We have a Duck

Our neighbors "kindly" brought a duckling round that their young dog had in its mouth. I think we must be seen seen as some kind of Dr Doolittle characters. Well it was obviously only a day or two old, its parent I think was taken by the fox that killed our chickens. They love Duck. So we took it assuming that it had been so stressed and chilled that it wouldn't survive the night. We put it under a broody hen, not expecting the duck to imprint on the hen.
Well here we are 3 days later and it is alive and well and thinks the hen is its Mum and the hen seems quite happy with her new charge.
The duck is a Malllard so will presumably fly off once it has fledged but time will tell.

Sorry about the quality of the photos, it is remarkably difficult to catch the little bugger while it is legging it round the crate as the hen gets frantic.

Millies' progress

Millie is about 13 weeks now and has at least doubled in size, she is interested in chasing chickens and shows curiosity towards sheep, she has only seen them through the fence and it will be a couple of months before I introduce her to sheep.

Fox Attack

We have just had our first fox attack for 3 years, he killed 17 birds and left 16 laying in the field which resembled the day after the chicken war. He chased and killed birds all over the field in broad daylight and must have been in and out in 20 mins.

Our main hope now is that the remaining flock don't go off lay as a result of stress
The game keepers have been less active recently presumably as a result of the downturn. I,m not sorry that mass slaughter of pheasants is being reduced on these huge shoots but it does mean that we will have to be more professional with our protection of the hens.

Recent visitors from Germany

We have just said good bye to Deborah who has been working for her keep over the past 2 weeks. She also got to use our little tractor, sow seeds, work with sheep and bees also to go horse riding with a friend of ours in the village and last but not least to dig lots of docks.
It broadens our outlook to have visitors to work with us and hopefully they gain from the experience.
We also had Josh here just for the day two weeks ago while visiting family in Hereford, he stayed for six months working on the farm and learning the language, so he went back with a mixture of Lancastrian, Shropshire and London accents. It was good to see him and his mum Ulrike again after 4 years.

New batch of layers, Day Old

We have just taken delivery of our first batch o day old chicks, these are Black Rocks which we hope will be in lay before november 09 . That means they will lay through the winter , another 4 weeks later and we risk not getting any eggs until after the nights draw out after December 21st.We put 25 chicks under each broody, they seem to be able to cope fine and produce healthy laying hens.

First cultivation of ground outside.

The new planting season is upon us and we are about to start planting the outdoor crops. The green manure has been developing over the winter, seen here are the roots of the main three species sown. On the left is colts foot grass used for its root mass and ability to take up and hold onto nitrogen. In the centre are two plants of chicory with deep fleshy roots drawing nutrients from the lower levels of the soil and adding root mass then on the right is white cloevr used to fix nitrogen and add green mass to the soil.


First we graze the green manure with our Lleyn sheep, seen here the short plant tops and evidence of where the sheep have been. This leaves the sward in a good condition to be incorporated.
First we use the deep tines to break up the surface and aerate the soil and sub soil.


The chickens help themselves to any displaced soil fauna.


Then we use the tractor mounted rotovator to incorporate the green manure into the top 3" to 4" and break up the root growth to stop competition with crop plants. We will change the green manure mix this year as the chicory caused problems with re-growth pushing up the weed mulch.

The green manure rotovated, still showing green but this is a result of shallow cultivation which we do to retain the soil structure as much as possible. The mulch when laid will prevent too much re-growth.

Her name is Millie

Now at 10 weeks and growing well has had her first injections second and final inoculations next week. She can then mix with other dogs.