Monday 28 November 2011

Straw and leaves are back!


The January ewes are now inside which heralds the return of straw and hay appearing in every crevice of clothing and materialising as we begin the 5 minute undress every time we come indoors to remove all the layers! The straw gets mixed in with oak leaves which drop from our neighbours wonderful oak tree. We know winter is here both inside and out!

Loading the girls up to come back to the sheds went well and it is nice to have them inside and give them the TLC they need to nurture the growing lambs inside them. During the last 6-8 weeks of pregnancy, the lambs put an increasing demand on the ewes energy so it is really important that they are given the right nutrition. Molly is at just the right level in her pushchair to see the ewes munching through their food, she loves it!

This morning the boys were separated off from the girls and brought back to have a well earned rest. They had a bit of a pedicure and are now enjoying a bit of boys time back together.

Roly has been busy building the sheds and creating more space this year for the extra ewes which will be lambing. He loves working it all out and thinking how the layout will work for ease of lambing, bringing in the bales with the tractor and for the public to get a good view when we are open for our lambing weekends.

The markets are busy as are private orders so please get in touch if you would like to order lamb for Christmas and the New Year.

More soon

Camilla, Roly, Molly, Boris and Belle

Monday 14 November 2011

Results for our January ewes!

Who would have thought it is mid November! We went for a walk in the glorious sunshine today without a coat on, it was amazing. However, we have just watched the Countryfile weather forecast for the week and it looks like it is getting colder tomorrow. I will be relieved if it means that some of the germs Molly is picking up get frozen out. Her nose has been constantly running for about 2 months now!

Anyway enough of Puzey domestic news….what about the farm? Well as ever it has been really busy. The ewes are now entering their second cycle, which means we have changed the crayons on the rams raddles to green! The crayon on the first cycle was orange and looking at the ewes bottoms the boys have been very busy, in fact we can count on one hand the ewes who still don’t have a mark. This means that the first two weeks of lambing will be full on!

We mustn’t forget that we have 70 ewes lambing in January and we had them scanned on Friday morning – 10 triplets, 35 twins and 24 singles, one ewe was empty. Really exciting! We will be bringing them indoors in about a week and the winter routine begins of feeding twice a day. We rather like it as there is life back in the sheds. Molly will love it, we can’t wait to show her.

A busy week ahead, 4 markets in a row and a local Christmas fair on Saturday. Please come and see us – Wallingford on Tuesday, Woodley on Wednesday, Oxford on Thursday and Abingdon on Friday.

More soon

Camilla, Roly, Molly, Boris and Belle