According to the BBC Weather page for our area this morning, it looks like we may be getting the first sub-zero temperatures at night this coming weekend! We’ve particularly enjoyed watching the onset of autumn with the associated array of colours but we can’t ignore this sign that winter is coming.
First frost perhaps?
Even after 5 months, we still find ourselves caught up in the excitement of finally completing the purchase and move to our new property. I’m sure this will fade with time but I’d like to remember the feeling for as long as possible so that we appreciate our good fortune (and hard work).
I’m still making a conscious effort to update the blog or keep taking notes for future reference though because, with so many new experiences in such a short space of time, there is no way I will be able to remember everything from one year to the next!
We’ve already sorted out the most important winter preparations – coal delivered, wood delivered and stacked, oil tank filled etc. – but even these fairly basic tasks were all new to us. We’re only used to the mains gas supply that we had in our previous, suburban house with no need to ensure that we have enough supplies in stock. One remaining task is to ensure that the spring water supply is properly protected to prevent it freezing if we get a really cold spell.
There are still so many first time experiences to come and a great many unknowns ahead of us but that is all part of the adventure. One thing is almost certain though – I’m sure we will find ourselves regretting the recent enthusiasm for the coming winter by the time the cold North Pennine weather really sets in.
As we get closer to their departure it’s a good idea to keep track of their progress more closely. We may not be able to change much this time around but it should be useful reference information for the future.
The 24 week weigh-in
The usual calculation has been repeated but this time I took measurements a number of the times over the weekend to give an average figure.
Twirly
Heart Girth (measuring around the body just behind the front legs) = 0.89 m
Length (measured from between the ears to the base of the tail) = 0.97 m
This means that the approximate weight is: (0.89 ² x 0.97 x 69.3) = 53.25 kg
No Tail
Heart Girth (measuring around the body just behind the front legs) = 0.94 m
Length (measured from between the ears to the base of the tail) = 1.03 m
This means that the approximate weight is: (0.94 ² x 1.03 x 69.3) = 63.07 kg
Conclusion
It seems that No Tail is still growing faster than Twirly despite living in the same environment and being fed twice a day with the same feed. We were told that they are not directly related, at best cousins, so there might be some difference resulting from the family tree perhaps.
With just 5 weeks to go, the reality of the situation is becoming all too clear. There are many things to get organised in advance but at least the abattoir is booked. Next on our list of jobs is picking up our shiny new trailer (hopefully in a week or two) and preparing the cutting list for the butcher.
We plan to try making our own sausages and curing bacon but the rest is headed straight for the freezer with a roasting joint top of the list for the oven!
While constructing the new improved facilities on Chicken Lane, it seemed to be a fairly simple task to give them some additional shelter by moving a rusty old pig ark from an adjacent field. How hard could it be I thought?
The answer is – very hard! – especially when there are just two people and they’re not entirely sure what they are doing.
Luckily the old ark was already upside down under a large sycamore so, after clearing out the debris from years of neglect, it still proved to be too heavy for two people to lift over the stock fencing.
No problem I thought, bring out the quad bike and drag it round through the gate. The quad is acting up a little but it eventually started (must get that starter/battery fixed!). We quickly managed to drag the ark out of the field behind the quad and made it two-thirds of the way before we reached a narrower point in the path.
Fence post rollers
From here it wouldn’t have been wise to drag using the quad without risking damage to either the stock fencing or the main chicken house.
We would have to resort to pushing/pulling but that didn’t look promising with our limited combined strength and the restricted space to work in.
Luckily a flash of inspiration struck at this point and I finally found a use for the useless facts from school about the Egyptians building the pyramids.
Our spare fencing posts would make great rollers and the ark could be simply rolled up the hill into place.
This would make everything easier to handle and with luck would reduce the risk of any further damage to the rusty hulk as a result of our manhandling.
Not quite as simple as described but was still a huge success and the move was completed with no further problems! We can now put chicken feed under cover through the winter and it gives the chickens somewhere to shelter from the elements if needed.
Once the ark was in place we were able to complete the remaining fencing work so that we could have a greater element of control over their coming and going!
It has been quite frustrating for us having to spend so much time finding out where the hens go to lay their eggs – for some reason it isn’t often in the nest boxes that are provided.
On the first occasion when we found a hen sitting on some eggs in the woods, we were quite interested to see what would happen. We didn’t know what the previous owners used to do in that situation so we just left her to it and watched over her from afar.
In retrospect perhaps this decision was the start of our problems but since that time two more hens have hatched some chicks – one batch of 5 and one batch of 7.
No eggs in the nest box
No amount of regular cleaning, dusting with red mite powder, fresh straw and even the use of china fake eggs seems to make much difference. Most of the hens are just not interested in those nest boxes although we do occasionally get a token egg or two.
I’m starting to wonder whether our hens can hold their eggs in until we aren’t looking before popping them all out in one go somewhere in the woods as soon as one of them decides to sit on a batch.
For the moment we are getting relatively few eggs with no idea why but we are able to check them all in at night so at least none of them are sneaking off to a hidden clutch of eggs somewhere else!
The current dilemma
Mother and 7 growing chicks
It was entertaining the first few times to follow the development from hens sitting on eggs through to hatching.
It’s one thing understanding what will happen but quite another thing when you actually see it unfold before you.
After that the big surprise was the speed at which the new chicks grow. It doesn’t take that long before you have difficulty telling the chicks from the grown ups!
However eventually it slowly dawned on me that there are two inevitable outcomes for us once the chicks have all hatched and grown:
There will be a lot more chickens in need of housing
At least 50% of the new chickens will be male
The first problem is relatively easily solved while we still have a little money left in the bank. As a treat for us and the chickens, we splashed out on a new chicken house from Steve Fisher Woodworking who are just down in North Yorkshire.
After some initial concerns over damage on arrival and an error during manufacture which stumped me for a while, some excellent customer support (and prompt delivery of replacements meant that the assembly was soon completed. Just in time in my opinion as the newer chicks were growing fast and the existing housing was starting to bulge at the seams!
Chicken Lane – almost complete
I am also hoping that providing a shiny new house with brand new nest boxes will help the hens see the error of their ways and they will start leaving their eggs in the preferred location.
Introducing a fence round their housing is another trial to see if we can encourage egg laying in the nest boxes by containing them for the first part of each day. It’s worth a try and putting it up was relatively easy given that we’re only trying to keep them in for a few hours. It must be much harder putting up something strong enough to deal with a more serious problem like keeping out predators!
The second problem with the excess of male chickens is still not completely resolved but there are two obvious solutions. We can either find new homes for the unwanted cockerels or learn a new skill – how to “dispatch” a chicken.
It seems that re-homing them is not a simple task because there are always lots of spare cockerels and it many cases you can’t even give them away.
This means that we’re left with the difficult but necessary task of dispatching and processing our unwanted cockerels – something I’ve not done before but it’s all part of the experience I suppose.
I’m off now to build up some badly needed will power before I do the deed – luckily the two chicks that hatched from the first batch turned out to be one male and one female so I have my first “volunteer” at some point near the end of October or early November!
A few more weeks further down the line and it’s time for yet another Pig check point!
The 22 week weigh-in
The same calculation will be repeated but after the slightly surprising result last time it is becoming more obvious that one pig is noticeably heavier than the other.
Twirly
Heart Girth (measuring around the body just behind the front legs) = 0.85 m
Length (measured from between the ears to the base of the tail) = 0.95 m
This means that the approximate weight is: (0.86 ² x 0.95 x 69.3) = 48.7 kg
No Tail
Heart Girth (measuring around the body just behind the front legs) = 0.9m
Length (measured from between the ears to the base of the tail) = 1.0 m
This means that the approximate weight is: (0.9 ² x 1.0 x 69.3) = 56.1 kg
Conclusion
As time goes by I can feel that, despite my best efforts, there is a definite sense of attachment growing. However I’m doing my best to get past that and there will be no change to our original rule that the pigs are only here until November. Besides we’ve already ordered our shiny new livestock trailer so we can take them to the abattoir – which reminds me, that needs to be booked in advance so I mustn’t forget to do that.
The gap between the two is now clearly noticeable when you see them together but they get fed at the same time and there are no obvious signs of bullying while they eat? Perhaps the one with a tail is just less efficient when it comes to rooting out extra food while foraging in their woods?
We will no doubt need to keep an eye on this and possibly adjust the feeding level for the final couple of months to avoid the larger one putting on any extra weight. Hopefully it won’t matter too much if they are slightly different weights but I’d definitely rather not have one too fat and one too thin!
It didn’t take long after moving in for us to realise that having such a large expanse of lawn would be far too time-consuming every week even with the industrial grade petrol mower we bought. We could have just bought a ride-on mower and tackled the problem in that way but I preferred an alternate approach particularly as we had no need for so much lawn.
My approach was that if the grass takes too long to cut and we don’t use that area anyway then it makes sense to use that space for extra vegetable growing space. This is especially relevant as I had very quickly filled up the existing vegetable bed soon after we moved here!
General plan
After considering some different layouts and even briefly considering the idea of a parterre with fancy box hedging, I soon realised that this would involve almost as much work as the lawn which defeated some of the object! In the end I decided to be more practical and common sense prevailed – the final layout I devised was this:
Final veg bed layout
Materials so far
Some lengths of 6″ x 2″ timber from the local timber merchants
Some 2 ft long, 2″ x 2″ corner posts to hold the beds together.
Unwanted cardboard boxes left over from the move
A few “dumpy” bags of compost (but I won’t recommend buy that again due to the poor quality)
Progress so far
This was never going to be a rush project as I only expected to use these for the first time next spring. However by the time I had some of them in place and filled with compost/soil it seemed a shame to waste the growing space.
The initial layout was an exercise in careful measuring and placing stakes. A layer of cardboard covered with grass cuttings and compost hopefully kills off the existing growth and acts as a good mulch base. This allowed me to visualise some of the layout before cutting any boards to length incase I decided the sizes weren’t working for me.
Step 1 – Cardboard, grass cuttings and compost
At first this didn’t look too promising to my untrained eye but after adding the boards around the edges including some old sleepers from elsewhere in the garden the first few came together quite nicely.
Step 2 – Edge boards and top soil
A Work In Progress
There are now 4 of the 7 raised beds in place and I couldn’t resist the temptation to plant something.
I’ve not used green manure before so I planted two beds with different varieties to try that out. Also a late sowing of carrots, onions and beetroot seemed like a good idea at the time but the weather has since become a lot more autumnal so I don’t expect much from that.
While waiting to see what if anything will germinate, I covered half of that bed with a clear plastic tunnel and the other half with some bubble wrap. It would have been interesting to see if there was a difference in the results between the two materials.
Unfortunately after I removed the covering temporarily on a day when the weather had picked up a bit, the chickens discovered the joys of scratching and dust bathing in the loose soil when I wasn’t looking.
I don’t expect much to survive now other than the few rows which I covered over again with the plastic cloche but you never know! The green manure may never recover but I can always try that next year.
Partially protected carrots, onions, beetroot
Luckily I learnt my lesson from this episode and the next batch of sowing – garlic and overwintering onion sets – were planted last weekend behind a temporary 4 ft high fence
Garlic and onion behind a security fence
Some hard lessons learned but once I get the rest of the raised beds finished with luck all this effort will pay off in the spring when I can get much more in the ground that I did this year!
Four weeks on from the previous pig measurement session seems like a good time to check on the progress of our two Tamworth weaners.
By doing this it also brings home that they will not be with us for too much longer if we meet the planned schedule for taking them to slaughter in early/mid November at about 26 weeks.
In 2 months or less there will be no more tramping off to the woods twice a day with a bucket of pig feed which will be good. However it also means that one of the best bits about having them – the “pig watching” moments – will also come to an end.
To distract myself from any melancholy feelings, I’m focusing on the great meat they will provide us, the sausages and bacon we can make and I’m also thinking about the next 2 or 3 weaners we plan to get in spring next year.
Our resolve to raise our own animals for meat will have been tested for the first time and hopefully we will have risen to the challenge
The 19 week weigh-in
The same calculation for pig weight from metric measurements applies and I’ve included it below for easy reference::
Heart Girth ² x Length x 69.3
This time I decided to measure up each pig separately as they’re getting that much older but as we have not given either of them specific “pet” names I’ll resort to temporary names based on their physical appearance – Twirly and No Tail – although the difference is not visible in the picture above
Twirly
Heart Girth (measuring around the body just behind the front legs) = 0.78 m
Length (measured from between the ears to the base of the tail) = 0.96 m
This means that the approximate weight is: (0.78 ² x 0.96 x 69.3) = 40.48 kg
No Tail
Heart Girth (measuring around the body just behind the front legs) = 0.81 m
Length (measured from between the ears to the base of the tail) = 0.94 m
This means that the approximate weight is: (0.81 ² x 0.94 x 69.3) = 42.7 kg
Conclusion
Rather unexpectedly, the “Twirly” pig is slightly behind the other despite apparently being slightly larger when we first got them. However, allowing for discrepancies as a result of my measuring skills, the difference is negligible particularly since this is only a rough estimate to monitor progress.
Although I have no past experience to go by, I’m still hoping that they will be around 60-65kg by the time they go to slaughter if all goes to plan. We’ve supplemented their food from time to time with the occasional cabbage (including juicy caterpillars) and reduced their pig feed ration a little to compensate particularly as they have such a wonderful spot in the woods to root around in.
It’s possible that our inexperience means we’ve over estimated the reduction in feed and they’re certainly keen to get their food each meal time but they don’t look or feel malnourished and I can vouch for their weight as they often stand on my toes when I’m feeding them!
The two rhubarb crowns I bought and planted in pots at the start of the year are looking really good now so I thought it’s a good time to post a general update on their progress.
They had to go into pots at the time because we knew we would eventually move house even though we hadn’t actually sold at that point. We knew it was inevitable though and that was the easiest way to bring them with us.
At first I wasn’t sure that they were both going to make it because after a few months only the Stockbridge Arrow had shown any decent growth. The Champagne variety was more of a disappointment to say the least with no signs of life for a couple of months but I held my nerve and eventually they both started to come good.
Now I think I need to make plans for planting them out somewhere in the garden because the pots were never intended to be their permanent home. They are fairly thirsty and easily dry out in the pots with those large leaves keeping the rain off.
I also had a brief scare when they almost went into reverse at one point but I think they just needed some more nutrients as they had exhausted the supply in the pots! They are fairly large pots but it seems that rhubarb can be greedy and I need to keep an eye on this in future.
Stockbridge Arrow and Champagne rhubarb
So this is how they look now and they don’t seem to have suffered at all in the move from the seaside to our new place in the North Pennines. There has been no harvesting for this first year as instructed by every reputable rhubarb source. Next year they may not be so lucky though as I’m looking forward to trying some and I’m keen to compare the taste of the two varieties.
I just need to find the right time to move them from the pots to a longer term home but I have no idea when that might be!
The two Tamworth weaners arrived on 20 July so they’ve only been here for just over 4 weeks now but to me it seems longer. The twice daily feeds are hugely entertaining and they look to be having a wonderful time in the woods.
One thing I’ve certainly been surprised by is their impressive turn of speed on the rare occasions that I manage to quietly sneak up on them before rattling the food bucket. Maybe I should start running regular piglet racing events in the North Pennines?
They were born around 1 May so they are around 15 weeks old or if all goes well just over half way there according to the information I’ve read.
They will be going off to slaughter at about 26 weeks of age but this is only a rough guide and working out the weight helps clarify this as I’m aiming for around 60-65kg if all goes to plan.
The first weigh-in
Engrossed in their breakfast
According to a range of sources the calculation for weight from measurements using metric units goes something like this:
Heart Girth ² x Length x 69.3
Now that they are more comfortable around humans it is possible to think about measuring them to gauge their progress. Distracting them with their breakfast also helps to keep them occupied and there were none of the problems I’d expected.
The “Heart Girth” (measuring around the body just behind the front legs) was about 71 cm which is 0.71 metres (because this calculation uses metres).
The length was roughly 85 cm (measured from between the ears to the base of the tail) which is 0.85 metres
So using the approximate measurements I’ve taken on the larger of the two pigs I get this:
Heart Girth = 0.71 x 0.71 = 0.5041
Girth Result * Length = 0.5041 * 0.85 = 0.428485
Approximate weight = 0.428485 * 69.3 = 29.69 kg
However I noticed in the Haynes Pig Manual (by Liz Shankland – http://www.biggingerpigs.com/) that a small deduction should be made for Tamworths because “they don’t have much of a rear end”.
According to this calculation the larger pig weighs somewhere between 25-30kg so perhaps a little behind schedule for their age. However I’m aware that the slower growing rare breeds like Tamworths can easily put on a little fat if you’re not careful so I’m happy with the general progress and will only increase their feed a bit at a time.
The plan is to take them off to the abattoir around the beginning of November which is about 11 – 12 weeks from now and by then they will be 26 weeks or just a little over. A second weigh-in at the end of September will give a better idea of how they are doing though.
Their handiwork
All the predictions about the rooting capabilities are proving right so it’s lucky that they are in some well-established woodland which can take the beating…
Great for clearing willowherb
They were particularly fond of something which was growing among a patch of nettles but I can’t name that plant because they ate it all very quickly! Luckily the dry stone wall is very solidly built and has probably stood for many years so they’ll have to work hard to knock it down!
I thought it was probably time for a general update on all the chicks that have hatched in the first few months that we have been in the new house. There was no master plan for us to raise lots of chickens when we moved here, just keep some for eggs for us and other family members.
After asking around on Twitter about the flock we inherited from the previous owners I think they are White Leghorn and a quick check on Wikipedia (the source of ALL knowledge obviously) I find the conclusive evidence in the statement:
Leghorns are active and efficient foragers. They typically avoid human contact and tend to be nervous and flighty
I couldn’t have described them any better but plans are now in hand to deal with the wayward laying of eggs by enclosing the main chicken area so we have more control over when they disappear into the woods and thus hopefully where they lay their eggs.
Luckily I can’t bring myself to think about getting rid of the cockerel and he does a good job of keeping the girls in line so he gets a reprieve… for now at least.
Chicks #1
The two chicks that hatched around 22/23 June were our first batch and I’m not sure why the other 4 or 5 eggs didn’t hatch as well. These two are looking very healthy and I assume that as they are now 8 weeks of age they are almost ready to be independent of their mother.
The first batch of chicks
Chicks #2
The next batch of chicks just turned up quite unexpectedly 1st August when I went to shut the chickens up for the night. The mother hen was sitting on the steps of the chicken coop and when I tried to scoot her inside she stood up to reveal that she apparently had 8 pairs of feet.
Larger second batch of chicks
Chicks #3
The most recent batch appeared quite unexpectedly in the woods at the end of the chicken area around 12 August and unfortunately there were a few deaths early on. This was probably because the mother hen doesn’t seem to have any sense and wanted to keep to herself in the woods instead of using the accommodation provided by us. We are down to just 5 chicks from the original 7 or 8 that originally hatched but those that have survived this far are doing well now.
