it’s Sunday afternoon and I am taking a much needed break from lambing. This is the most sheep I have lambed in a single year, and it has been tough.
I’m going to write several blog posts today, about some of the ups and downs of lambing so far. This is as much for myself as it is for anyone who reads the blog! I’ve found it very useful, going back and reading over posts, several months later.
To date, I am almost two-thirds of the way through lambing. Still a way to go!
How to make sure you get your fill
Tired yet satisfied after getting everything done today. The ground is so much wetter than it has been at any point this winter. Everywhere is waterlogged – and slippery!
I wasn’t due to clean out the hen house until Monday, but had to do it early as it was so mucky. Hebs are staying inside and when they do go out, they take mud back in with them!
That’s me for the weekend now, apart from feeding the sheep tomorrow. I need a rest!
I’ve only had a quad for a few months, and I honestly don’t know how I survived without it before!
It’s been invaluable, particularly at this time of year when the hen house has to be kicked out regularly and sheep need feeding!
I am going to post a selection of my favourite photos from the last month or so. I can’t wait for spring, the extra hours of daylight will be a big help – as will some grass growing!
Gizmo wanting in
Returning a lost ewe to the flock
More repairs to the portacabin. Still awaiting payout from my insurer.
Hungry Hogg
Swollen eye
A couple of visitors
I’ve been a little light on posts here recently, mainly due to them taking a little longer to write, and time isn’t something I have a lot spare of!
Things have been very busy since I started selling the eggs but that’s not what this is about, this is about scanning!
A couple of years ago, I posted about an extremely poor scanning and there you can see pictures of how it’s all done. We have the same setup every year, but fortunately this year was a little better for me.
Scanning is arranged by the Lewis & Harris Sheep Producers Association, of which I am a member. The scanner comes over from Aberdeenshire and blitzes 7,000+ sheep in a week. At around 75p (ballpark figure, not sure what it is this year) per sheep, that’s a profitable week for a scanner!
My sheep went through & I had mixed results. Most of it was ok, but I was very disappointed that 3 of my best sheep were empty. I had put them to the Zwartble ram lamb, as a wee experiment, but 3 of the 5 he had were empty. It’ll be interesting to see if he left anything in the other two, or if it was the work of the other rams that covered him.
I had results of 130%, which is ok, although I’d rather closer to 150. What I mean by percentages is that 130 = 13 lambs out of every 10 sheep.
I have now started feeding, all in anticipation of lambing starting in the last week of March – I can’t wait!
Don’t look any further if you are squeamish or easily offended.
I was cleaning out the hen house earlier today and was just spreading the new wood shavings when I noticed a hen dragging something behind her. Her intestine….
The other hens were pecking away as I lifted her up, and the entrails, and took her down to the barn. Unfortunately it was a total mess around the rear, so I culled her.
Not nice. Anyone know what causes this?
This lovely load of tyres is on its way to my crofts, to (hopefully) provide some shelter for my livestock. I have flat open crofts, with zero shelter and have decided to try something different.
On this trailer are 30 bales of tyres, weighing over 20 tonnes, to be spread out amongst the crofts that I have and use. This will provide shelter for the animals and also not be blown away like sheets of corrugated iron!
I applied to SEPA for a Waste Exemption Licence and received the bales free of charge from the council. I think the council get a landfill tax rebate, as the bales are diverted from landfill and put to a good use. Basically everyone wins!
They are being dropped off tonight and placed on the crofts tomorrow.
Finally sat down and had my dinner after coming home early to get ready for the storm that’s about to hit us.
Last night, this is the forecast that we had for Fri/Sat (this is from xcweather, the site I use almost exclusively)
96mph, which usually means that we will have gusts over 100mph. The weather station that was formerly Eoropie Tea Room has been relocated to my village, so should be interesting to see what it reads. I’m pretty sure it’ll be over 100mph. In the past few hours though, the forecast seems to be dipping ever so slightly, so I’m hoping it won’t be as bad as feared – but still very very bad.
Because of this, I came home early from work today, to make sure everything was as secure as it could be. On Monday, I put the blackface sheep out onto the moor. They are hardy and can find plenty of shelter out there. As you can see from the picture, though, there is absolutely no shelter on the crofts.
So I went to take the Cheviots back from the field they were in at the bottom of the croft, and leave them in front of my house for the night, where they can shelter. That was supposed to be a 5 minute job, until I noticed the rope on the gate had snapped (probably in yesterday’s mini-gale) and the sheep had disappeared!! Fortunately, they came when I started calling them, they had gone down to the shoreline – probably the worst place for 100mph winds straight off the Atlantic!
They followed me all the way out, nearly a mile, and I treated them to some feed in front of my house.
Everything else tidied away, bins put in the barn and peats taken in. One more job was to check the hens. I am pretty sure the hen house itself won’t move, but I am concerned about the roof. One section tore away in December but hopefully the repairs will see out the winter and then I’ll replace it with box-profile.
One wee issue has been wind-driven rain coming in under the ridge. This is because the roof has a shallow pitch, so wind doesn’t have to fight gravity when pushing rain in. I think I have plugged most of the holes with expanding foam
Now I’m in by the fire, all gadget fully charged, torches to hand and ear plugs by the bed. Hope I sleep, although worry and wind will probably keep me awake.
One thing is that I bought a generator this week and it’s sitting in the back of the pickup, at the back door, ready to be put to use if (or probably when) the power goes out.
I just hope the hens are all ok in the morning!
Tonight I did something that I’ve never done before; I wrote the following letter to the Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs, Richard Lochead. I must be getting old!
A’ charaid choir
Bliadhna mhath ur an toiseachd. Like many crofters, I today welcomed the opening of the new CCAGS scheme, which provides a vital mechanism for active crofters to make capital improvements. I was, however, dismayed when I realised that CCAGS applications would now require three quotes.
Previously, CCAGS had a very sensible rule that meant that an application for funding of less than £2000 required only one quote. For some reason, this was removed in the past two years and all applications required two quotes.
This inclusion of a third required quote provides crofters with an additional layer of, in my opinion, unnecessary administration. Crofters already have to deal with European, UK and Scottish Government paperwork and this bureaucracy seems to be never ending. In my own experience, it is the most active crofters who apply for CCAGS, and it is the most active crofters who have the least amount of time to deal with additional, unnecessary paperwork.
As a crofter, I have recently completed an economic survey (the findings much celebrated by the Scottish Government) and also the crofting census. I will shortly receive my annual Sheep census form and then my IACS form. This is an additional level of bureaucracy does little to encourage people to remain in crofting, or young people to enter into crofting.
I believe that this will have a negative impact on crofting, and on crofting communities. As well as discouraging applications, I believe there will be a negative social impact. Crofters are often part of small, close-knit communities and guidelines drawn up in an office fail to take this into account.
If a Crofter is applying to CCAGS for some fencing, those is small communities tend to know who will carry out the work before they apply. Three fencing contractors must be approached, but contractors 2 & 3 already know that they will not be carrying out the work, should it be approved. Why would a self-employed contractor be willing to waste more of his (unpaid) time providing quotes for work which he will never carry out. This will have nothing but a detrimental effect on small communities. For items such as fencing, SGRIPD staff already have guideline rates for work, so quotes are almost identical anyway – further waste of time!
I request that the scheme for one quote for applications under £2000 be reinstated, and that all other applications return to a two-quote requirement.
I would also like to know where the requirement for a third quote came from; my understanding, following a discussion with a civil servant, is that there is still uncertainty as to whether European funding will be used to pay for CCAGS, so I take this to be an internal Scottish Government decision.
I look forward to your reply
Leis gach dùrachd
Dòmhnall MacSuain
As the year draws to an end, I have been thinking about it a lot in the past few weeks.
2014 didn’t get off to a good start for me at all, as I felt some backlash, both locally and nationally, for arranging the world Guga eating championship. Afterwards, I made a conscious decision to move away from community-involvement and focus on my own plans. I had been involved in numerous community groups over the past 10 years; Ness FC, Social Club, Comunn Eachdraidh, village Grazing Clerk, Ness Golf Club & the Community Council, but decided to focus on my own plans after this.
And focus on them I did. As soon as lambing was over, I ordered 320 hens. The thinking was to provide some kind of sustainable income from the croft. The sheep and everything else washes its own face, but I needed something that would make a decent profit. Having done the sums and spoken to shops, I decided that hens were the answer.
Another big step was at the end of June, when I reduced my hours at work. I now work 3.5 days a week, having every Monday off, as well as every 2nd Friday. This has been invaluable during the winter, as I’d have no time to get anything done otherwise.
There are plenty folk who were trying to convince me to work full time or who thought I was crazy in doing it, but I have always been of the opinion that work is there to fund life, life isn’t there to sit in an office. Work to live, not live to work. I know what I want to do and 18 months of hard work will get me where I want to be.
The hens arrived at the end of July and things have gone well since then. They started laying semi-regularly by mid-September. Things have been ticking over since then and I hope to hit the ground running by the end of January.
There are loads of things going on behind the scenes too, but I can’t share all of those quite yet, as things are at a sensitive stage. I cannot wait for 2015 though, I know it is going to be my most successful, profitable and happiest year as a crofter.
Air an Lot 