October 6, 2008
Today George, Els and Ben arrived. They are 4 year old Alpacas, and are truly gorgeous.
We are hoping that these friendly and curious animals will do some lawn mowing, and rumour has it that they will keep away the foxes.
It has been an amazing day, Robert and Robin from Goodwin Alpacas have been so kind and helpful, and I have learnt how to trim an Alpacas toenails today – a skill I never guessed I would need!
July 2, 2008
Our 2 lambs are growing fast. As well as still enjoying bottles of milk, they are now starting to eat a lot of grass and lamb-nuts. As soon as the bucket is down, their heads are straight in until its all gone! Sometimes they even like to run around with the bucket on their heads.
June 13, 2008
The lambs have been eating and playing now for several months and boy they have grown! We are still feeding them milk once a day. Guests to Elmfield farm (both young and old!) have enjoyed giving the lambs their daily pint. A local farmer has been very kind and helped us vaccinate them for Blue Tounge disease and made sure they stay healthy – it has been a big but very enjoyable learning curve for us.
April 22, 2008
Yesterday 2 lovely baby lambs arrived. Our neighbour works on a farm, and on hearing we were looking for lambs popped a couple in her boot and delivered them last night. One is a 4 week old orphan, and the other is one of triplets which the ewe couldnt look after.
We had made a lovely comfy coral, which they promptly jumped out of. After several attempts at lamb proofing their coral we stacked straw bales three high and they now have a Lamb Colditz in the barn for cold, wet days and nights. During the day they are going to be running out in middle field.
The children are just loving feeding them their milk – and the lambs have caught on very quickly and come charging over when they catch sight of a bottle.
April 22, 2008
It has been a while since I posted pictures of our 2 ex battery hens. So here they are roaming free with all the other birds.
They scratch in the ground, dust bath and sunbath with all the other hens and have finally started laying delicious eggs too.
April 20, 2008
The ducklings have for the past few days been ranging free with the other birds. They are so used to Clifford, our dog, looking at them in their run that now they are free they like to come and sit right next to him. They can even be seen rummaging through his thick fur – I guess looking for lunch!
March 29, 2008
Four weeks ago we put a few of our duck eggs in our incubator. And on Good Friday Duckling number 1 (we have named him Seymore) arrived. He is the one on the left in the picture. On Easter Sunday number 2 hatched and finally at 3am on Easter Monday number 3 made it out of its shell. We havent named the 2 littlest ducklings – let me know if you have any suggestions!
The ducklings are all promised to a neighbour, as we really dont have room in our Duckhouse to keep them forever, but we are hanging on to them as long as we can as they are incredibly cute (but very very mucky!)
They like to eat lots of chick crumb made into a sloppy sort of porridge, and often like to stand in their food bowl to eat! After slurping up some food they run about their cage splashing water everywhere then collapse in a heap together under the heat lamp for a well earned snooze. What a life!
March 12, 2008
Well it has been a busy week – we had some chicken eggs in the incubator due to hatch last week – and not one hatched. We are not sure why, maybe the temperature wasnt right or maybe the eggs weren’t great quality. So we decided to buy some week old chicks from a hatchery. So yesterday 21 cute and fluffy chicks were delivered.
As the weather is so awful they are currently living in our conservatory in a little run with a infra-red heat lamp. They are a bread of meat chicken called ‘Farm Ranger’. They will soon be moved to a barn and then outside to run in the field nearest the farmyard. As soon as I have a photo of them I will update the blog again.
Our local Animal Sanctuary has a few hedgehogs which have been found and need rehoming – so later this week we are going to collect a hedgehog to live in the small patch of woodland at the end of Gilt Cottage. We hope it will keep busy by eating slugs!
March 8, 2008
Just another day on the farm. Andy and I have been learning so much since we moved here – but in all our wildest dreams we had never expected to give a chicken a haircut.
But this week we noticed that Tiny a little Poland Bantam hen was getting thinner. It seemed that her rather crazy hairdo meant she couldnt see her food. So whilst she was fed at banana we gave her a haircut. It is not a cut that will feature on the pages of Vogue – but it does mean that she can now see out enough to eat.
Meanwhile there is no problem with her boyfriend Frizzels who likes nothing better than to sit on the Duck House and crow to the world at large.
February 18, 2008
Sadly one of our three battery hens died last week. I understand that this can happen, especially when the weather changes suddenly – but we were nevertheless very sad.
Our two remaining hens are still doing well – it is amazing to see their behaviour change. They scratch the floor in search of tasty morsels and even tried dust bathing today. With the cold weather they have to stay in the feed store a fair bit. They have plenty of space and straw to scratch around in – but it was lovely this afternoon to let them out for a couple of hours in the sunshine.
They sleep at night in a straw lined Rabbit hutch safe and warm. At the moment I am not sure their legs are strong enough to perch like the other hens all night. I hope in the warmer weather the can move to the hen house to really become part of the flock of other hens.
Duckling in the farmyard August 2009.
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