Lambing at Ruthven

Mid April to early May is the main lambing season at Ruthven. 750 sheep each give birth to one, two or sometimes 3 and very occasionally 4 lambs! All in the space of just over 3 weeks. So it is a pretty hectic time for us all. This year with the Covid lockdown we actually benefitted by having both daughters at home rather than at school or college so it really was a family effort. The weather was kind, (which helps both the sheep and the shepherd!) and the grass grew, so all in all it has been a very successful season.

Blackface ewe with very new lambs

Cheviot ewe with blue texel cross lambs

This mule has her hands full with 3!

We don’t turn many ewes out with 3 lambs to rear as we feel it is a bit hard on the ewe, who only has two teats so is only designed to rear 2. In most cases the third lamb is lifted off and fostered onto another ewe or bottle reared.

Poppy had 3 as well but reared 2…

…and look what a grand job she is doing!

Curly the Icelandic with her twins

This Shetland ewe with her Ryeland cross lambs is enjoying some shade

Blackie the Icelandic and her twins getting blown about!

But although the weather was good for the main part of lambing, we didn’t get away without snow completely – the next photo was taken on 10th May!

Bluefaced Leicester in snow

Lambs playing despite the chilly weather

This is “Stompy” – one of the mules who won a lot of prizes as a ewe lambs at the shows last summer, now with a lamb of her own.

The early born Suffolk lambs are now huge!

Sheep are inquisitive creatures…..

… and Maisy is not impressed!

Meg and Maisy ready for a ride on the quadbike

Now all the lambs are born, we have to work hard to keep them healthy and growing well. From late May onwards they are checked in the fields daily. When they are 4 weeks old they are vaccinated against Clostridial diseases, as the immunity they gained from their mothers milk is wearing off by then. From late May onwards they are regularly dosed with wormer and are given a topical treatment to repel flies and ticks.

Ewes and lambs coming in for dosing

Of course it’s not just sheep on the farm here – we are proud of the work we do to encourage wildlife by enhancing habitats , so it is lovely to hear the waders calling – snipe, peewits, oystercatchers, curlews, along with the skylarks singing on the hill.

Peewit numbers are good this year

Mother duck and her brood on one of our ponds

Roe deer

As I write this blog, things are starting to open up again after the lockdown and restrictions are gradually being lifted, so hopefully we can look forward to welcoming people back to the farm for tours before this year’s season is over. Until then we hope you all stay safe and well.

Lesley

Wild Farm: April 2020

As I write we have experienced the warmest and driest April that I can remember. For the past 2 weeks we have had frosty mornings and bright sunny days, ‘shorts weather’ for me! Primroses are in flower, often found on south facing wooded slopes where there is not much grazing. These warm comfortable environments are perfect for this pretty yellow flower.

First Primroses on Wild Farm

Primroses are often in less grazed areas, here beside the River A’an

I just hope this is not our summer, because with the Covid 19 lockdown still in place it would be a cruel world if once restrictions are relaxed there was no more sun to enjoy.

As a farmer the weather is never ‘quite right’ and I have to say it is pretty dry. Discing, harrowing, seeding and rolling fields for barley has been a dusty process and now the seed is in the ground we do really need rain to get the growing process underway.  We are not arable farmers with acres of barley, we use it as a ‘break crop’ between reseeding with grass seed.  The barley then gets used as feed for the animals over the winter.

A dry sunny month like this is brilliant for outside lambing and all of our young born ( Soay lambs, belted Galloway calves and wild boar piglets so far )  have benefitted from the warmth on their back.  April can experience all sorts of testing weather conditions and driving rain, sleet and snow is always a killer for new born animals.

Newly born Belted Galloway calf

Our belted Galloway cattle have spent the winter, being fed silage down in fields beside the river and now that the spring calving has finished we move them onto higher ground for the summer. They know the routine and happily follow a bag of feed across the River A’an, along the road and up through birch woodland and onto the open hill. There are still quite a few calves to be born but they will be over the next few months. Although there is a warmth in the sun the grass is only just beginning to come through so we are still feeding silage for the time being.

Since mid February migrant birds have been returning to breed. Up here in the north of Scotland Lapwings ( peewits, peesies, green plovers this bird goes by many names ) are the first to arrive back in February. Flitting over the fields, pottering in the wetlands and finally finding a place to nest on the ground in April. Oystercatchers arrive next with the distinct black and white colouring long red beak and strident call ‘cleep cleep’, you generally hear them before you see them. The Curlew too have returned to breed and although mottled brown in colour their long curving beak and very obvious ‘curlew’ call is a give away.  All three species have probably found nest sites by the end of April and so leaving the fields undisturbed is always a bonus for them until the chicks hatch.

Swallows came back at the middle of the month and we have plenty of nest sites here on the farm as we leave all our doors in to the old farm buildings open so the swallows can fly in and out to their nests. And then just yesterday I heard my first cuckoo, so they are back too before the end of the month to seek out an unsuspecting nest, probably of a meadow pipit, to lay eggs and leave the incubating, hatching and feeding to this much smaller bird.

 So the migrating birds have returned but the rest of the glen is silent, with only tractors working fields, shepherds tending their lambs and local people going about their business. No visitors to come and stay in our local self catering cottage or indeed any local accommodation. Our farm visits, which have been so popular and bookings for this year were certainly coming in have all been cancelled. This corona virus pandemic has certainly taken its toll and when lots of marginal farm businesses have diversified away from pure farming to provide extra income from tourism this has been a huge blow to the local economy.

But across the country we are all in ‘the same boat’ and we must be patient and hopefully survive until lockdown can safely be lifted, a vaccine is developed and we can get back to our normal lives.

Tilly

Spring at Ruthven Farm

I write this in very strange times – the world is a very different place just now due to coronavirus. But work goes on as near to normal as possible on all farms across the country, and ours is no different. At this time of year it is all about feeding sheep and getting ready for the imminent lambing season.

Ewes on the hill waiting for their breakfast

This year we bought a new piece of kit – a second hand bale unwinder – and we are impressed already by the difference it is making to sheep health. Instead of one bale of silage in a ring feeder in the middle of the fields, this machine goes on the back of the tractor, and unravels the bale as you drive along, so that it leaves a trail of silage across the field. With the old ring feeders we found that the greedy dominant ewes hung around the feeder all day, getting over fat and blocking access to the weaker less dominant ewes, who then wouldn’t get the feed they needed to maintain them and their developing lambs, and would lose too much body condition prior to lambing. With the bale unwinder every ewe gets equal chance to eat, and another bonus is that they don’t stand in mucky conditions to feed as we can change the feed site every day.

Bale unwinder in action

Silage laid out so every ewe can get access to eat

On a day like this they are glad to see food!

Fine job on a nice day!

Snow doesn’t seem to bother this Icelandic ewe…

But Ruby the Ryeland finds it a bit of a nuisance!

We are all set for the main lambing starting in a few days. Ewes have been vaccinated (against clostridial diseases, so that they provide immunity to the lambs via the first milk, or “colostrum”), they have been wormed (to stop a rise in worm burden on the pasture post-lambing), and split into their groups according to how many lambs they are carrying ( they were scanned in February), and when they are due to lamb (we can tell this by the colour of crayon left by the tup’s raddle on their rear ends).

See the different raddle colur marks on the ewes rear ends

While all this was going on we were also busy lambing the pedigree sheep – they lamb from February onwards, so the lambs are bigger for selling or showing. First lamb of 2020 was this Suffolk lamb on 15th February.

First lamb born…

…and look at him now!

The Ryelands have all lambed, and for the first time we had two coloured lambs (change of genetics with a new tup which obviously carries some coloured genes!) And the bluefaced leicesters have been very busy – with several sets of triplets and two sets of quads!

Ryeland with coloured lamb - her other lamb was white

Blackface with mule lamb - we lamb a few of these early hoping that some of the lambs will be suitable for showing

Cheeky Suffolk lamb

Lamb creche....in the hay feeder.

Ryeland lamb

Spring is well and truly here now, and the farm echoes to the beautiful sound of visiting birds – oystercatchers , lapwings, curlews, redshank, snipe, golden plover, skylarks can all be seen and especially heard.

Oystercatcher

And in the ponds, the frogs and toads have been extremely busy…

Good morning!

Lots of spawn

We hope that you all stay safe in these difficult times and we are able to welcome visitors to the farm later in the year.

And to finish – the all-important canine team!

February 2020 at Wild Farm

Snowdrops (appropriately) in snow.

There is not a more welcome sight in winter than the first growth of the year, which for us in the far north has to be Snowdrops. We have a few plants at the front of the house,

Flour Power.

One aspect of our farming business that we are particularly proud of is the fact that we are able to grow a lot of the feed that we give the animals or source it locally. Just one way to reduce our carbon footprint and reduce food miles of the meat we sell.

The cattle and deer eat silage, hay and barley that we grow ourselves. The deer are also fed draff and dark grains. Both these products come from the whisky distilling industry and living in the midst of whisky distilleries it is an obvious feed for us to buy.

There is a third product which also comes from the distilling process and this is the ‘flour’. As its name suggests it is very light and powdery ( almost like talcum powder ) and is a by product of the malted barley. Every week we go down to the Tomintoul Distillery, which is just ½ mile away, collect ‘the flour’ and give it to our pigs.

I say ‘give it’ to our pigs because not only do they eat it, but they love using it as a dust bath as you will see in the series of photos below.

In their element.

During the winter when we are trying to get round all the farm animals to make sure they are well fed, the one animal that doesn’t need that same daily tendering are the reindeer. 

From January through till April the reindeer who stay at Wild Farm are free ranging on the Cromdale hills. It doesn’t matter to them whether it is storm Ciara, Dennis or indeed Jorge, they will stay high up, as they are able to withstand any Scottish weather that is thrown at them, whether it be snow, rain, high winds or hard frost.  They are completely insulated against the ravages of winter

But they always welcome an extra bite to eat and so when we are free of our normal farm feed round we head to the Cromdales on the ATV or skis to give them some food. Reindeer do not rely on this, but they never say no! Their main winter diet is lichen, which grows under the snow, even though sunlight is excluded. They will also eat dead grasses and sedges and heather from the previous summer. Most importantly they have a lower metabolic rate in the winter which is basically means they ‘tick over’ more slowly, have a reduced appetite and do lots of resting and sleeping.

So once fed they are ready for a long lie down and snooze!

Spot the difference!

At the moment the soay rams and ram lambs ( born 2019 ) are kept away from the main flock, close to the main farm.  Taking them away from the breeding ewes after the tupping helps to keep a short lambing season and means we can give the tups ( who would have lost condition during the tupping ) a bit of extra food to help them through the winter. Soays can be light or dark coloured and they have symmetrical curved horns, which grow incrementally bigger with each year.

This winter we are also looking after a young Jacob ram for a friend. He is easy to spot in the group because he is bigger, multi-coloured and has 4 horns! That is not to say that all Jacobs have 4 horns, some of them only grow 2 horns. But I don’t know enough about Jacobs Sheep to know why they grow 2 or 4. You’ll need to do some research yourself!

Good old Felicity.

Poplar Felicity is our oldest breeding cow in the herd.  Born 7th June 2002, we bought her in October 2005 from a Belted Galloway sale at Wallets Mart, Castle Douglas. She was sold as an ‘in-calf heifer’ and she produced her first calf 2 months later. Since then she has produced 12 more calves, 6 heifers and 6 bulls, the most recent being last year when she had a heifer calf, coincidentally born on Felicity’s 16th Birthday! Some of Felicity’s heifer calves we kept as breeding cows, so in the herd today Felicity is also a Granny, many times over!

Being so old we were unsure if she would calve again and so a couple of months ago we asked the vet to come and PD her to find out if she was in calf again. Well guess what, she is and it’s another heifer calf she is carrying!  

So to make life a bit easier for Felicity we have kept her close to the farm with her 2019 pedigreed calf  Balcorrach Unique, so that she gets a little extra feed each day and doesn’t have to walk too far for it either! If she calves this year at 18 years old that will be a record for us.

Felicity and Unique getting spoiled

Tilly

Winter at Ruthven Farm

Happy New Year from all of us at Ruthven, 2 legged and four legged!

Winters in this part of the world can be very long – sometimes we are under snow for months on end, but this year has been relatively mild so far, with temperatures swinging between freezing and 10 degrees Celsius.

In November, tups were put in with the main flock.  Tups are put into groups of ewes at the ratio 1 tup to 40 ewes, and every day the sheep are moved around a bit in their fields to make sure all ewes that are in season are noticed by the tups. Tups are left in for 34 days – ewes come into heat every 17 days at that time of year so this gives each ewe 2 chances to be mated (sometimes they may be missed the first time or not become in-lamb from the first mating). Then the tups are taken inside and pampered  with extra food and a nice strawed pen, to help them regain body condition lost during their busy few weeks when they expended a lot of extra energy, and probably didn’t spend the time eating that they needed.  The pedigree sheep were tupped in October, so in mid-December we had them scanned to see how many lambs each ewe is carrying. The results were good, and we look forward to welcoming the first of the lambs from mid-February.

Bluefaced Leicester ewe in the crate for scanning

Rory the scanner sits in the wee compartment to the right, where he has a computer and screen. The process is much the same as in humans - he holds the ultrasound probe under the ewe’s belly and moves it around to get an image on the screen of her uterus – the difference is that he is expecting multiple foetuses as a norm! It is a stress-free and non-invasive procedure for the ewe and the information provided means that we can cater for each individual ewe’s needs during late pregnancy. Ewes are colour-marked according to what they are carrying – red for singles, green for triplets, and blank for twins as they are the most common.  Then we can easily separate the ewes into groups according to what they are carrying and feed them appropriately.  It takes a lot of calories to carry three growing lambs, maintain bodyweight and still have the reserves to produce milk to feed them after birth, but too many calories fed to a ewe carrying a single lamb result in an overfat ewe and a lamb that is too big to be born naturally. So scanning is a vital tool for the farmer.

Little and Large! Ryeland and Bluefaced Leicester ewes watching to see what's happening at scanning.

Bluefaced Leicesters at tupping time – “I wonder if there’s any food in here…..”

Yeti the Ryeland tup with his raddle harness on.

Blue faced Leicester meets Scottish Blackface!

Ryeland ewe with a heavy load!

The ewes are regularly condition scored throughout the winter, so that thin ones can be taken nearer the farm and given extra food, while fat ones are kept out on the hill where there is less food.  The main flock will be scanned in mid-February – always a nervous day as we find out what to expect from that year’s lambing! They will all be dosed for liver fluke and worms and given a booster  vaccination against clostridial diseases before lambing. The vaccination is timed so that they pass vital immunity to their lambs in the first milk – called colostrum.

Ewes coming in for body condition scoring.

Meg and Kate keeping an eye on the proceedings!

Autumn at Ruthven Farm

Autumn is one of our favourite times of year at Ruthven. Early September brings the annual ewe lamb sale at Huntly, where we sell the majority of our mule ewe lambs. It is a big day for us as it generates a large part of our annual farm income. Prior to the sale the lambs have their fleeces trimmed (along the belly and the underside of the neck) and coloured. Then they are ready for sale. 

Mule ewe lambs

Settled on the lorry and ready to go

On the morning at the mart we sort our lambs into pens depending on their quality, the top pen being expected to sell for more than the lower ones. Quality is determined by size and conformation, fleece quality, and to a lesser extent colouring of face and legs. There is a show of lambs on the morning of the sale and this year our top pen gained second prize, which we were very pleased with. Prices were down this year compared to last, but we were pleased in the end to average only £2 a head less than last year, with most of the lambs going to farmers who had bought from us last year and were pleased with how the sheep had gone on to perform.

Once the ewe lambs are away we look forward towards tupping time, which will be the start of a new farming year. The ewes are all brought into the farm and checked individually. Any with missing teeth or damaged udders will be culled from the flock.  The rest are “condition scored” – which is a method of grading how fat or thin they are. Thin ones will be kept in-bye on better grass to increase their condition. Over-fat ones will be turned out to the heather hill to lose a bit of weight and fitten up. Two weeks before tupping they all go on to good grass – a process known as “flushing”. This increases the number of eggs that the ewe ovulates and therefore produces more twins and less single births. 

Kate and Fly gather in the ewes

The main flock starts tupping in the last week of November, but for some of the pedigree groups the tups go in earlier – in October – so that these lambs are born earlier, outwith the frantic main lambing so we have more time to spend on them, and meaning the lambs are better grown when the summer show season comes round.

Tups wear a raddle harness when working – this holds a coloured crayon which marks the backside of the ewe when the tup serves her. With the smaller groups it means we can have an accurate record of service date and therefore lambing date. With the main flock we change the colour of crayon every 7 days so we can then tell come lambing time which group of ewes will be due in the first week, and which in the second week, and so on. Therefore we know which sheep need to be in the lambing fields or sheds, when.

Suffolk tup wearing a harness

We can tell the ewe at the front has been tupped from the orange mark on her rump.

THE TEAM :

This month it is the turn of Kiwi to star in the blog .

Kiwi

Kiwi is a Kelpie x collie. She is nearly 2 years old, and has lived with us since she was 7 weeks old. She is certainly a character. She has endless energy, and lives life at full speed. Kelpies are Australian sheepdogs that were originally bred to have the stamina and brains to herd sheep all day in the hot climate, with little supervision. They are known for running along on the backs of the sheep to get to where they want to be.  As Kiwi is a crossbred, she has inherited all the energy and power of the kelpie, and some of the brains and trainability of the collie, which makes her an asset to our team. (Though the handler has to be on the ball at all times!) Kiwi doesn’t have the finesse to star in our sheepdog demonstrations, but she is invaluable when moving large groups of ewes and bigger lambs. She is a good natured, friendly dog, though a little dominant towards other dogs – the team has a definite pecking order, and Kiwi likes to challenge her place occasionally! But because she is always so happy we all forgive her.

Kate and Kiwi

Kiwi as a puppy

Introducing the Wild Farm pigs

There is one group of animals on Wild Farm that need feeding everyday regardless of the season and that is the pigs. And they want to be fed as soon as you arrive at the pen!

FEED ME!!!

We keep two breeds of pigs crossing our Wild Boar sire with Tamworth/Gloucester Old Spot sows, to produce a hybrid, called an Ironage pig.

Pure wild boar

Tamworth x Gloucester Old Spot sow

The name Iron-age reflects a time in the domestication of the pig from pure wild boar to the large variety of domestic pigs we have today. Domestic pigs have long rounded backs ( for bacon ), shortened snouts, big floppy ears and high productivity ( large litters of piglets, high yields of milk, fast growing ). In contrast Wild boar are more streamline, for running through undergrowth, with long snouts, small ears and short backs. They only produce litters of 4-5 and the piglets grow more slowly.

So the Iron-age pig is a cross between the two and probably very similar to the pig kept by man during Iron-age times. The Iron-age pigs give us the benefit of higher productivity from the domestic pig but the hardiness of the wild boar.

Iron-age piglets are stripy when they are born ( the same as pure wild boar ) and for the first couple of weeks, are quite small and vulnerable, depending entirely on their mother’s milk and keeping out of harms way from the bigger adult pigs.

Newborn piglets

But the promise of extra food soon gets the better of them and they start mixing with the main group during feed time, getting a taste for the food we give the group everyday.

Venturing out at two weeks old

Pigs are highly social and tend to move around as a group. They are also very clever so as soon as they here the rattle of the feed coming out of the feed hopper and the starting up of the ATV to carry the feed up to them, they are ready and waiting at the fence.

What we like most about our Iron-age pigs are their hardiness, resistance to any illnesses and tasty meat! By 9 months old they are ready for killing and the sausages, burgers, chops and roasts that come back from the butcher are delicious. We sell all cuts of meat off the farm and the Iron-age meat we produce is extremely popular. Added to the taste is very low food miles as our pigs are born and bred on the farm, transported just 15 miles to the abattoir and then delivered back to the farm after butchering.

Meat from Wild boar and Iron-age pigs is described as ‘red meat’, like beef and lamb, unlike pork from domestic pigs which is much paler in colour.

The end product!

Tilly

Summer at Ruthven Farm

July is sheep shearing month at Ruthven. All 800 need to be sheared, as soon as the weather allows and the fleeces start to peel around the sheeps’ necks. The whole family gets involved, with Jim shearing alongside a shearing contractor, and the rest of the family helping roll the fleeces, keep the pen full of sheep etc. It’s hard work, especially in the hot weather, but the sheep get tremendous relief from having their thick woolly jumpers removed! Different breeds produce different grades of wool. Blackface wool (the majority of our sheep) is coarse, and is used for making carpets. Wool from the mules is softer, and some will go to carpets, some to textile manufacture. Blue-Faced Leicester wool is very soft and is often blended with cashmere to make quality woollens. Shetland, Cheviot, Ryeland and Icelandic wool is all suitable for garments, with the Shetland and Icelandic wool especially popular with hand spinners.

Shearing team at work

Icelandic ewe being sheared

Maisy supervising from a comfy seat in the wool bag

Once the fleeces are rolled they are packed into giant sacks, according to their breed. These bags are then transported to a collection centre where the wool is graded and priced. You may be surprised at just how little a fleece is worth! A blackface fleece will fetch between 80p and £1, mule fleeces £1.20 - £1.80. A shearing contractor charges £1.40 per sheep to shear them, so the wool doesn’t even always pay for the cost of shearing. At the other end of the scale blue faced Leicester wool will make £2-3 per fleece – but we don’t have many of them!

Rolled fleece ready for packing

Late July and early August are busy times with agricultural shows. We show our best mule ewe lambs and our Ryelands. This year we have had a very successful season, with several prizes. Through the season there is a show somewhere in the North East just about every weekend – they are a great chance for farmers to get a day away from the farm, show off their stock, meet friends that they may not otherwise see, and have a family day out. This year we had a trip to the Royal Highland Show, Turriff Show, Black Isle Show, and our local show at Grantown -on - Spey.

Our ewe lambs were champion cross sheep at Grantown Show

Ryeland Shearling Yoda with his rosettes - he has done Eilidh proud in the young handler classes all season

In between showing, we’ve had a lot of people visiting the farm this summer. This lovely group of folk visited Wild Farm in the morning, with Katy and Julian from Braemar Highland Experience, had a picnic lunch, then came to visit us in the afternoon. They met some of the show sheep, had a super walk (the weather was kind too!) during which they saw the dogs work to gather in sheep from the hill into an in-bye field. As well as being very proud to show our farm to visitors, we also love to meet them and hear their stories and views.

Visitors for a farm tour

Last week we hosted a large farm event at the farm. Organised by the Moredun Institute and Crown Estate Scotland, the event looked at maximising grass and health for upland lamb production. We were extremely lucky to hear Charlie Morgan, who is an expert on grassland management, and travelled all the way from Wales to speak at the event. We also listened to an expert from the Moredun Institute who talked about managing internal parasites in sheep, and a vet who spoke about eradicating lameness in the flock. 80 farmers attended and enjoyed a walk to look at the farm as well as the lectures. It was all topped off with a barbecue in the evening.

Farm walk for the Moredun event

One of the old farm buildings was converted into a temporary cinema!

Finally, we thought it would be good to introduce some of our “helpers” to the blog. So this month it’s the turn of Fly. Fly is a 12 year old border x bearded collie. She is the oldest member of the dog team, and ”knows it all” (or so she likes to think!) She came to us at 18 months old from a neighbouring farm, where the farmer was struggling to get her to work. She has been a loyal friend to us over the years, and the chief lambing dog as she is very good at separating off a ewe with problems and helping Jim to catch it. She gets to take it easy some days as she is now a pensioner, but she is still top dog and would really rather be working, in fact following a big operation earlier this year to remove a mammary tumour, she recovered like a dog half her age and was delighted when she was allowed to start working again.

Fly

Fly having a rest between jobs.

Wild Farm Red Deer

Spring has sprung and summer has come, with all the beautiful shades of green from spring barley to birch trees. Wild Farm is a rich mix of fields, native woodland and heathery hills and after a winter of bland colours and snow ( a rare sight last winter though ) it is great to see the rich green colours return.

New growth of vegetation means welcome fresh food for all the animals on the farm. From rations of silage and hay over the winter they can now enjoy fields of young grass to feast on. With this abundance of growth it is perfect timing for red deer calves to be born. June is the main month for calving and the hinds slip away from the herd to find a quiet spot to calve.

 Last year we were lucky enough to witness one of our hand reared hinds ‘Willow’ calve and the following sequence shows the first faltering steps of her calf.

While the hinds are busy calving and producing milk for their new born calves the stags are well into growing their new velvet antlers. This process starts when the old boney antlers from last year fall off. In fact the newly growing velvet antlers ‘push’ the old ones off. The mature stags are the first to lose the old antlers, they need to get on with growing the new set, which have just 3.5 months to grow.  By June the antlers are well developed and to produce this mass of bone, they need plenty of good spring grass to feed on.

Red deer calves are very secretive when they are new born, hiding up in long grass for at least 2 weeks before they join their mother with the herd. So by the end of June we are starting to see the calves gathering together, enjoying each others company and running around and playing like spring lambs.

Basking in sun is not a habit restricted to humans sunbathing on the beach. Our ‘free to roam’ Marans ( hens that lay the most beautiful and tasty dark brown eggs ) are the first to find a sunny spot on the farm.

Tilly

May at Ruthven Farm

April and May are the busiest months of the year at Ruthven. From the middle of April till the middle of May, 1200 lambs were born! 600 Blackface ewes lambed out in the fields, producing mainly Scotch Mule lambs (Scottish Blackface mother and Bluefaced Leicester father), and a few pure Blackface lambs as flock replacements. 70 cheviots and Shetland-cheviot crosses lambed outside as well producing cheviot lambs, and some pure Shetland ewes had cheviot cross lambs which were soon nearly as big as themselves!

Blackface ewe with mule lambs, this one had triplets!

Cheviot ewe and lambs

150 mules lambed in the sheds, producing Suffolk-cross lambs. These are lambed inside as they tend to have more multiple births, and bigger lambs so are more likely to need attention. They are turned out with their lambs usually 24 hours after lambing, weather permitting. Also in the sheds at that time were any ewes expecting triplets. This year there were 74 of them! But  we don’t often let a ewe rear all 3 lambs – it is really too much to ask of most sheep, so in most cases we try to take the third lamb and foster it onto a ewe who has only a single lamb. If you do this as the foster mother is giving birth, the results are really successful – she goes away happy that she has just had 2 lambs and the other ewe is turned out to grass with her two remaining lambs.  This vastly reduces the number of lambs in the bottle rearing pen.

A successful fostering - mule ewe, right hand lamb is her own suffolk cross lamb, left hand lamb is a mule lamb out of a blackface ewe.

Cheeky!

Pens of ewes expecting triplets

All the male lambs will be fattened on farm on grass (and turnips for the slower to mature ones) and sold for meat from July onwards. The mule ewe lambs are sold in September through the market at Huntly, destined for breeding flocks on lower ground. We keep 40 of these each year as replacements for our own small flock of mules. The best of the Suffolk cross ewe lambs will be sold for breeding, and the rest will be fattened along with the males.

As well as the commercial flock of course we have several different breeds, some of which we lamb early in February, to allow the lambs a chance to grow before the summer shows, and to enable us to give these sheep more individual attention. So in the fields can also be seen Ryeland, Icelandic and Bluefaced Leicester lambs.

Icelandic ewe and lamb

Icelandic tup lamb

Ryelands

So a frantic time of year but also one of the most enjoyable. By the end of May, all the ewes have lambed, lambs are dosed and vaccinated, and the fields are looking full. The next big job to look forward to will be shearing, as the weather warms up and the fleeces begin to lift.  And of course the show season, starting with our first try showing at the Royal Highland Show – we will be there with Mules and Ryelands.

Even through the busy times, we still snatch moments to appreciate the wildlife around us on the farm. At the start of May we managed to catch a photo of an osprey, visiting one of our ponds. This year the lapwings, with their distinctive call, were much slower to arrive than usual, but eventually the numbers did increase, and now some have successfully hatched chicks. Oystercatchers and curlews are here in good numbers, and the skylark can be heard every day singing their hearts out above the hill.

Osprey visiting

Skylark

The hedges that we planted in 2010 are looking fantastic, providing great habitat for wildlife, crab apples blackthorn and hawthorn have a tremendous display of flowers, and so hopefully a good supply of food for birds later on.

Crab apple in flower

Lesley