Cocks & Pigs...

Since we last ‘spoke’ we have not just another cockerel but a further two cockerels! Queenie our gorgeous jubilee Orpington bantam is a cock! We also believe our exceedingly rare lavender cuckoo Orpington Jamie-Lee is going to show ‘his’ true colours any day now. We have decided to keep the names (as much as punishment and humiliation for the boys as it is habit for us). Tilly and Queenie now have two little houses in a run of their own and have settled in nicely; God only knows what’s going to happen when Jamie-Lee reaches maturity (for those of you who don’t know – Orpington cockerels are about the size of a dog!) We are very much hoping that we will be able to accommodate him in some way, since his outlook may be dim if we decided to give him up, but the logistics of this are difficult and we are quickly running out of space. Fingers crossed ‘he’ turns out to be a freaky feathered massive girl! :-/

Basil the Bassett hound is fine and well. He had his stitches removed at the vet without any fuss at all (very surprised since he normally shits on the floor!) and he is back to his annoyingly chirpy howling self. His neck is now so hairy you can’t even tell he had an op unless you lift up his front lip to look at his gappy smile.

Flynn is very much ready to go to the vet to get the chop now; he is the last of the bunnies to be castrated and has recently turned into the most beautiful big shiny black Continental Giant, a proper adult now. We are hoping to commence stage two of building our colossal bunny hutch soon; the plans are drawn and materials soon to be on their way so it should look amazing and homey-er than the first attempt!

We have now had the donkeys for eight weeks and they have changed and grown so much. Unfortunately our plans to have the donkeys and pigs living together have been abandoned since the death of Evie; the risk of injury to the pigs was highlighted before she died and although the donkeys were not the ultimate cause of her death they may have contributed significantly. Understandably this is not a risk we are willing to take again no matter how small the likelihood since the stakes are far too high and the outcome may be catastrophic. As a result of this decision the last month has been very difficult. The donkeys and pigs have been alternating the use of the field whilst we have been waiting for some stock fencing to be done in our other ‘entertainment’ field. This partial use of the field day-in day-out has led to frustrated and misbehaving donkeys and pigs as well as stressed people! The donkeys have toys in their stable as well as the radio to try and keep them entertained but they are continually chewing the walls and have now progressed to the field gates and posts; we are not happy. We are working towards an entirely new yard layout so that the pigs and donkeys both have a yard but they are totally separate and inaccessible to each other. Naturally this all takes time, effort and money so it is slow progress. Hopefully by next month the donkeys and pigs will have a separate field and yard each to go with their lovely separate stables, they will all be able to come and go at will and the situation will be easily manageable and stress free for us and them.

Since the passing of Evie our two beautiful boys have been so very lonely; Oliver and Archie have been sleeping with a gap between them where she used to be, have been wandering separately, desperate for human attention and company and have had very straight tails. We discussed what to do as a family, since we were still grieving the decision was very hard but we decided to get more little piggies. It may sound crazy to add more chaos into the mix but we couldn’t stand seeing the hole that Evie left behind, we also didn’t want to replace her, so we decided to get two little sisters. We located a woman in Tavistock whose Kune Kune piglets were nearly ready and a week later Gracie-May and Hope-Elouise arrived. The girls are adorable – and trouble! Hope is a proper chunky squealer and Grace is a soft sweet little darling – until she wants something! Both will climb into your arms for a hug and fall asleep; we love it now but just imagine when they are 15 stone each! 

It has definitely been a handful juggling the four pigs and two donkeys but well worth it. The girls are finally settling in and sleeping with the boys (although they still regularly manage to escape as they are so small!) and the boys seem happier with them as a distraction; we regularly see all four pigs out in the field as a group munching on grass, a sight that we have sorely been missing and that makes us smile again.

Away away away...

Sincerest apologies to those of you who are my biggest die-hard fans; my absence from blog updates has been extensive but I aim to end that deficiency now and continue forward with my account of the dramatic Goings On At Old Venn Farm!

The reason for my absence is melancholy to say the least. At the end of September our beautiful little black kune kune piggy Evie-Louise passed away. For those of you who cannot possibly understand the magnitude of the Stenton family’s loss I beg you to imagine a most beloved, enlightening and wonderful addition to your family being suddenly and unexpectedly stolen from you far before she should have gone. The loss of Evie has left such a huge hole that until now I couldn’t possibly conceive of writing about her. I still feel as if we may see her running noisily and rapidly across the fields towards us with such joy as she carried everywhere with her. She will never be forgotten.

On top of all the pig sorrow there has also been chicken sorrow. As you may recall we were fighting a long and gruelling battle with our gorgeous big rare breed chickens. This fight involved a lot of tiring and emotionally draining medicating with antibiotics in absolutely ghastly rainy weather. The poor beauties were suffering from bubbly eyes, temporary blindness, lethargy, rattling and gasping coughs as well as trying to stay warm and dry in the atrocious conditions. Unfortunately our gorgeous little character choc drop (Lexi) died suddenly; we miss her personality and presence terribly but we are lucky that it wasn’t far worse. The vet was baffled as to what was wrong as well as how to combat the multitude of problems that seem to be determined to ail our girls. The good news is, after months of struggling against an unseen enemy, we finally seem to be on top of the problem. I have no doubt in my mind that it will rear its head again, but for now the girls and ourselves have a brief reprieve from the exhaustion.

If I have learnt one thing in the last year with such awful and cruel reinforcement it is that a chicken’s life is fragile and most likely short. In the last two weeks I have lost two of my lovely layers, Tiger a Columbian Blacktail and Ginger an unusual and striking Lowman Brown. Like many chicken deaths they are unexplained. Most people, especially farmers and the majority of smallholders, find the deaths of ‘livestock’ perfectly routine and acceptable losses -- for anyone out there who knows me, I do not. Watching these little lives, their personalities and characters, habits and traits, come and go is so sad. My family and I do everything in our power to make our hens lives as wonderful, enriched and as long as possible.

Most people don’t realise that you can possibly tell a chicken apart from a group, but you can. We have nearly 50 chickens and I can tell everyone apart with a glance, not from ring colour but from plumage coupled with their behaviour. Each chicken is unique; I don’t say this to cause controversy or to be seen as a crazy animal lover (which incidentally I am!) but to try and educate. These animals are kept in terrible conditions which are completely cruel and unnecessary; you may wish to hide behind the mass ‘knowledge’ that chickens are stupid and have no understanding of the world around them but you are wrong. Many of my customers have come to see my girls and been truly shocked by how friendly, inquisitive and interactive they are with everything around them. My point really is that you don’t have to buy your eggs from me, but you do have a duty to buy ethically produced food from small, local and morally sound sources. Most of the time ‘Free Range Eggs’ are so far from the expected illustration of happy hens that you really need to be careful where your produce comes from. Large companies have a tendency of lying and there is nothing to stop them – remember convenience isn’t everything.

On a far less dramatic note but none-the-less still annoying – my Hunters split! Arrgghhh just as we are coming up to winter, I am without Welly! This is clearly undesirable and inconvenient, so I did what any crazy consumer would do – I went out and spent an extortionate amount of my (mum’s) money on a new (faulty) pair exactly the same! You can say what you like about Hunter’s, yes they aren’t what they used to be and yes they split every six months or so and yes they are overpriced, but when it comes down to it for those six months before they split they are a dream; they fit like a glove, they keep everything out, they are light and attractive and pretty much the only available thing. So say what you like but Hunters are the best! (Just make sure you keep your receipt for your 1 year warranty!)