Monday 23 December 2013

Farm Update

It has been a while since I've updated the blog regarding our farm. We've had a good-ish year with animal husbandary and veg growth. So in no particular order here is their season news.

Dogs

Its been a quite a quiet year for the dogs, no major dog escapes and no one has been too sick. The electric fence has finally finished and it is too effective. I've tested it on myself and it has a bite/kick! The dogs are terrified of the fence and the area where the fence is. They are currently camped in the area between the kitchen and the house. The winter will be spent coaching them into going into their new home.

Rabbits

We've had rabbits now for about a year and overall its been a slow but good year. We've finally managed to breed our original group and at one point we had over 25 rabbits. In the later part of this year, Mr Brown and his ladies picked up a bacterial infection which has taken about 3 months for them to shake off. We don't know the full extent and effects of the medication which was used. The best case scenario is that these rabbits can bred and are kept separate from the other rabbits. The worse case is that they are all sterile, so we would need another buck; Mr Brown would be kept as a pet (he is sooo cute!) and other girls would be dispatched. The descendants of have been unaffected so with the help of an external Buck, we've successfully mated the remain girls. The first litter didn't survive and another litter in our colony space appeared today :)

Chickens

The Chickens have been a suprise success. We've eaten the 19 chickens down to 7 chickens and 2 cockerels. The 7 ladies have each been producing an egg a day so we are upto our necks in fresh free-range eggs. We are already planning for next year's batch of day-old chicks. We're aiming for 20 meat chickens, some more egg layers and some orpington chickens.

Goats

Hopefully our grass munching goats are all pregnant by Steve the stud. We'll only really know in January when you can see the bugles. The milk is drying up slowly. We've gone from 3 liters a day to about 1.5 l every 3 day but this should increase with the hopeful spring kids.

Vegetables

We planted loads of vegetables this year, the success stories from our seeds were pumpkins, butternut squashes, courgettes, sunflowers and potatoes. WE also managed to grow tomatoes and paprika peppers from plantlings. We are planning expanding the patch to produce more next year so We've ploughed the patch and are waiting for the spring