Well Done Boys

We had our sheep scanned on monday, a good day weatherwise since it rained on sunday and tuesday and indeed on monday afternoon, but the morning was sunny.
The tups had done good work as of the 150 ewes, only 4 are not in lamb and they will be off to market as soon as can be arranged. Of the rest we have 3 sets of triplets, 70 twins and 73 singles. One of the singles is due in 3 to 4 weeks time, the rest in April. The early bird is because she was in with the tups last summer due to a wound that needed lots of attention from us, having her here at home meant we could get hold of her on a regular basis to treat her. Anyway she will have to come home again soon and live with the calves so we can keep an eye on her, as its still too cold for her to lamb outside.

This is my oldest(14) who has just had his "twin blocks" changed for a fixed brace. He is somewhat daunted by the long list of dos and don'ts and the cleaning instructions and at 2.30 this morning he was a very sad boy as the discomfort of his teeth starting to move had woken him up and was stopping him getting back to sleep. His Daddy fixed him up with some paracetamol and sleep was resumed.
I sent him off to school with another paracetamol for lunchtime, and a note excusing him from PE for today. The Dentist said that it will settle down in a couple of days and become the new normal.

Our local National Trust House is doing some tree felling, mostly round the carparks but also this one from on top of the mound alongside their moat.

I am very sad to see it go as all my children used to play under it and run/jump/slide up and down the mound. I'm not sure why they are removing it,possibly a combination of health and safety and fears that the roots are causing damage to anything beneath it.
Anyway we will be having all the wood, bar some for the Hall itself which we will be storing for them.

I forsee lots of time with the woodsplitter in my future.

All Change at the Library

Its going to be all change at our local Library, they are closing on the 15th Feb for three weeks for"refurbishment"

According to the Librarians this includes going "self service". Im not sure what this will entail but it doesnt sound like good employment news for the librarians.

The closure will cover school half term, which is inconvenient as I usually take the tribe down there for some book choosing and a bit of them begging for me to borrow DVD's, Wii games or Dsi games for them to play with. Its actually a good way of trying out games without committing to buying them. From previous experience something that sounds good ends up causing so much strife that I confiscate it. There is a small charge to borrow media items, usually less than £2 for a week.

The good thing about the closure at the library is that we can take books and media items out and keep them for the whole three weeks whilst only being charged for one week.

We have stocked up, for the children we have Lego Starwars for the Wii and Mariokart for the Dsi, also the new video of The A Team, we have a selection of the original ones so I hope they like this, I'm sure the special effects will be better.

For the grown ups I have the first series of True Blood, I have read all the books and love them and I watched most of the TV series but will enjoy filling in the gaps. Also the US series Justified starring Timothy Olyphant. I started watching this when it showed on TV but it was on late at night and I kept forgetting it.

I could get these out any time but 7 days is not long enough to watch 13 episodes so I dont bother, I have these till the 12th march.

Best thing is that all this cost about £7.

Good value and I will wait and see how the "refurbishment" turns out.

Some Days You Win, Others Not So Much.

Our Dairy Herd is regularly tested for TB, this involves the vet injecting each animal with a tiny amount of both Avian and Bovine TB, then checking 72 hours later to see if there has been any reaction and if so to what. Its OK if you get a lump at each site, or if you just get an avian lump, but bad news if you just get a lump at the bovine site. The animal is then a "reactor" and taken away to be destroyed, the whole herd is put under restrictions, which means you cant sell any animals, and you start a retesting programme that lasts for 2 years.
Yesterday we finished our testing programme, with the 12 month interval test, We passed, or at least the cows did and we can now go back on the regular testing schedule which for our area is 24 monthly.
I couldnt tell anyone we were being tested just in case it jinxed it.

These are the bottles of the stuff they inject the cows with, 50 x 1ml dose, mind you the fuss some of the cows make you would think we were cutting their heads off. The Vet clips some hair off at the 2 sites on the neck and jabs them, we have to put every cow on the place through the crush, from the oldest to the youngest, new calved to those on maternity leave, even though its a bit of a squeeze for some of them.
For our milking herd of 65 cows plus followers it takes 3 to 4 hours, checking them doesnt take as long though its more stressful for us.
I dont understand why they cant develop a vaccine against TB in cattle, surely it would be more cost effective than testing and destroying thousands of cows each year, the scientists keep talking about a vaccine for Badgers, which we would have to trap and are not exactly easy to handle, apart from the whole issue of them being protected. We already vaccinate the cows for several diseases so one more wouldnt be a problem.


After the good news about the TB testing yesterday, this morning I got a phone call from our Milk Buyer, telling us we are going to be fined for over production!!!!!!
Apparently we produced 50% more than we had predicted in January, and we are only allowed an error margin of 20%, so we are fined 5ppl on the extra 30%.
I think its more that we under estimated than over produced, but now we are in the crazy position of slowing the cows down by cutting their cake ration, only slightly as otherwise we could have fertility problems. We cant adjust our prediction for February so must try to minimise the damage, we have redone the prediction for march.

The 3 sheep are getting used to being in the garden, I'm a bit fed up with sweeping sheep pooh off the path, and they will have to go before the daffodils come up.

Looks Like Starbug

We have been having problems with the tank washer, which automatically cleans the bulk milk tank when it has been emptied. Its one of those machines that always seems to go wrong, water, pcb, iodine and steam add an electrical supply and you have breakdowns and malfunctions.
Anyway the latest manifestation was the pumps failing, of which there are two and this is one of them. After a very frustrating couple of weeks, during which Richard has been cleaning the tank by hand, we have two new pumps and new fuses, fortunately the little electronic brain seems to have survived to think another day.
Richard tells me that these pumps always remind him of Starbug from Red Dwarf, the little space ship they use to fly around outside the mining ship. Now he has told me it's all I can see when I look at this.

More sheep, well really its less sheep, these are the last 3 boy lambs from last year, we decided to sell the rest as store lambs, for someone else to fatten up, it would take us ages to get them ready for slaughter and we can do without all the extra cost involved in giving them extra feed. Next year we will sow some stubble turnips as winter feed, although several neighbours who have done that for this winter have lost most of them with the very low temperatures, they can't cope with minus 13 c.

These last 3 sheep have sore feet and so will go into the small paddock, when they are better we might sell them or just keep them for the freezer.

They are in the garden at the moment, with a notice on the gate reminding people to keep the gate closed.

Life Skills

I'm wondering when is a good age to teach my children how to change the sheets and duvet covers on their beds.
I started doing mine when I went away to boarding school at 11, we were issued with a clean sheet and pillow case every week or so and told to put "top to the bottom and bottom to the laundry". We also made our beds every morning and those who had never done it before learnt pretty quickly.

My children are 14, 12 and 9, and whilst the 9 year old would probably struggle to change duvet covers and the sheet, she should be able to manage the pillowcase, and the other two with a bit of tuition should be OK.
I realise that it may be hard for them and make their arms ache a bit but I dont think it's unreasonable. Generally I dont ask them to do much in the way of housework, a bit of bedroom tidying and setting the table for meals, also putting stuff in the dishwasher.
Part of me feels that it is my job and since I dont work off the farm I do have the time to do it, but on the other hand these are life skills, like tying laces and telling the time,and since I do intend for them to leave home eventually they should learn them.

I think the time is now, I will proceed with a plan to offload all the things I hate most, hoovering, changing beds, sewing on nametapes and buttons. The children might leave sooner than planned.

Who Needs TV

Our oven died just before christmas, inconvenient but no great loss, I still had the Rayburn to cook with and the old oven was one that we bought for £40 about 8 years ago.
Anyway we ordered a new oven, after consulting Which, the consumer report people, and it arrived last week. It is so shiney and new I am almost afraid to use it, but I forced myself.
This is sunday where I turned some leftover pizza dough into something pizza-ey for lunch, it had bits of blue cheese as well as cheddar on top and the children were facsinated by the different ways the cheeses behaved when heated, the fact that this oven has a light that works just made the whole thing better.
They stayed there for ages and I had to kick them out of the way to get the food out of the oven. As entertainment its not quite as good as reruns of Top Gear but its way better than CBBC.

Sorry about the carpy photo, I cant remember how to do macro on my camera.
This is a cows tooth, its about an inch square in size and we found it balanced on the edge of a water trough in the cowshed.
We find about 2 or 3 a year, mostly outside, which is amazing considering how relativly small they are. The children suggested that the cow had carefully placed the tooth hoping for a visit from the tooth fairy, if so she was disappointed as after a wash and brush up the tooth has gone into school for show and tell.

Good Deed for the Day

I went to give blood this evening, I've been donating blood since I was 19 and am up to 45 units now, which considering time out for 3 pregnancies is not bad.
I do it because its the right thing to do, it doesnt hurt or cost me anything other than time, and I used to come away with a nice glow of righteousness at having done a good thing for society as a whole. I have O rh negative blood which is the universal doner, means that in a crisis they can put it into anyone and it wont cause a problem, so I have always thought it even more important to give blood.
My spouse works in a fairly high risk industry as regards accidents, and I wont let him give blood as at 6'4" and only 11stone he has nothing to spare.

As time passes I find the whole rigmarole of giving blood more and more irritating, I hate the questions that they ask each time, I feel I am being asked to justify being there, now they tell you to drink a large glass of water before you donate, and if you say you have already had a drink at home they seem to think you are lying to them.
Occasionally I have cancelled an appointment because I was ill or was pregnant, OMG you'd think I was trying to get out of paying income tax, Its none of their business why I cant make it, they behave as if they are doing me a favour.
I come back all cross and angry with them and feeling that I wont go again, so far it has worn off by the time 4 months is up.
One of these days it wont wear off and I wont go back.
I reasise that I have a problem with people telling me what to do and hopefully I am the only one who feels like this, otherwise our brilliant system of freely donated blood will fall apart.

I should have called this "rant for the day"