2 minute read
Farming
Happy New Year from Farmer Luxton
Happy new year everyone. I hope you had a lovely festive period with friends and family. After Covid it was lovely to have returned to normal. It seems odd as I’m writing this in early December, Christmas is not yet done, but it will be a distant memory by the time you read it.
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On the farm it’s a quietish time of year. The sheep are off the moor for tupping, there is no lambing or calving going on. We have a daily routine of feeding, bedding and checking animals.
You may remember me telling you that I had purchased a small pedigree flock to breed some rams for my own use. We fertility test all of our bulls every year, our own stock bulls and all those that we sell. I’ve never tested a ram. Normally we ram ewes in large bunches. The recommendation is one ram per 50 ewes, we always put one ram in with every 40, that way if one ram isn’t doing his job properly there is a little slack in the system and his mates will help with the workload!
As my three posh ewes were only going to see the one £1200 ram I thought I had better get him tested to avoid failures in the form of expensive ewes not being pregnant. Believe it or not the ram was not fertile and was never going to be. The farmer I purchased him from agreed a refund, then two days later the ram died. I’m not yet sure if I was lucky or unlucky, but it didn’t change the fact that I wanted superior genetics and now had none. We have since found an older proven ram for my special ladies. Next time I write there should be results from the pregnancy scanning.
I wonder what the weather holds for us over the winter? Part of me hopes for a nice cold spell, mud sets like concrete so you can travel around the farm with a tractor again without making a mess. It is also healthier for the animals, the cold kills parasites and worms. Believe it or not pneumonia is much less common when its cold and dry. The only problem with the cold is that all the water freezes so the animals can’t drink. Sometimes we can spend half the day trying to defrost water pipes.
At the shop things have been very busy for it seems like forever. We felt the summer was good but the autumn would be tricky before a good Christmas. How wrong we were, the autumn was busier than the summer. We started a Sunday carvery in October that has just gone from strength to strength. If you want to come now we definitely advise booking. Its been so busy I haven’t got round to organising our staff Christmas party. Hopefully that will be in January, but if this keeps going it will be February!!!!
Bye for now, spring will soon be here.
Stuart Luxton
