Presenting George…
Amongst of things happening this week, this guy happened. Here he is as promised and you can find a couple more in the gallery near the top of that page.
This is always an exciting time because the ewes are swelling nicely and I never really know what to expect with numbers and the ram/ewe ratio. Our “oops” lambs are doing very well indeed and are having a great time leaping off rocks and running around. We aren’t a modern sophisticated farm and don’t believe in drugs and pregnancy testing etc. We just provide the mothers with the best feed and minerals that we can and trust that it all works out. Each year it works out very well indeed. We use a good mineral and also add a regular dosing of good old apple cider vinegar to the water once a week. Seems like that stuff is good for pretty much everything!
Talking of mineral though, I’m excited to try something new this year. Usually we buy bags of mineral, the pre-mixed kind, but I’ve often wondered if there is some harm in doing this. I mean, if my animals are trying to get a specific mineral that has a low volume in the pre-mix then it seems to me that they must be over-eating the other minerals to get enough. Perry Milling, our local mill where we get ALL of our feeds from (thanks guys, you are awesome!) is allowing me to get the individual minerals. I will present the sheep these as part of a constant “free choice” ration throughout the year.
Ruby is beginning to swell a little also and that reminds me to get straw for her to farrow into. I give it to the sows a week to ten days before hand for them to squash it and make it soft for the piglets. It makes a tremendous difference. I watched her this morning (Sunday) asleep in the sun, her bright red hair shining. It almost looks like it also has a golden quality too. Quite the life!
I can already tell that the spring weather will make it hard for me to be inside keeping up with the computer chores. I’m totally an outdoorsman and I hate to waste any of the fresh warm air and sunlight. Yet keep up I must, we rely on all the data to make sure that we are moving in the right direction and that we are as efficient as possible. There is very little time to do things as it is you see, so being efficient is important to make sure we don’t do too much and burn out. After all, if we aren’t enjoying it then we have already strayed for our course.