Month: March 2007

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At the moment the Badgers tend to be feeding on…

At the moment the Badgers tend to be feeding on camera one first, it could be because it is staying lighter of an evening. Although camera one is very near the farmhouse, it is positioned in a darker and more secluded spot than camera two, that is very open position. As it gets lighter of an evening I gradually feed later. The clocks go forward this weekend, so I will start to feed the Badgers an hour later, at about 8 to 8.15pm. In the summer you can see the Badgers in colour as they feed before it gets dark.

The Deer were not about last night, they use the same spot at nearly the same time for three or four days, then go off somewhere else. I should think it would be close by as we often see or hear them in the day. We are leaving the valley camera on of a night to try to see them. Last night there were a couple of Badgers and a Fox running through, it makes a change to see them in the valley, a little more interesting than it is at feeding times.

The lake has been very noisy today, two pairs of Geese flew in and have being arguing all day trying to chase each other off. Why they both cant put up with each other, I don’t know, every year only one pair settle. Last year two pairs flew in and tried chasing each other off, in the end three of the Geese flew of together, leaving one on its own. A pair did settle a few weeks later.

We need to get on with a couple of jobs on the lake. We are going to put a couple of landing branches in the the lake to encourage the Kingfisher to catch the fish from them, so that we can see them on the cameras. We have Kingfishers on the farm, but we do not see them as much as we would like.

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The Ewe and lamb are doing much better they are…

The Ewe and lamb are doing much better, they are turned out on the grass in the mornings and come in of a night.

No more of the Ewes have lambed yet, but I am sure that it just a matter of time and we will have a few more. They will have to come in very soon to allow the grass to grow to make our hay for the year, and give the horse their grazing from the beginning of May until the Autumn.

Lady is showing no further signs of foaling, her udder is getting larger but no signs that the foaling is imminent. We have to check her out many times throughout the night, having a monitor in our bedroom to save having to go to the stables. Mother who also has a cottage on the farm, has a monitor, so that she can keep an eye on the mares. She insists on keeping watch for us, and stays awake all hours of the night. With all of us watching we have still nearly missed the births on a couple of occasions. I am sure that without our help the births would happen naturally without any problems, but it is not worth taking the chance. So many things can go wrong, a breach birth, legs coming out in the wrong position, the mare being to exhausted and starts to give up and lays down, many unwanted situation that might need ours or the Veterinaires help. Once born you need to make sure that the foal gets the colostrum in the first six hours. First you have to make sure that it can get up on its feet, a number of times foals have been to exhausted to get up. One could not find the mares udder. Some first time foaling mares, don’t like the foal suckling them, and we then have to hand milk the mare and bottle feed the colostrum, within a few hours the mare normally gets the idea and allows the foal to feed naturally.

It is essential for the foal to get the colostrum milk, as is all new born animals and humans. This special milk is yellow to orange in color and thick and sticky. It is low in fat, and high in carbohydrates, protein, and antibodies to help keep the new born healthy. Without it newborns struggle, any small germs or diseases without having the colostrum can cause new born animals to die. If a mare has a lot of colostrum we will milk a little off and freeze to use in case of any future problem, with other mares.

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We try at least four times a week to walk…

We try at least four times a week to walk around the whole farm. Although the farm is only sixty acres, it is in a long strip, and it is more like walking a hundred acres, with each field having different aspects.

The farm is in a very beautiful secluded valley. On entering before getting to the farmhouse and buildings, there is a three hundred metres driveway, with the lakes to one side, that opens up at the end to open fields, like entering Shangri-La. On both sides there are woods that line the sides of the valley, that really does make it haven for wildlife.

It does not matter how many times we walk the valley, we never tire of it, we are always looking for new tracks and foot prints of the wildlife, little bits of badger or fox hair that may get snagged on the barbed wire as they have gone under. We have taken out most of the barbed wire, but a little has been missed. With the different season smells and plants, there always seems to be something to talk about on the walks.

In the woods you often hear the breaking of twigs and catch a glimpse of the deer that trod on them. This time of year you can hear the Buzzard menacing the Rooks, and see the Rooks mobbing the Buzzard in retaliation, determined to chase it away. As big as the Buzzard is the Rooks nearly always win the confrontations, out numbering the Buzzard by many.

It looks very much like we have missed the snow, when we do get it, you can see animal and bird tracks in places that you have never seen before. The Badgers have well worn tracks that they have followed, some say for hundreds of years. The tracks in the snow show just how many Deer, Fox and Badgers have visited the valley, that you would not have known about if it had not snowed.

A question on an entry yesterday, asked the what Deer have been on the cameras over the past few days. The three are Roe deer they are smaller than the Red, now that you have seen the Roe you will know immediately when you see a Red.

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The twin ram lamb was missing this morning unfortunately he…

The twin ram lamb was missing this morning, unfortunately he must have been taken by a Fox or Badger. We have looked everywhere for him, but he could not be found. I had given the lambs a late bottle feed last night, the last time I saw him was at 11.30pm

I had the choice putting the Ewe and lambs in a closed barn at night, it would have been easier to feed the lambs, if I had, but the Ewe was not happy to be shut in. It was a mistake and the Ewe and lamb have been shut in tonight, and will be at night until the lamb is stronger.

The lamb should start to get stronger quickly now that the Ewe only has one lamb to feed, as soon as it is, it can go out in the flock with the Ewe.

The other Ewe and lamb are doing great, the lamb is starting to try to get the other sheep to play with it. A few of them will, but most just try to ignore it. You may have seen them on camera this afternoon, the lamb bouncing about and exploring everything and everyone, including a pheasant that initially edged away from the lamb before deciding he was being harassed far to much, and got out of the way. The sooner we get the other lamb out the better it will be for both of them, as the lambs do enjoy running about with each other.

As we were walking up the valley this afternoon we saw a Hare, it is the first one that we have seen, or may have noticed for many years. When we first moved onto the farm we often saw them, but they seem to have disappeared, It was good to see it, and hopefully they are returning.

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I don t know if anyone else saw them between…

I don’t know if anyone else saw them, between camera one and camera two last night there were ten badgers. I have been checking the cameras out every night since we found the dead Badger, and although I had my suspicions that the dead Badger was not from the local sett as it looked very small, but you can never be sure until you see the amount that are normally there. The dead Badger must have unknowingly strayed into the local setts area and unfortunately got attacked.

We also managed to show the three Roe deer, later last night, they were grazing and laying in the valley field for a good hour. We will see if they are about tonight, for they often come back at the same time for a few nights running.

The two Ewes decided that they wanted to join the flock this morning, trouble was the twin lambs got left behind and were crying out for their mother, we did not notice until they were a good way off, so we had to go looking for them. No way were the Ewe and single lamb going to be captured, they had decided they liked the bigger fields. The lamb is a good size so it will be fine. The twins mother was easy to catch, she was pleased to see the lambs when she got back to them. We are still having to help feed the lambs by hand feeding them with a bottle, I don’t think they will survive without the help.

As is most of the country, we are being promised snow over the next few days. The Farm, the surrounding hills and countryside really take on a different aspect and is a delight to see, although it does make work on the farm harder, so I cant say we are relishing the thought of it. We don’t get a lot of snow here, so with a bit of luck, it may miss us.

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A few of you may have seen one of my…

A few of you may have seen one of my lads on camera 2 today, on the lake, in a dingy. He was towing around four orange sacks. If you did see it on camera, It wasn’t meant to be quite like that. He was trying to submerge the four sacks that were filled with barley straw. We put it in a a precaution against algae.

The lakes are man made, that we put in about ten years ago. We had a small, very wet field, with the overflow of a leet running through the middle of it, It was an ideal site for lakes and would encourage wildlife, it has worked very well. The idea was to fill the lakes with water from a stream that runs by the side of them, before we had time to put a diversion from the stream into the lake it was half full and filling very quickly from underground springs, there was no need to use the stream as the water source. There is a constant flow from the main lake, that is about an acre in size, to a smaller pond of about a third of an acre.

When the lakes were finished we had a nutrient problem that cause a very large build up of the algae. Trying to clear it by hand is a never ending task. The chemicals released from the barley straw as it rots down, acts as a natural herbicide and kills the algae, a wonder fix really. We had not renewed the straw for a few years and I should think that we may not have a nutrient problem any longer, but it is not worth taking a chance.

Any way back to the boat saga, the idea with the bags of straw, is to put a weight larger than the weight of the straw, to take the bags to the bottom of the lake, unfortunately we got the weight wrong and it was not heavy enough to sink the bags, they would have floated around the lake until the straw got wet and the bags sunk, but they really need to be in a certain place.

My lad was in the middle of the lake with one oar, no rowlock trying to get the dingy, straw and concrete weight back to the bank, but the heavy weight was making it difficult for him to move, he was cursing about needing help and that we needed to throw him a line, so that we could pull him in. I hope there were no lip readers watching. What was not seen on camera was my other lad and myself on the bank, in fits of laughter at the site of him struggling to get back to dry land, so much so, we were unable to help him. Needless to say the job did not get finished and it will have to wait until next week. I didn’t have the heart to tell him he was on camera, will he curse when he finds out.

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The twin lambs are doing very well today The Ewe…

The twin lambs are doing very well today, The Ewe is eating the grass and is looking a lot brighter, even calling out for the lambs, when she cant see them. The Ewe lamb has been getting a little milk from the Ewe with one lamb, she will creep up to the Ewe whilst her lamb is feeding, attaching herself onto the spare teat. It does not take the Ewe to long to realise what is going on, and she butts the lamb away, but a least it has been getting a little feed that otherwise she would not have got.

When ever we take Tass and Ky for a walk down the valley, we inevitably come in view of the sheep, more often on the other side of a stream and hedgerow and as far as 300m to 400m away. Without fail, in fear they will run to make a tight flock. It was caused last year, a little while after we got the sheep, when a friend rode through the farm on her horse, she always had in tow three or four dogs. She did not realise one of her dogs had not followed her off the farm and was attacking the sheep, fortunately I had the valley camera on, in a flash across the camera monitor I could see the dog was chasing one of the Portland sheep, I was lucky to have seen it. It took several minute to get to were the attack was happening, seeing me the dog ran off. One of the sheep was just getting up after the attack and ran back to the flock, a Portland was lying as if dead, as I got to it, it got up and ran off in panic to the wood, with blood on its fleece. It took us four hours to find it, it had tucked itself under a fallen tree in the wood, we were taking it back to the farm to treat the wounds when we saw another injured Ewe in the hedgerow, she had obviously been there for the four hours and was in a sorry state.

We had to treat the Ewes for many weeks, but unfortunately the Portland died, the crossbreed lived, she is a very friendly Ewe, but it has taken many months for her to get back to her old self. What I cant understand is that our German Shepperd’s look very fox like, the sheep will sit chewing the cud, spread over a large area in the middle of the night, with Fox walking within feet of them, and they don’t take a blind bit of notice. They see the dogs and they panic.

The annual frog mating period is just about finishing, for the past few nights our drive, that is about 300m long has been full of many hundreds of frogs making their way to the lake to spawn, there are so many on the drive, that to get in our out of the farm we have to walk in front of the car moving the frogs to the side, it can take as long as ten minutes for a minute journey. How many are in the area making the pilgrimage I cant imagine. For the amount of frogs going to the lake, we get very few tadpoles.

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The twin lambs are doing very well today The Ewe…

The twin lambs are doing very well today, The Ewe is eating the grass and is looking a lot brighter even calling out for the lambs when she cant see them. The Ewe lamb has been getting a little milk from the Ewe with one lamb, she will creep up to the Ewe whilst her lamb is feeding and attach itsself onto a teat. It does not take the Ewe long to realise what is going on and she butts the lamb away, but a least it has been getting a little that it otherwise would not have got.

When ever we take Tass and ky for a walk down the valley, we envitibally come in view of the sheep, more often on the other side of a stream and hedgerow and as far as 300m to 400m away. Without fail they will run to make a tight flock in fear. It was caused when a friend of ours rode through the farm on her horse, she always had in tow three or four dogs

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Today we managed to renew the wire to the valley…

Today we managed to renew the wire to the valley camera, it was broken in the high wind a few weeks back. I was surprised how far it is away from the Farm House, the piece of wire needing replacing was a 100m long, The camera is a good quarter of a mile away. I should think there would be a good five miles of cables around the farm making the cameras work. The camera has not been used as much as I would like because most of the interesting events are a little to far away for the IR lamps. With a bit of luck and the weather stays kind we will get a new lamp going tomorrow, that will light up the far end of the valley. I say light up, in fact with any of the lamps going, the area covered is always as dark as the night, the only indication of a lamp is when you look at it with your eyes there is a red tint on the surface.

I sometimes pan the camera around when I get a minute, now and then I show it. You tend to see a lot more Deer, if you catch them when they have just arrived you may see them grazing for up to a couple of hours, they quite often rest down the valley after grazing very close to the sheep if they are in the same field, I hope to see them with their Fawns this year, they should be showing their faces very soon. We have three types of Deer a Denbury, Red Deer that we have seen in herds of up to sixteen, believe me they go through a lot of grass in one night, you would not want that many visiting you to often, especially if it is in your hay grass. We also have Roe Deer, they are a smaller deer, I have seen small herd of six on the Farm but very often they are on their own, just recently there have been three about, twice I have seen them on the main Badger camera. The other Deer we have is the tiny Muntjac, I believe it was originally imported from China, it is no bigger than a large dog, although we do not see them that often, it is usually in the summer with a fawn.

We also see Badgers from another sett running around the field, looking for food, digging for worms and generally playing. The sheep take not notice of them at all, you can very often see them walking in between the flock. You can also see the Tawney Owl and in the summer months Bats.

We have seen the twin lambs suckling on and off all day, the Ewe is a bit more perky, so hopefully she is over the worse of her illness.

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The twin lambs did not look too good this morning…

The twin lambs did not look too good this morning, both were calling out and obviously had not been feeding as they should, The Ewe was definitely unhappy, scouring, pawing the ground and not eating, a good sign that she was likely to have a tummy upset, we gave both the Ewe and the lambs a glucose solution to give them energy. The Ewe is on antibiotics and the lambs will be bottled fed to supplement what the Ewe is giving them. Just before sunset I the Ewe having a little nibble at the grass, with luck she is over the worse. The lambs will have to have a couple of feeds tonight.

On checking the other Ewes none were seen to be getting ready to lamb, I think that the lambing will go on for a month or so, it may well make me to decide next year to separate the Ewes and Rams until I want them to mate. It brings all the lambing work in a shorter period.

I saw nine badgers feeding tonight, none were limping or holding their weight off of their legs. It could say one of two things, it may be that the injury has got better or it may even be that the injured Badger may not have come out tonight and that there are still ten Badgers in the sett.

Woody has got over her illness and is feeling good. Lady’s udder is now starting to get bigger, a good sign foaling is not far away, it is now advisable to check her udder every day, for a good sign that foaling is imminent is that the tip of the teat has a little wax over it, this is natures way of stopping any seepage from the udder for the first milk is colostrum that is vital that the new born foal has within the first six hours. Although you don’t see it every time.