivering the lamb breech. I briefly considered pushing the lamb back but gave another pull and the lamb was out to about the abdomen. I stepped out of the pen to see if Aeryn could finish it herself but she just ran around the pen with the lamb dangling. It finally popped out but she stood licking the fluids on the ground and ran from the spot where the lamb was, I had to pull it closer, rubbing some straw on it’s nose at the same time, and to her head.
I checked she was licking the first lamb then stepped out. I looked up and saw the second lamb was already half out. One leg was extended out like superman and the head was out past the neck. I rubbed at it’s nose a bit just to make sure it was clear. The second foot was nowhere in sight. I put a hand in and unfolded the front leg (it was bent under the lamb) and it just fell out. Much smaller than the first. I checked that she was licking it as well and that both lambs were breathing before I peeled off my gloves and went inside for a bit of sloe gin! Both lambs had been born by half 9, just over 2 hours from when we first noticed labour.
I went back in later to check that they were feeding, spray the navels, weigh them and check them over. Two ewe lambs, one 2.5kg and the other 2kg. They both seemed to be feeding ok. We named the lambs Celaena (bigger and likely first) and Caitlin (smaller and likely second). Of course, over the next day or so I worried about their feeding. Like Crichton they weren’t doing the big stretches and didn’t have nice round tummies, in fact these girls were slightly sunken. We saw that each lamb was getting feeds, and Aeryn had milk but it was like she didn’t have enough. I attempted a bottle but had no luck. I later found out that the teats have to be cut!
As with Crichton the lambs did seem very active despite the thin look so we decided to leave them be and get them all onto grass as soon as possible.
That happened on Saturday once we had set up the storage polytunnel as an additional shelter. Getting them out didn’t quite go to plan though. We tried leading Aeryn out with ewe nuts (had worked for the Arya) but she was more interested in the grass. Managed to get one of her lambs but instead of following it she stayed grazing as the other one was by her. Popped that lamb down in the area we wanted her and went to get the second lamb. Arya came running over to the twin lamb and nuzzled it. It started feeding, she sniffed it’s bum and then went crazy butting it. We managed to get that lamb away from Arya and get Aeryn and second twin into the area. But I think by that point Aeryn and figured she was down to 1 lamb and just ignored the bleating of the other twin, which ran after Arya who was not happy with it’s advances. Got the twins together and with Aeryn and kept an eye on them. Arya ran over to the twins to still butt the one that had fed from her but Aeryn stood her ground and chased off Arya.
Things have seemed fine and settled since them. We set up a second shelter area and was planning to leave them out Sat night as it was warm, but do regular checks to make sure Aeryn hadn’t abandoned or forgotten one. We ended up rushing Chi to A&E with breathing difficulties and staying in (she is ok now), so the sheep were left to fend for themselves. When Sam came home early hours of Sunday they were all ok. We’ve left them out since and everyone is ok, the lambs have now even started playing together and seem to know who is mum and who to stay away from. I’m really looking forward to seeing them all running around like crazy things.
PS I’ve finally worked out Youtube, so have a look on our channel for more videos from the smallholding.
As it turns out, we didn’t have to wait long for Arya to lamb. On Saturday morning we noticed her vulva was looking really pink and swollen. Then, as I was doing the washing up, I noticed her lying down and standing up repeatedly in the triangle, she was separate from the others as well.
I had however been thinking she was going to lamb the night before, so we weren’t putting much faith in my guesses. We desperately needed to make a trip to the local tip – trailer full of dog rose – so I went out and studied her for a bit. She was very interested in a particular spot and looked like she was licking the ground. I actually walked around her just in case she had a lamb in the long grass but there was nothing there. She wasn’t pawing the ground to make a nest, she had stopped the lie down – stand up routine and she wasn’t raising her head to the sky or showing any other signs of pain (possible contractions). Our plan for lambing was to do 2 hourly checks and the tip run should take us about an hour and a half so at 2:45 we decided it was safe to go. I now know that was a rookie mistake and she was actually licking the ground to clean up from her waters breaking.
We got back at just coming up to 4:15, to get home we drive past the area the sheep are in. I looked out and said to Sam ‘I think Arya’s lambing, or maybe I’m just seeing the tree behind her. It looks like something is sticking out of her bum.’ Sam parked up and I left him and Chi and legged it up to the field. Sure enough she was lambing. Just as I got there she was lying down and doing the classic star gazing. Sam came up shortly and asked if I was videoing, of course not, I was just standing there in awe! Sam got a little video.
It didn’t take her long at all. She put her head down to graze and the lamb popped out. She kept eating for a second and I panicked thinking she might just not notice it, possible with a first time mum, I ran to grab something to clear the nose just in case but she turned around and started licking the lamb. I’m pretty sure I held my breath at that point but then Sam heard bleeting. I have to admit my knees went really weak, it was so amazing to just watch her give birth and this new little life start moving around. I had to go and start getting the pen ready for them and check on Chi (sleeping in the car) so Sam stayed to watch them.
We have a nesting pair of crows who having been scavenging and killing things left right and centre all Spring. One of them got very interested when the lamb was born and came and sat on a fence post right by her. Crows can be really vicious and take a lambs eye or even tongue
Arya was so smitten with licking the lamb she kept jumping over him when he tried to get to her teats. Again I worried, I think it’s my superpower, that she wasn’t going to let him but within about 30/45mins she let him. The other possible danger with her lambing outside is another ewe either getting aggressive with her and/or the lamb or it going the other way and another ewe trying to steal her lamb but not having milk to give it. The other three did approach once the lamb started bleeting but as soon as it moved they scattered. I think they were actually scared of it.
We gave them an hour to bond in the field. We kept watch in that time as the crow was showing a lot of interest. By then it was starting to get nippy for the evening and we had seen him feed so crossed our fingers that the bond was ok. I did my best interpretation of what I had seen on lambing live and dragged the lamb slowly whilst bleeting to encourage mum to follow us.
The lamb had not been watching lambing live and was not as placid as the ones on tv, he wriggled quite a lot and I had to pick him up a few times. I did get to see that he was a boy though! I discovered that the ewe gets very confused if you lift the lamb past thigh height. She just starts looking elsewhere. She also got really confused when we went past the other 3, she turned to go to them but when I bleeted again and put him on the floor she came running back. That was the longest it has ever taken me to walk that distance but we got there in the end.
Sam had set up the pen with fresh straw, hay and water and we penned them up for the evening. I gave his navel a quick spray to avoid infection as we had brought him in and had a go at weighing him. I need a better set up for the next lambs as he was a bit precarious in the bucket, but he weighed in at 2.85kg. No idea if that is good or not but it’s the start of our record keeping. I was really happy with how everything had gone. One of the things I had read was that humans jumping in to ‘help’ with lambing too soon was one of the biggest causes of issues to do with bonding and ending up with bottle feeding so I was really proud of myself for keeping my distance. She passed the afterbirth about 5 hours later and all was well.
Of course I soon found something else to worry about. Whenever he went to the teat he would faff about and then you’d see the teat beside his mouth and he would give up. I had heard a couple of tests to check if a lamb is feeding ok so I tried them all. The first was, when the lamb is sleeping stand it up. If it is full it will stretch and have a round belly, if it is hungry it will stand with all four feet in one spot and its sides will be sunken. Well lamb did neither of these. He stood for a moment, wandered to mum and did the faffing then lay down again, and his sides weren’t rounded but they also weren’t sunken.
The second trick is to hold lamb up by it’s front legs supporting it’s back with your legs. Again you should see a round stomach if full and sunken if hungry. But no, his sides were pretty flat. The third trick was to see if he pees when he stands up, like in human babies, weeing and pooping is a sign they are drinking. He peed but it was a drip drip affair rather than a stream. I then checked that mum actually had milk, she had a good sized udder (in my inexperienced opinion) but maybe there was an issue. No hard spots, lumps or heat (signs of mastitis), but I also couldn’t really get any milk out (two spots on my hand) did she have no milk or was I just rubbish at milking?
It was getting late by this point, and I had read that lambs should have colostrum in the first 6 hours so I made up a bottle. I offered it but he flat out refused. I went to bed very worried we would have a dead lamb in the night. We got up and checked regularly, ready to bring him into the house or tube feed him if he went downhill. Morning came and he was still with us but much the same as the night before. I messaged a local smallholder with more experience to come and have a look. He did and said lamb was doing ok. He got lots of milk from the ewe as well. I found out from the lovely people over at TAS that primitive sheep aren’t the same as the commercials I’d have seen on lambing live, they don’t tend to be as rounded with milk and as long as they aren’t sunken will be ok. I probably interfered with them a bit too much at this stage but thankfully the bond seems to be strong with them. I will know for next time and be able to be more hands off.
The polytunnel started getting a bit warm on Sunday afternoon, our main concern with using it for lambing. We decided to close off access to the polytunnel and let Arya and her lamb out of their pen. They would have access to the whole lambing space, including a penned off area outside where they could feel the breeze and cool off. We moved them down to the polytunnel doors and had to go collect some muck so off we went. When we got back it was getting a bit nippy and the lamb seemed a little unresponsive. I carried him back to the pen with mum following and headed inside to deal with Chi. We had a look on the camera and sure enough the lamb had been running up and down the polytunnel the whole time we were out. Not at death’s door at all! I was finally able to stop worrying about his eating.
We let them out into the post-lambing area on Monday afternoon as Arya was getting really depressed and not eating anything but the ewe nuts we offered. She just wouldn’t touch the hay. She got straight to eating and her lamb followed behind. They are out in the day and in at night at the moment as the nights have been a bit nippy but from tomorrow they will be out full time.
We named the lamb Crichton and he is just so wonderful to watch, running around and nibbling grass already. We are looking forward to him having some little friends. No-one else is due until the end of the month, but Aeryn’s bagging up already and is quite huge so she may have been caught on the first tupping as well.
PS I think I have fimally worked out Youtube, so have a look on our channel for more videos from the smallholding
It’s been a while since my last update*. Suffice to say I got ill and everything went a little out of control. I think it would be quite easy to mistake our polytunnel for a jungle at the moment! I need to get better at juggling illness and smallholding, maybe juggling babies and smallholding as well.
On a more positive note we have some new additions. Meet Baldrick and Barbara. They are two Embden geese, born mid May and hopefully one male and one female. I’m actually feeling pretty confident that Baldrick is a boy, his croak is harsher than Barbara’s. There’s also the grey feathers on the wing of Barbara, this is mentioned in the breed description as being possible in females in their first year.
For the most part they have settled in well, although Baldrick quickly took the title of stupidest animal at Six Oaks. Within 10 minutes of being here he had gotten his head stuck in the fence somehow. Then he tripped over the goose bath, going face first into it. Within his first week he had also gotten into a fight with one of our sheep.
Our plan for these two is to send Baldrick off as a meat goose, see how we find the process and meat as a test for doing it on a larger scale. Barbara is going to join Athos’ harem and hopefully provide some nice Toulouse x Embden chicks for us to eat and sell as meat.
We had intended on keeping the two groups of geese separate for a while but in the time it took for Sam to get Baldrick to the goose area Barbara had broken out into the existing geese’s area. We just let them mingle after that. There have been a couple minor squabbles. Mainly when food is involved but for the most part they are happily co-existing, although not one group as of yet.
Our first batch of chicks are doing well, well 3/4 of them are. We found little blackie (proper name Bellatrix) dead in the garden late one afternoon. Somehow the door to the coop had come open (the latch closing it isn’t very good and has since been tightened). We found Aino and 3 chicks huddled under a bush and Bellatrix dead in another part of the garden. I think it was a goose as there was one wound under the wing and blood on her legs suggesting she had walked wounded. She was also very close to the goose area. It could have been a cat or another chicken though. Catching the others was not fun, and included all of them running into the goose area, but we managed it. They’ve got a new coop and run on order to give them more space and keep them more secure. We had been thinking about bringing the chicks into the flock but after that we will wait until they are at POL (point of lay).
Our last new additions are still in progress. Aurora went broody and in the quest for a truly multicoloured egg box we bought some White Leghorn eggs to go under her. We are at day 21 now and we have at least one chick hatched, possibly two. Aurora has been a different broody to Aino. For one her poos don’t smell half as bad as Aino’s, but on the downside she insists on pooping in the nest and is quite caked. We tried cutting the offending feathers off but it is all quite close to the skin. We’ll have to bath her once the chicks are hatched. She got very distressed at the trim we gave her and hatching day was around the corner so I didn’t want to spook her.
The hatch hasn’t been without issues as well. We had one infertile egg that we got rid of at day 18, not too bad out of six eggs. The biggest issue was born out of my stupidity though. Upon realising that Aurora has poop on her I decided to clean her off. Of course I wanted to stop her going back to the eggs so I blocked off the nest box before picking her up. Unfortunately I grabbed the coop door rather than the bit of cardboard I usually use. As soon as my hand moved away from it it fell and landed on two eggs. Cracked and bleeding. I was a mess. Ended up taking them inside, accepting that we had lost them and sitting down to feed Chi and take my mind off it. Sam had asked if they could still survive and I said of course not; cracked shell and bleeding – they couldn’t possibly. I googled out of interest and saw something about candle wax. Rushed to the kitchen got Sam and we got to work. They were severely cracked so a lot of wax was needed but we got them sealed up and put them under Aurora. Candled that evening and both were very much alive. Keeping everything crossed that they hatch!
That’s it for new additions for now, although we are in talks to get a ram lamb to come and service our girls, stay over winter and then fill our freezer in spring. Hopefully more on that soon!
* I actually wrote this post a month ago and it has taken me this long to get the pictures sorted out. I decided to post it as it was rather than update it. Two important updates should be mentioned though.
1) Aurora’s chicks hatched. We had 4 chicks hatch, which included one of my repaired eggs, so the method works! They are getting big now and I think we have 2 girls and 2 boys based on comb size.
2) We lost Baldrick. He went downhill rapidly, from looking a little depressed on a Saturday evening to being at death’s door on Sunday afternoon. In that time we had got him to a vet but they said there was little that could be done. He had a lot of lice which were jumping ship, he was thin and very watery diarrhoea. He had looked ok to me on Friday but I guess that shows I didn’t know what I was looking for. We have since treated the others for lice and worms and are giving extra feed to help plug any gap the grass isn’t covering. We’ll be rotating their grazing more as well. It was bad husbandry that caused us to lose Baldrick, some say that it is hard to tell with birds and most new keepers get losses this way, but we will learn from our mistake and I hope not to lose another bird to something so easily avoidable.
Day 21 of incubation was on Saturday, Sam and Lis heard some cheeping in the late afternoon but we didn’t think any had hatched. By the evening there was a Cream Leg Bar shell outside of the nest box but no sign of a chick.
By morning we had the CLB chick (well CLB x Lakenvelder) and two others, a black one and a yellow one. At first I thought they were from a light brown egg and a dark brown egg, but it turns out that they are both Rhode Island Red x Copper Black Maran. There was also an egg with a hole in it. I had read that intervention generally caused more harm than good so we left it be. We popped some crumb down though as we weren’t 100% certain when they hatched.
Evening everything was still the same and I was worrying for the pipped egg but kept my hands to myself. Thankfully when Sam checked in the morning there was another egg shell but he couldn’t see the chick. It turned out to be another black one (RIR X CBM), wobbly on it’s feet but alive. Four chicks out of 7 eggs seemed good to us but we still hoped for the other three. I was keen to get a CBM or a CBM x Cuckoo Maran.
We had a mini panic that afternoon as I went to check on them and a chick was outside the coop. It squeezed it’s way back in when I arrived, but not a good situation. Aino was now sitting outside the nest box with the chicks under her but no eggs so we thought we’d give them a chance by shutting her into the nest box. I had heard tapping from one of the remaining eggs and it would keep the chicks safe until I was able to block off the gaps in the coop.
By Tuesday the chicks were all doing well and we’d put cardboard around the edge to keep them in. Aino was adamant that she didn’t want to sit on the eggs. They had been pushed to one corner of the nest box and she was in the other with the chicks. We took the eggs out and brought them inside with a hot water bottle on top of the fish tank. I could still hear the light tapping.
Wednesday evening we candled. I saw what looked like feathers but no movement in one egg, and just a dark shadow in two eggs. We gave up on them. I cracked the first one in the sink and it opened with a loud bang and an awful smell. Have had to light some incense in the kitchen to mask it. Another infertile egg, no development at all. The second egg really broke my heart though. I was expecting the same again but I saw black feathers. Then I saw movement. I opened it up and the yolk sack was still very large and hadn’t been absorbed. For some reason this chick was days behind the others. It’s possible it had been one of the eggs on the edge and the lack of constant temperature messed up the development. I held it until it stopped moving, there was nothing more I could do for it. The third egg I was certain would go pop as two of them had just had a shadow when we candled. I saw feathers again. This chick was huge though, taking up the full space of the egg. It still had some yolk sack not absorbed though and it was dead. I guess it was a day or so off hatching when Aino gave up.
A very sad evening, and no doubt my first of many where we lose an animal. If anyone has suggestions of things I could have done to help these chicks I’d be very interested. We’ll be buying an incubator before we put eggs under any other broodies.
Tomorrow I will go and watch our surviving chicks, try to come up with B names for them and maybe take a video for you all. We have our first new lives and our first deaths in the same week, life has a balance and this is a good reminder of that.
Oh PS I finally learnt how to get a subscribe button on here, so you can sign up to get notifications of our updates. That’ll help you keep up-to-date with our antics now I am keeping up-to-date with posting them!