Hendra Farm Blog

July 2010

What a month!! The more daylight hours you have, the more there is to do. The gardens and polytunnel are overflowing with fruit and veg with daily attention required to stop some plants taking over - I'm sure my grapevine is closely related to the Triffid! Then there's the strimming, weeding, picking, watering etc. - the list is endless. Thankfully we haven't been subjected to the drought conditions some counties have had to endure so there is plenty of grass in the fields. Beauty has been making slow but steady progress and a visit from the horse dentist revealed the source of her recent laminitic attack - a super numerary (extra) tooth! This is rare in horses, but I have the good fortune (!) to have two horses with extra teeth as Viddy had to have one removed a few years ago that was causing her a lot of grief. Removing the tooth isn't an option with Beauty as the operation could easily bring on another attack of laminitis, so it was down to the dentist to sort out the problem best she could. The extra tooth has no opposing tooth to grind it down, so it keeps growing and causes problems in the process. A small pocket between the extra tooth and its neighbour had formed, which was filled with rancid food that eventually caused an abscess to form. The dentist ground the tooth down, smoothed off all the edges and flushed out the pocket, which to date, seems to have done the trick. I've been treating Beauty homeopathically to help support her immune system and she has responded really well to it - in fact so well I've stopped all the antibiotics. Now we just have to wait for the laminitis to clear up, which can take some time. Fingers crossed!

They say there's never a dull moment, and so it proved when my maiden alpaca, Bonnie, went into labour. I was checking her every half hour and after 6 hours of nothing happening, I was getting a bit concerned. She then started pushing and straining and started to prolapse, so I summoned the vets who hot-footed to her aid. An internal examination revealed a twist in the uterus and it was decided to perform an emergency caesarian section. After an anxious wait, and thanks to the skill of the vets, 'Little Man' appeared safe and well. Bonnie has made a remarkable recovery after her surgery, but was unable to feed baby herself - so I am now a full time milk bar!! Luckily my final expectant Mum gave birth the very next day, so Little Man has a friend of the same age.

                                                Little Man (Hendra Del Boy)and Bonnie                         Little Man and Hendra Donovan

June 2010

May 2010

The grass is growing - and so are the weeds!! I do not like using chemicals or artificial fertilisers on my land, but when it comes to docks, thistles and nettles, I have no such qualms. I have a a 5 litre garden sprayer that I use in my war on the weeds!! Knapsack sprayers are a bit too big for me to carry, but I can wander quite happily around the field zapping them with my hand held!! I try to spray first thing in the morning when there is a good dew, as this gives the best results. I shut the animals out of the field I'm treating for a few days after treatment.

I always leave the hedges alone, as, although they are a nuisance in the fields, these plants are essential to a lot of wildlife.

The first baby alpaca (cria) has arrived and she is an absolute corker. Born on a glorious sunny afternoon, she was soon up and running around. I've got several expectant Mums due around the end of May/middle of June, so I'm keeping a very close eye on them. They tend to have their babies in the morning or middle of the afternoon so that they are dried off and up and about before nightfall - the nights in their native homelands of South America are very cold.

Unfortunately, I lost a ewe and am now Mum to her ewe lamb. Teaching a 7 week old lamb to suck out of a bottle is no easy task, but persistence has paid off and she now runs up the field to meet me when I call her at feeding time. She has been named Ella Jemima by my two favourite boys, Ali and Charlie. Ali wanted to call her Ella, and Charlie wanted Jemima - so what was I to do!!!!!!!??

Beauty the Shire has been unwell with a re-occurrence of the dreaded toxic laminitis, brought on by an infection in the sinuses. Thankfully I caught it early and she is making a good recovery - she has been confined to a stable 24/7 for the past two weeks and is on painkillers and antibiotics. As ever, she has been a model patient, not even complaining when I have to inject her antibiotics - she really is a wonder horse!!!

(If you'd like more information about toxic laminitis, go to the Shire Horses page and follow the link).

April 2010

What a difference a month can make!! The rain has stopped, at last, and the mud is fast disappearing. The last few ewes have had their lambs, and what a bumper crop it's been! Loads of doubles (sheep talk for twins), not too many singles, and even two sets of triplets. I have to say, it's the easiest lambing season I've ever had as all the ewes have managed to lamb on their own with no intervention from me. Last year I had all sorts of problems and a lot of losses - this year no problems, and only one loss (one from the first set of triplets). The lambs are all really strong and growing away well. I wormed them all very early on and they moved to a new field, which actually had some grass, in the middle of the month. Grass growth is very slow as daytime temperatures are still quite low, with several overnight frosts. I have kept up supplementary feeding of mineral licks and feed blocks to compensate. The pig ark has been extracted and a new pig enclosure erected on a fresh piece of ground. The piglets arrived at the end of the month and are settling in nicely. They were very nervous to start with, but are now getting quite tame as they appreciate the delights of a good scratch at feeding time. I use sheep hurdles to make a pen for the pigs, and it works really well. You must tie the hurdles together with string though, otherwise the pigs manage to pull them apart when they are rooting. It is better to keep them in a smaller enclosure if you want them to clear ground, as they do a much more thorough job. Mine are only with me for about 4 months before they go to slaughter, so I build a new pen on clean ground for each batch.

Hatching has taken off with a vengeance now, and the brooders are full of chicks and ducklings. Spring has finally arrived!!!

March 2010

Is Winter ever going to end? March started off well, with nearly three weeks of fine, settled weather, albeit still cold at night with a few sharp frosts. But it was dry!!! The mud disappeared, rugs came off the horses, dry weather jobs got done - bliss!! The lambs that were born outside were thriving - it's so much healthier for them to be born in the field. The pigs went off to the ark in the sky, and not a moment too soon as they were starting to put on fat. (I couldn't move them until the field was dry as I needed to get the trailer backed up to their pen to allow for stress free loading!). However, the grass was looking a bit sad - the harsh temperatures had browned it off, and the dry spell had hardened the ground too quickly - so we hoped for a drop of rain and some warmth to kick start it back to life. And boy, have we had some rain since then!! It's back to mud, glorious mud!! The ewes that haven't yet lambed are back in the sheds, and the younger lambs in the field are sporting little rain macs. Rugs are back on the horses and the haylage is still disappearing at a rate of knots. Oh joy! The new weaners are still waiting for collection as I've been unable to extract the ark from the previous occupants pen without fear of disappearing into the glorious mud bath they so relished.

The daffodils that were looking so glorious only a week ago, are now bedraggled and windswept and even the ducks are looking fed up. This has been the longest and hardest winter I can remember for some years, and we haven't had half the weather problems that our northern friends have had to endure! Oh well, when it's this bad, it can only get better, so let's hope my April report will be decidedly more cheerful.

February 2010

Well, as expected, the nightmare of the ice and snow has disappeared only to be replaced with the delights of mud, glorious mud! The only ones who are enjoying it are the pigs, which absolutely love the soft ground for rooting. Everyone else is rather fed up with slopping around in a quagmire - including me!! With one of the Zwartble ewes getting very close to lambing, I brought her, and a friend, in to the warmth of a well bedded stable. This also has the benefit of me being able to monitor her 24hrs a day on the CCTV. After keeping me waiting for about a week, she eventually produced two gorgeous ewe lambs late one afternoon. Unfortunately one of the lambs was limp and cold - you put a finger into the mouth to check the temperature- which necessitated a night indoors in a box by the oil burner, and a heat lamp. I also gave her a precautionery dose of penicillin. Thankfully she came around fairly quickly, and I was able to bottle feed her the all important colostrum a couple of times through the night. I always keep a supply of powdered colostrum on hand for times like this, and it can mean the difference between life and death. I got her back to Mum the next day, and bottle fed her for a couple of days until she managed to figure out where Mum's milk bar was! Thankfully, Mum was very helpful and let me milk her, so baby didn't go withough that all important first milk. Not an auspicious start to the lambing season, but at least all is now well. Just need the weather to improve now, so I can get them back out into the field.

Egg production is now seeing a marked increase - my customers will be pleased. The birds have survived the rigours of this winter well, with only a couple of losses. Extra vitamins in the water always helps, and the hens have been allowed to free range in the paddock with the rheas and wallabies, so their run has had a really good rest. It is always a good idea to rotate their roaming areas so you don't get a build up of pests and diseases. However, I don't think they are going to be terribly impressed when they are shut back in again. It is a very large run, but they love to whizz off into the field in the morning to check out what the wallabies have left behind from the previous evening's feed bowl!! Greedy birds!

December 2009/January 2010

I've amalgamated these two months as they have both followed a very similar pattern, as happens at this time of year. It's been a continual process of feeding, watering and mucking out, together with the delights of defrosting numerous poultry drinkers twice daily, breaking thick ice on water buckets, carting buckets of water from the house to the yard because all the pipes are frozen, and constant replenishing of haynets and feeders for lots of hungry mouths!! Although the snow hasn't caused too many problems - the sheep and horses just dig it away to find the grass underneath, the icy roads and yards have proved a complete nightmare. Thankfully, the trusty Landrover got me safely from A to B as some of my fields are a couple of miles away from the main farm. Very useful when you're weaning, but a bit dodgy when the roads resemble skating rinks!! The dry and cold weather is always welcome, as the animals really do thrive in it, but the wet and cold isn't much fun for anyone. Still, we've all survived, with only two of the Zwartbles requiring a warm stable for a few nights as they are accustomed to being in during the Winter months.

Thoughts now turn to preparations for lambing as some of the ewes are due at the beginning of March. Booster vaccinations of Heptavac are given to all the ewes approx. 6 weeks prior to lambing - this will ensure that some immunity is passed on to the newborn lambs - and feet are given a routine trim. Mineral licks are put out in the fields, and access to ad lib haylage continues to be available at all times. Supplementary corn is offered, but my girls turn up their noses in disgust, preferring to chase me across the field demanding their daily ration from the 'bun bag'!! This consists of all the unsold goodies from a local bakery, which the horses relish, and ensures they come out of the Winter looking as round as the doughnuts they have eaten! Ok, it's probably not the what the dieticians would recommend, but the animals absolutely love it, and it makes me extremely popular in the mornings!! The daylight hours are gradually getting longer which makes life a lot less rushed, the daffodils are pushing up through the soil, the trees are growing buds, and the chicken have started laying again - roll on Spring!!!

November 2009

Oh, what a month - not one I particularly want to repeat. When smallholding goes well, it can be the most rewarding thing in the world - when it goes wrong it can be truly devastating. Back in October, one of my female crias (baby alpaca) broke her leg - nothing to serious, a simple fracture that was expected to heal in about 6 weeks. All went to plan, the cast was removed, leg seemed fine, baby was walking gingerley as expected. A week later a massive abcess burst out, baby was rushed to the vets and intensive antibiotic treatment commenced. Several conversations between my vets and the most experienced alpaca vets in the country ensued, and all avenues of treatment followed, including an operation to remove a bone fragment. Baby recovered well and we all celebrated our achievement - three days later she died! We had all become very attached to this very brave little alpaca who endured all the needles, poking and prodding with incredible trust and bucket loads of cheekiness - how we all miss her!! However, life goes on and there are all the other animals who demand my attention. I have sold some of my non pedigree Jacob sheep, and have now become the proud owner of some Zwartbles!! The idea is to use the Zwartble ram on some of my Jacob and Herdwick ewes to produce a heavier carcass, faster finishing, meat sheep, whilst still retaining the quality and leaness of the meat. They are incredibly friendly sheep and very quiet - just as well as they are very large!! I have also acquired two pigs, Pinky and Perky. They are destined for pork chops and sausages come February which I'm sure will be very popular with the guests in my holiday cottages. The weather has been absolutely foul, which makes the hard work even harder. I am feeding the animals haylage much earlier this year because the grass is so wet - it doesn't satisfy them. The fields are holding up okay so far, but if the rain continues as it has then I think I shall be growing rice next year!!!