SPLISH, SPLASH, SPLOSH

Sunday 1st April
Is this an April Fool's Prank?

Wet does not describe it!
The whole smallholding has basically been transformed into one of those very trendy wild swimming pools. Needless to say, the only animals enjoying it are the ducks and geese.

Piled onto the cold start we've had to the growing season, this is going to put everything back even further.

The wet weather job list
I have a long list of jobs to do on the smallholding, but luckily I have a separate list for very, very wet days, when the soil can't be touched and it is just too unpleasant to be working outside. Since I much prefer to be working outside, there are some jobs that have been on this list for an exceedingly long time.
Working in the polytunnel is always a good option for such days, but there is only so much tending to seedlings that I can do. Love them too much and they die.
So reluctantly I started mending one of the chicken houses which have been sitting in the garage. The space will be needed soon for rearing chicks. Mending chicken houses is a case of scraping and scrubbing all the surfaces, a quick coat of creosote on the outside, new roof felt, often new hinges and a few bits of wood replaced. I quite enjoy doing it but always put it off too long.
Here's my starting point for the current project.



Turkey eggs-it
I spent some of the day trying to sell turkey eggs and goose eggs on the internet, as well as our trio of Ixworth chickens. It's amazing how many people can't read your location, the price, or even what you are selling!
We usually sell them at school but they quickly build up in the holidays.
Anyway, I ended up with future orders for turkey eggs which people want for hatching. So the last of last year's offspring needed to go as she was the daughter of the stag. I caught her after dark, when you can just pick the birds off their perch rather than chasing them round a muddy, waterlogged pen. Turkeys are easy to dispatch and surprisingly easy to pluck, although doing it in the dim light of the stables added a degree of challenge.
Finally, it's been covered in a separate blog post, but Ewe 0004 was looking slightly better today.

... while one of the other ewes is looking very close to giving birth. This is the same ewe who looks very close to giving birth for weeks on end every year. I am checking on her every hour or so but praying that she does not choose such awful weather to go into labour.

Monday 2nd April

Splish, splash, splosh
Me and three dogs woke up one minute before the alarm to bottle feed Rambutan.
Yes, I did say 3 dogs - Sue has abandoned me for Lapland and left me with her friend's dog. We all went for a long walk (involving lots of splashing) although Charlie was useless at dyke jumping.

I delved into the list of wet day jobs and decided to clear the stable where Ewe 0004 had given birth to twin lambs not long ago. It needed sweeping and disinfecting in preparation for the possibility of another ewe being brought up closer to the farmhouse to give birth.
Then somehow I ended up digging about 20 metres of dyke. I didn't plan to do this. The small dyke hardly ever has water in and when it does it's a good time to check for blockages.
Halfway through this I literally skewered my thumb on a reed. I initially thought it had just stuck into the end of my thumb, but when I pulled it out it became apparent that it had actually penetrated about an inch!
It quickly started bleeding quite heavily and I hastened back to the house, sucking blood as I went. Fortunately the blood stopped flowing quite quickly but it was very painful.
Undeterred and with the thumb cleaned up I continued digging the dyke until darkness was falling.
The reed had actually gone in the top of my thiumb and come out  a couple of centimetres further down.
It didn't affect me doing big jobs, but I was unable to do anything fiddly.



Tuesday 3rd April
Keeping busy

Dogs fed and watered, chicks fed and watered, Rambutan bottle fed, chickens let out, fed and watered, ducks, geese and turkeys sorted, cats fed and watered, dishwasher on.

Thumb hurts!

Raining.

A morning of clumsy seed sowing followed by trying to joint a turkey without using the thumb on my dominant hand,

Then onto breadmaking - luckily the food mixer does the kneading now, 

Then cooking - turkey tikka.

The list of wet-weather jobs is gradually growing smaller but I could really do with getting on the land now.

Wednesday 4th April

With Sue away, the three dogs and two cats get to sleep on the bed. There's a little room left for me too.

Rambo and his friend got the big pumpkin today and quickly set about devouring it. Pumpkin seeds are an excellent natural wormer, which is a bonus.

The Muscovy ducks have been having the time of their lives lately, making their way down to the 'lake' every day. The sun appeared briefly today and they rested under the plum tree - this plum tree was overtaken by whatever it was grafted onto, so it is completely unproductive but is the most attractive tree in the orchard, especially when it comes into blossom. There is still not much blossom about this year. Everything is just so late.

-

Me and the dogs went on a long walk, though we had to abort when Charlie refused to cross the dyke.

Rumours of a resurrection would seem to be true

So here's a quick update on the sheep situation. After a poor prognosis from the vet, Ewe 0004 picked herself back up enough to deliver two live lambs, but the effort of the labour took it out of her.
Saturday 24th March 2018
After last night's surprise twins, Mum and both lambs were doing ok.

We were confident enough of their health to go out for the evening to the first meeting of the Fenland Smallholders Club Winemaking group.



We had a lovely evening, but a horrible shock was waiting for us when we got home. For one of the lambs was breathing its last few breaths. Despite our best efforts there was nothing to do to save it. It had seemed the strongest of the two.
Here is the last picture we have from its sadly short life.

Sunday 25th March 2018
We kept mum and the remaining lamb in the stables today, but mum is hardly eating and we have started to bottle feed the lamb.

Monday 26th March 2018

With mum still not eating I decided to move her and the lamb onto the back lawn. The lamb followed me out of the stable and into its new enclosure and mum followed the lamb. Straight away she started munching away at the grass and she even had a nibble on a mangel wurzel. The lamb is still being bottle fed.

Rain was forecast overnight so I put mum and lamb back in the stables overnight.

Tuesday 27th March 2018

A cold, soggy day. I constructed a shelter for the lamb to keep out of the wind and rain. Mum has taken another turn for the worse today. Things are not looking good for her and she looks like she has given up. I have come up with an exit plan for her should I think that she is suffering too much.
Meanwhile the lamb has been enthusiastically chasing a chicken around the pen all day!

Wednesday 28th March 2018
Ewe 0004 has not been seen to eat or drink for two whole days now. She occasionally gets up and wanders around her pen sniffing at the various food offerings but not being in the least bit tempted.
I think it is only having her lamb with her which is keeping her going.
At the lamb's midnight feed there was a heavy frost. Of course the sheep are adapted to deal with this, but I am not sure how a very sickly ewe is going to cope.

Thursday 29th March 2018
Seemingly oblivious to the heavy overnight frost, Rambutan the lamb was bouncing around his pen early morning.
Mum was licking the water from the hurdles - the first time I have seen her even drink since Monday.
I threw in a couple of mangel wurzel tops before I left for work and she actually had a very light nibble on the leaves.
Things remained the same when I returned for the lunchtime bottle feed, with Ewe 0004 still nibbling very lightly at the mangels and a little bit of straw - sometimes just a little bit of something really plain can be what we need to start a recovery, but I don't want to build up any hopes. Ewe 0004 has been up and down for too long now and every glimmer of hope seems to be quickly snuffed out by a downturn.
When I returned from work late afternoon, mum was walking around the pen much more and showing none of the adverse symptoms of recent days. She is obviously still weak and has lost a lot of weight and we are most definitely not out of the woods. But I am not giving up and it seems neither is she.
Friday 30th March 2018
Mum has been nibbling at various offerings today. A bit of mangel wurzel, a bit of cabbage, a bit of dried up old leaf, a bit of willow bark. She is clearly still not back to normal, but this is another slight improvement. She seems more assured on her legs and generally more alert. I don't want to get my hopes up, but things could be worse.
Saturday 31st March 2018
Ewe 0004 was eating grass for the first time today. Not a lot, but it was great to see her grazing again. She tried some of the soaked sugar beet pulp too.
Sunday 1st April 2018
Well, if you'd told me on Wednesday that Ewe 0004 would still be alive today, I would have taken it for some kind of sick April Fool's joke.
But she is. She has cabbage, willow, mangel wurzel, hay, grass, oats, sugar beet and carrots to choose from! She isn't exactly eating a lot but nibbles at bits and pieces.

I think she'll have company soon, hopefully not another sick ewe but the other fawn ewe is looking very, very pregnant indeed.

Monday 2nd April 2018
More improvements today. Rambutan goes from strength to strength. He runs over to me for milk four times a day, though he usually wants it about an hour before it is due.
Ewe 004 seems much stronger. She is confident on her feet and stamps the ground when the dogs appear to look at the lamb. She is eating various bits and pieces, from willow bark to banana skins to brassica leaves.
Tuesday 3rd April
If it weren't for Rambutan, I would try moving Ewe 0004 down to the paddocks with the rest of the ewes. But there is always a bit of head butting as they settle back in and this can be a worrying time for the lambs. Besides, with bottle feeding it makes sense to keep the pair close to the house. With all this recent rain, they may be the only way I can get the lawn mown for quite some time.

So that's it. I don't want to declare the problem over yet, but the future is looking a  lot brighter than a week ago.
Where we go from here with the sheep I do not know. If we carry on breeding then it is unlikely Ewe 0004 will stay with us. But that is a big IF.
We just feel that we are in beyond our depth. Even though Shetland sheep pretty much do it by themselves,there have still been significant worries every year. This is mainly down to our lack of experience, but that experience often comes through some very worrying times.
It is lovely having lambs each year and an economical way of getting sheep for meat, but at the same time we have to maintain our breeding flock which often involves having to keep males and females separate. This has implications for our land use, plus keeping horned rams means that we cannot afford the sheep with any sort of decent shelter, for it just gets destroyed.

So what if we don't continue to breed? Well, Rambo would have to go, which I would find hard. The older ewes would probably go too, maybe over a couple of years as that is a lot of mutton! We used to just get orphan lambs in each year to rear up. This worked well in terms of resting the land over winter but we often couldn't get them before the grass was knee high and going to seed. This was the main reason we decided to get our own flock.

But there is a third way. We could keep a non breeding stock of Shetlands, mainly for grass cutting and for wool. Then we could just bring in what we need for meat each year.

We have a few months to decide, so no knee-jerk reactions.

Keeping Chickens for Meat

29th March 2018
I am keeping a diary of the progress of Ewe 0004 and her lamb, but I am going to publish it all at once when I know what the outcome will be. As you can tell, we still have her but her future is unclear.

For now, meat chickens.

Ixworths
We have a trio of Ixworth chickens from which we have been hatching eggs for the last couple of years. We have a conveyor belt going, 18 eggs into the incubator, from which typically 12 have been hatching. We rear them for the first four weeks indoors in an old hamster cage under an electric hen, a heat pad under which the chicks can take shelter.
After four weeks, the next batch of eggs are hatching and need the electric hen. So they go into the garage in a brooder ring, a giant Correx circle. Heat comes from an overhead heat lamp.
When they are ready, they go down to the main chicken pen, but in their own small compound until the other chickens have got used to them and they are big enough to go free range.

This has been pretty successful for the last couple of years, but to be honest we have been getting a lot more leg meat than breast. Now I like legs, but I like a bit of breast too!

This left us in a quandary. Perhaps the only way to get a bird with a decent breast is to be cruel and raise something that is so inbred that it has heart problems and can't stand on its own two legs.
If this were the case, then maybe we should accept the Ixworths as the best option or stick to Muscovy ducks for meat instead.

Industrial Chickens
I refuse to call these anything else. Chicken production is not farming, it is an industrial process and it is not pretty.
Four months ago we took on a dozen chicks which had come from a unit. These birds are bought in as day olds and reared 50000 at a time until about four weeks old, then they go off somewhere else to be further fattened up. But they are not destined for roast chickens, they are for processing. They are given as much food and water as possible and as little exercise as possible. High mortality is an accepted part of this.

The birds we got did not profit the unit they came from. They were taken into a school to show the children and then could not go back into the unit because of biosecurity.
I was curious as to how they would fare if reared alongside our other free range chickens.
They are now 18 weeks old and getting big. So far there has been nothing cruel about keeping them. Yes, they eat a lot and drink a lot, but as long as they are encouraged to roam and look for their food then they don't just sit there. They have legs like tree trunks and are clearly very big-breasted. Their growth has been much quicker than the Ixworths too.
In fact, they look ready to go now. If they get much heavier they do look like they might struggle, so we will probably cull a couple of them quite soon and see just how much meat is hiding under those feathers.

'Commercial' chickens
With our industrial chickens almost ready to go in the freezer and with spring upon us (though you wouldn't know it), we needed to think about 2018's plan for meat chickens.
Friends of ours have been going through a similar process of trying to find the right meat birds and each year buy in day old chicks. These are of no specific breed, but instead have a number assigned to their strain.
Our friends have been happy with these 'commercial' chickens so far, so we asked them to get some in for us this year.
And so today they arrived. Here they are.

For the next four weeks we will have a noisy and occasionally smelly front hallway.

Something's Brewing

edit - some parts of this post have been somewhat superseded by subsequent events, which account for the delays in posting.
19th March 2018
Something's Brewing
My new hobby is to be making country wines. I have bought all the gear, which is surprisingly inexpensive as far as hobbies go.

Sitting in  a cupboard for about 6 years has been a beer-making kit so I decided to start with this. The kit was well out of date, as was the yeast, but I thought I might as well give it a go. If it fails to ferment I have purchased a new sachet of brewers ale which I'll throw in to save the day.



The can of malt surprised me. It was just like the malt extract I used to take as a youngster. I don't know what I was expecting really.
So with a bit of luck I'll have 40 pints of tasty beer quite soon. If it works, it could become a regular feature. As for the wine, I am going to start off with mangel wurzel wine. It should be ready in about two years.

20th March 2018
Tending to the sick
Sick animals take up an awful lot of time. I spent much of the morning tending to Ewe 004 and Wonky the Wry-necked Silkie hen. To be fair, I was actually tending to all the sheep and chickens. On the whole the animals don't take up too much of my time, but when things go wrong then I need to be able to give them all the time they need.

It's a bit tricky to see in amongst the mass of black feathers, but Wonky

is the one on the left. 

Things are hopefully looking up for Ewe 0004

The Ewe is, I think getting better, though we are still not out of the woods. We continue to hand feed the hen with a mixture of scrambled egg, sunflower seeds and cider vinegar. Every day we pierce a vitamin E tablet and tip the contents into her beak. As yet we are seeing no change in her condition.

It was almost gardening weather today, so I spent most of the afternoon doing general trimming and tidying, cutting back perennials and taking out dead growth. The dogs came out with me too and Arthur in particular busied himself trying to flush a rabbit out of one of the compost heaps.
In the end he was actually successful and Boris got lucky being in the right place as the rabbit ran into the wire fence.
I know rabbits are quite cute, but not when they constantly destroy your work in the garden. Besides, they are a good free food source for Gerry our cat and for the dogs. They usually steal Gerry's catches rather than hunting their own.
Boris didn't quite know what to do with the rabbit once he had played with it like a toy. All he knew was that Arthur wasn't allowed to take it. Once he got bored I threw it to Arthur who did what Arthur does with rabbits.

21st March 2018
Lamb Surprise
I got home to find the young brown ewe lamb nose to nose with the two rams. It had made its way up towards the stables!
I decided to put it in the stable with Ewe 004, who is looking much better now. It will give her some company. I will move them both back outside at the weekend, when I can keep an eye on them.
Hopefully a bit of company will help Ewe 0004 to make a full recovery.

22nd March 2018

The beer yeast, despite its age, has finally started working. It just shows there's life in the old dog yet!

The Silkie hen seems to be on the mend too. She is still holding her head to one side and occasionally goes into spasms, but she is now able to feed unaided. Fingers crossed.

Sue is camping with school children tonight. Only on the school field, but I am sure she will be shattered come the morning. Meanwhile I am looking after everything on the farm.

Apologies for the radio silence blog-wise, but things have been rather complicated with Ewe 0004. It has been a very worrying time and it is not over, but I just thought I would check in and let you know what's been going on.

By the end of last week Ewe 0004 seemed to be on the mend. We still had her in the stables but I was considering letting her back out into the paddock at the weekend when we could keep an eye on her.
There were no signs of impending labour.

But at about 8pm on Friday Sue checked over the stable door and there was a new-born lamb, already cleaned! It had only been a couple of hours since I had last checked on the sheep. Moreover there were two hooves just poking out of Ewe 0004's rear end.
We left her in peace for about 20 minutes, by which time there were two lambs. I was amazed that they were both alive after the previous week's dramas and I was just praying there was not another inside.

Lambs need to take on colostrum, the mother's first milk, soon after birth as it contains the antibodies they need to survive in life. Thereafter they need to continue to feed successfully. It can be hard to see if they are doing this, even if they are performing the right actions.

After the birth the ewe needs to pass the placenta, but again this is not always seen as they usually consume it soon after it passes (a wild instinct to deter predators and not to waste precious nutrients, disgusting as it sounds).
Shetland sheep are pretty good at doing everything themselves but obviously this ewe had been extremely ill so the likelihood of complications was higher than usual.
We went to bed hoping that everything would be ok. And in the morning all did indeed seem to be going to plan, except for the minor complication of hanging membrane from the ewe's rear end, but this happened last year too and sorted itself out in the end.

By the evening both lambs were looking ok, though we still hadn't positively seen them take milk. We felt confident enough though to keep a prior evening appointment.

So it was a complete shock when we got home to find one of the lambs on the brink of death. We tried to warm it but sadly we were too late. Mum was not looking wonderful either.
We dashed back to the friends we had been visiting to pick up an emergency supply of goat milk, which is just about the best substitute for a range of animals, and fed the remaining lamb.
Saturday night was a long night. I did till 3.30am and Sue did from 4.30.

Today has been unpleasant. We have been bottle feeding the lamb to make sure it gets enough milk and to take the pressure off mum who is very weak and showing no inclination to feed. I am syringing energy boosters onto her mouth and she picks up for a while, but that can't go on forever.
Losing lambs is something you have to get used to. It is very sad but it is inevitable. At least they go quickly and probably just effectively fall to sleep.
But watching a ewe struggle so is heart-breaking. I just have my fingers crossed that she will ride it out and gradually improve.

We won't make any decisions right now, but this whole event is seriously making Sue and I rethink our flock plans. It might be easier just to buy in lambs each year for fattening up and to keep some of the Shetlands for grass cutting and for their wool.
We don't need to make a decision yet, though I fear a difficult decision over Ewe 0004 will become necessary in the next few days.

Felt Flowers

17th March 2018
Cooking and Crafts for a Cold Day
More snow and biting cold easterlies again. It wasn't the best day to choose to move a new house into the turkey enclosure, but they have started laying now and need somewhere to sit.
That was it for outdoor jobs. This was a perfect day for cooking and crafts.

First up was a parsnip cake - a bit like carrot cake but, you've guessed it, with parsnips instead. Easy apart from the grated parsnips!
I had dug up too many parsnips so made parsnip and potato hash browns for the freezer too. It's astonishing how much mess grating a kg of root veg can make!
The parsnips are lovely and sweet now - reputedly they sweeten up if left to stand a few frosts.

Next up was my first ever felting. Sue purchased a box full of different coloured merino wool for her birthday. One day we hope to be able to prepare our own wool from the Shetland sheep and dye them with natural dyes from the farm.
The actual process of felting is somewhat magical. You simply arrange tufts of wool as you want them, which is hard to judge when you've no idea what's going to happen, then agitate them with increasing vigour sandwiched between layers of bubblewrap. The fibres of the wool intermingle inextricably until felt is formed. And that's it.

Mine is the best one. 

18th March 2018
Things are Looking Up
A busy day ahead. It started well with Ewe 0004 finally standing up and looking a little stronger. I am still feeding her the bright pink glucose liquid. I think she actually quite likes it, but I can tell she is getting stronger by her initial resistance. Up till now she has been too weak to protest.

Today was the Grow Your Own group, hosted by some members down in Ramsey. I had arranged to visit a smallholding on the way with a view to it opening up for a summer smallholders meeting. I had also arranged to pick up a meat slicer which I had jumped on when it came up on Facebook. Three birds with one stone.

The smallholding I visited was delightful, even in the harsh weather. I was greeted by four very large, barking dogs. A few years ago I would have buckled and turned away, but I am now a dog lover (once I know they are definitely friendly). They no longer smell the fear in me.
Then it was time to meet the goats. I have not yet kept goats (note the 'yet') but I am always surprised by how friendly they are and how soft their coat is. I am co-ordinating a Goaty Day (nothing to do with funny little beards) for the Smallholders Club late in the year. Hopefully I will be able to resist their temptations. Seriously though, they are one of the trickier species of livestock to keep so I don't think we'll be getting one any time soon.
This is a shame, for I do fancy the idea of our own dairy products. A cow is out of the question and I am pretty sure the Shetland sheep would strongly object to being milked.

I stayed longer than I should have on the smallholding so was late leaving for the Grow Your Own group get together his wasn't helped by the total absence of mobile internet signal in Ramsey. Maybe I am too reliant on my smartphone.
Anyway, the meeting was most enjoyable as usual. We discussed perennial vegetables - ones that you just plant one year and reap the harvest for many more years. Asparagus, rhubarb, globe artichoke, Jerusalem artichoke to name a few. Oh that all vegetables were like this.
Everybody brings food along to these get-togethers. There is always way too much to eat and plenty of cake!

It was late afternoon when I returned to the farm. Time to give Ewe 0004 her last dose of glucose and to hand feed the wonky-necked Silkie hen. She is not yet showing any signs of improvement but we will persist for a while yet.
Her twisted neck causes her occasionally to completely lose her sense of orientation. It shouldn't be funny, but after feeding her, if you put her outside her little house facing away from it, as soon as you let go she quickly retracts backwards into the house. It is hilarious to watch. You have to have a sense of humour when things go wrong (paired with a strong sense of compassion).

Time To Call The Vet

15th March 2018
Happy Birthday Sue!
Unfortunately Sue's birthday was somewhat overtaken by events. With Ewe 0004's health seemingly deteriorating, I took the expensive but necessary step of calling out the vet. I asked them to bring some vitamin E for the wonky-headed chicken too.
Early afternoon they rang to say the vet was 45 minutes away. I had to hang by the phone, for the road was completely closed today as the electricity went off and the wires were fitted up to the new posts.



I made the most of being incarcerated by sowing seeds most of the day. But when two hours had passed I rang the vet again to be told they had been diverted to an emergency.

Eventually two vets arrived at about half past 4. By then I had sown a lot of seeds! They got straight onto the job and quickly diagnosed that the ewe had serious metabolic problems. The prognosis was not good. If she did not respond quickly to injections of calcium and oral drenches of glucose then she would likely die. The only other way to try to save her would be to induce her to give birth or abort. 
There are three types of metabolic problem in sheep. The first is known as twin lamb disease, pregnancy toxaemia or hypoglycaemia where the demands of the rapidly growing lambs outstrip the ewe's ability to take on energy through feed. 
The second is hypocalcaemia, also known as milk fever, a calcium crisis which can be brought on by stress as a result of poor nutrition, severe weather or dog worrying.
The third is a shortage of magnesium and is known as Grass Staggers.
Without blood tests it can be tricky to determine which is at play, but it is serious whichever is the case.

As for the chicken, neither vet had ever seen a case of wry neck before, so we were all playing GoogleVet! Most importantly, they brought me three syringes of vitamins which include the all important vitamin E, since it is probable this is the cause. Under all the furry feathers, Silkie hens are the scrawniest of creatures, so finding a breast or thigh muscle to inject into was not straightforward. Long term, the Silkies need sunflower seeds in their diet to avoid this happening again. If only I had known this before.

16th March 2018
The blood test results are back
The ewe is still alive and is standing up occasionally but extremely wobbly. I don't know if this is a sign of recovery or a last ditch effort by her. The situation really is very worrying. As a smallholder I feel an overwhelming responsibility for the welfare of my animals.

Down in the turkey pen, the first turkey egg of the year was sitting on the ground. I scrambled it and fed it to the Silkie mixed in with chopped sunflower seeds and cider vinegar. As yet she shows no signs of recovery.
I did today meet somebody who actually knew of wry neck. An old fenland type who keeps chickens for show. He reckoned the bird would be in a black bin bag by the end of the week! But that won't stop us trying as long as we don't judge the bird to be suffering too much.

News from the vet. Ewe 0004 was a bit low on Calcium and Magnesium but nowhere near as low as the vet suspected. So no need to inject the magnesium which I had been left or to continue with the calcium injections. We just needed to hope now that continued oral drenches of ketol (a form of glucose) would bring her blood sugars back up to speed and that she would soon start to show a positive response.

I still strongly suspect that the whole worrying incident has most likely been triggered by some sort of trauma. Given the way I found the electric fence, I'm pretty sure something had been through it and chased her. It would not be a fox, for that would not make the sheep bolt and besides, they just go under the electric fence, not through it.
If this were the case, it is utterly infuriating for it has seriously jeopardised the life of the ewe and her unborn lambs. It has been expensive and worrying for me too. Even if she recovers, I am dreading what will happen when lambing occurs.

I would like to think that Ewe 0004 is looking a little more lively this evening. She was flicking her ears for the first time, raising her head up and looking at me and she seemed to blink in response to me waving my hand in front of her eye. She does seem to know that I am trying to help her and seems to have learned to trust me.

With nothing more that Sue or I could do, we headed off to the Thai restaurant in Holbeach to forget the smallholding for a while and celebrate her birthday.

A bad day on the smallholding

Tuesday 13th March 2018

Peace and Quiet

What a lovely, quiet, peaceful day. They can shut the road more often if they like!

I cut the dogwoods back today. It's always hard to know how much brightly coloured growth to keep and how much to chop away, for it is the new growth that will look good next year.

I went pretty drastic this year, so we'll see how they are looking come next winter.

The fresh new growth offers a lot better material for taking cuttings too. Again this year I took about 30 cuttings and would expect to end up with at least twenty healthy little shrubs from this.

I took this lovely photo of the river on the evening walk with the dogs. 

On a more worrying note, one of the pregnant ewes is limping really badly. Oddly one of the electric fence posts was lying on the floor and another was way out of place. I do hope she has not been the victim of dog harassment.

To be on the safe side, I moved all the sheep a couple of strips down toward the house. I had to lead the ewe very gently indeed, letting her take a few steps at a time. 99% of the time a lame sheep will be completely better within a couple of days, but this looked different. She was only just able to walk and was clearly in difficulty. The thought of those electric fence posts worried me too. Occasionally they lean over or the wires come unfixed, but never before have I found one just lying on the floor unattached to the fence. 

Wednesday 14th March 2018
Bad News Comes In Threes
Smallholding can occasionally kick you in the teeth, usually just when you are starting to think that everything is going smoothly.
I came home from work to a triple hit. One of the dogs had left a mess in the kitchen which was not much fun to clear up.
But things were to get much worse. The lame pregnant ewe from yesterday was sat on her own in the field in exactly the same place as this morning. She had not moved all day, meaning that she had not eaten beyond where she could reach. I took the decision to move her up to a stable - not a decision taken lightly for it is not good to move a heavily pregnant ewe. But with further cold weather in the forecast I felt she would be in real trouble if I left her outside. I was on my own and all I could think of was to lift her as carefully as possible into a wheelbarrow. Fortunately I did not have to tip her upside down and she did not put up a fight - a sign of just how poorly she was.

A sad sight - I've never had a sheep so ill that she couldn't walk herself to the stables.

I set her as comfortable as I could in the hastily prepared stable and surrounded her with food and drink. For the moment there was not much else I could do than to leave her in peace for the night.

I still hadn't given the chickens their late afternoon feed. But as I entered the chicken pen I noticed one of the black Silkie hens flopping around on the floor near the food tray. She appeared to have a broken neck, but I couldn't feel a break. Her neck was writhing around and I can only describe it as her head being upside down! My best guess was that Cocky had been too rough with her and I would surely have to put her out of her misery.
By this time I was beginning to wish I had not come home from work today!

I checked back on the ewe. She was still in the same place but was breathing very heavily. Sue and I decided we would keep an eye on her and make a decision in the morning about whether to call out the vet.

An internet search for Stargazing Chicken revealed exactly what was wrong with the Silkie hen. Wry neck. What an appropriate name. There is actually a bird called a wryneck which does something similarly weird with its neck as a display.
This condition is peculiar to Silkie and Polish chickens. It may be genetic, but probably comes down to lack of Vitamin E. So if there is a solution, it is to somehow administer Vitamin E and Selenium which aids absorption of the vitamin.
Fortunately sunflower seeds are a good source of both. If only we had known, we could have been feeding sunflower seeds to the Silkies since I buy big bags of them for the wild birds. It seems far-fetched that such an acute condition could be caused by  vitamin deficiency, but we'll give it a try. 
For now, the two black Silkies have moved down to the stables too, for this girl will need hand-feeding until and she recovers (if).

One thing that smallholding teaches is resilience. You wouldn't get past the first year without plenty of that particular quality.
Endless optimism comes in handy too!

And just so that the day didn't go completely badly, quite by chance somebody I was messaging on Facebook just happened to put up an advert for a second hand meat slicer, a proper butcher's one. I responded immediately for I have been waiting a long time for an affordable one of these to come up somewhere.
I am picking it up on Sunday.