Its been another busy month here at the Over the Stile small holding. With plenty to keep us occupied.
Norfolk Black Turkey Poults
The response to our Norfolk Black Turkey Poults was excellent and exceeded all expectations. We sold all of our hatched stock for 2009 and could have sold more but then there would have been no layers left for 2010 year!
We feel that people are really starting to understand more about Turkeys. If you go for large commercial breeds that develop quickly then the result will be a dry uninteresting Christmas dinner.
The Norfolk Black is slower growing has fine textured meat and has a small layer of fat under the skin which ensures a moist and tasty meal!
Also we feel that people are starting to understand that the smaller traditional breed of turkey are more suited to today’s family requirements.
They fit into domestic ovens more easily and are actually more price efficient than the larger Bronze Turkeys because you are not paying away money for a huge Turkey that you do not necessarily want to be eating for the next two weeks!
Our new Turkey shed
Our new Turkey shed was installed in one of the small woodland plantations and it sits very well amongst the trees.
The shed was built by Smiths Sectional Buildings and they have done an excellent job, the pop holes have just the right amount of space for an adult Turkey to enter and exit.
We kitted out the new house with drinkers and feeders and then took order of our new breed stock for next year.
Forty little Turkey Poults were purchased – all of them girls we hope, although sexing Turkeys at that age is notoriously difficult – and they will be mated with Stags from our existing flock.
We are very excited about the prospects for 2010 with our Norfolk Black Turkeys and we expect some really lovely poults to be available for sale from June next year.
Production will be stepped up next year to approximately 2,000 Turkey poults, which is quite a considerable increase on our 2009 year production!
We are awaiting the installation of a seven foot high wire fence around the Turkey shed to allow our breeding flock to free range amongst the trees and the grass something which they love and which we encourage at Over the Stile.
The poults are a little young yet – some of them are only just off heat – so we are keeping them in the shed for a while yet but we cannot wait for that day when the pop holes can be raised and they can free range as nature intended.
Sales of our Hens
The sales of our hens has also been excellent with almost all hens being now sold apart from some of the Bantam Buff Sussex.
We still have plenty of Cockerels available – so if you want a Bantam Buff Sussex or a full size Barnvelder, Buff Sussex or Faverolles Cockerel please call.
Cockerels
We suspect that come Autumn we will transfer all Cockerels that remain unsold into meals in our freezer. Its sad but it is better than wasting them.
Our cockerels are simply magnificent and whilst we look forward to some lovely free range chicken to eat (with pretty low food miles!) it will be sad to see those wonderful birds disappear from our land.
So if you want to rescue a cockerel you know where to come!
Latest on the Lambs
Our Soay sheep have continued strongly this summer with the 3 lambs that were born in May doing very well.
We are expanding our flock and purchased two lovely brown polled Soays recently (Polly and Kilda) and we will add 3 more shearlings in early August together with a lovely Black Ram.
This should give us two small breeding flocks at opposite ends of the small holding and should give us some lovely lambs next year. We have had a real bitter sweet moment in July with a late born Soay Lamb Ram (Ramases).
Our little Ewe – Latte – was very jealous of her sister ewes who all had lambs and was constantly trying to adopt other animals as a lamb surrogate.
However, Latte was actually pregnant and she delivered her lamb in July, a bit late but then we thought finally she would feel part of the flock again. As it turned out it things quickly went wrong.
The little Lamb recognised its mother but Latte did not recognise its baby. Each time the Lamb wanted feeding Latte stepped over her eventually things got quite bad with an almost total break down of connection between the two.
As the first day of a Lamb’s life is so important we had to step in and get some colostrum into the little one. This now means that we have to raise a little Soay lamb with all that that implies with regard to a rigorous feeding regime.
As for Latte she has re joined the flock as if nothing has happened!
Ramases
Still Ramases is a very pretty and lovely little Lamb and will make a very tame and biddable wether which should help us control the flock later.
To provide some much needed contact, warmth and bonding Ramases has spent the last two evenings sleeping in our arms sitting in front of the telly in our Drawing Room. We do wonder what he will think when he has to spend his first day out on range?
He will probably be delighted to be away from the TV and all the nonsense on it!
Ramases has negotiated the first two days of his life in fine style and is now drinking more, bleating more and is gaining strength daily.
He is such a lovely little fellow and we hope the best for him and his future.
Pea Chicks and Quail update
Otherwise things continue as normal at Over the Stile. We have four young Pea Chicks (Pea Fowl youngsters) developing nicely, we are putting them with the Turkeys and will free range them outside eventually.
It is quite funny to watch the smaller Pea Chicks try to jump on the back of their larger Turkey bretheren and to hitch a ride.
Our Quail have still to produce an egg – although everyone tells us that when they do the production will be constant, we shall wait to see.
Pheasants are ready
Finally our Pheasant (we raised about 60) are ready to be released on to the land over the next few months.
They are developing into beautiful specimens and (if the fox leaves them alone) they will be allowed to free range on our land, unmolested by the shot gun!! Jane and I just love having them around the house.
Next Month
Well that just about sums up the activities at Over the Stile. Next month we hope to have Turkey fencing up, more sheep in our fields and a fit and strong Ramases. We hope to have more hens sold and new ones brought in and you never know – we might get a quail’s egg!
Lots to look forward to in August.
Tags: Cockerels, Norfolk Black Turkeys
Great to see you both yesterday and the lovely Ramases of course! I’m looking forward to seeing how quickly your blogs are picked up.