Departures and Arrivals

Life In The Tropics
We had some rain! About two hours of it on my birthday.
If it did that two or three times a  week we would be on the way to recovery, but since then it's been even hotter and bone dry. School holidays may have started but we are getting little achieved on the smallholding. Anything more than extremely light work is impossible apart from the first and last hour or so of the day. In between it is just too hot to do anything.

Departures and Arrivals
It has been all change on the farm.
Sheep
Three sheep went off on Sunday morning, two of last year's rams which have one ball each(!) and one of last year's ewes. We had a choice between two ewes, a difficult choice which we eventually made based on their fleece for we have plans to get the autumn sheep's fleeces properly tanned.
We are desperately trying to conserve our grass so three sheep less eases the burden somewhat.

Sorry lads!

Turkeys
It's been all change in the turkey pen too. I forgot to mention it, but the second turkey hen had some chicks too. The first three joined the other hen and her two chicks, but the younger hen kept sitting on the remaining eggs. But there was trouble ahead, for as soon as they were born the other hen would kill them before we could save them. In the end I moved her and the older poults into a different pen and the younger hen was left with all six chicks. We decided to sell all six turkey chicks and two of the ten week old turkey poults. They went to local smallholders. We have kept plenty for meat for ourselves and sometimes it is better to cash in by selling them early rather than going to the effort of rearing and fattening them. Again having fewer birds puts less pressure on the land and the money from their sale funds the feed for those we keep.

 

Muscovy Ducklings
We have an extra two Muscovy ducklings too, hatched in the stables under one of our Cream Legbar hens. All I can say is that they are very cute but they don't stay like that for too long.

Laying Hens
There is another addition to the smallholding too. Our flock of old hens are hardly laying at all at the moment. The hot weather is not helping.
So we have brought in 8 ex-laying hens. They come from a free-range flock and should be much more productive than our old chooks. Within an hour they had already produced as many eggs as all the other hens.


We won't be so sentimental about them though. We will keep them until next year when we will replace them with a new group.
More on my opinions about buying in ex-layers in my next post.