Richard Perkins updates on moving livestock across his farm, managing pastured poultry with specific feeding schedules, and receiving his first meat rabbit, a pregnant red New Zealand doe he plans to line-breed. He's also preparing for courses and internships with about 50 people expected.
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Long day today. Moving the pigs, getting the cows and sheep. Just moved now, late in the evening, had a very misty morning and a very warm, humid day. Warm winds coming up from the south and we got a first meat rabbit and that's exciting. We don't know exactly how we're going to keep them yet, but a short update from today, Just about to move the eggman Bill. We've got a steep little slope to come round and back down here and we've got our last little paddock in here before moving up to top field with the other hens. Fence is up. Last stop in top field for these birds. Mister Chickens, its feeding time now and the birds are on 162 grams a day. And they have grain which is organic wheat and oat from our local, the organic farmer mixed in. It's 50, 50 with a starch. It's a mix we tried last year that works well for us. And they obviously get pasture and forage too. They're fed three times a day now it's gone down in brutal. They start with five times a day and then four times a day. Now it's three times a day. Obviously checking water and things as well. They just moved for the day. Still a couple of weeks until they start moving twice a day. So we've now got a bunch of the pigs up and we've made our bridge a bit wider because they were so skeptical of the water. But apparently they're all coming down again. It's been a little bit of a challenge. Well, we've got four of the piglets. One's already up, one's behind and now we've got the majority of the pigs up here and they're doing good and they're just finding each other again. Hey pigs, what do you think of your new home? Is it good? Yeah, it's pretty good. So all the pigs are up except Reuben, the big boar. We need our fences back for the cows and sheep. So the first meat rabbit came today. It's a red New Zealand breed. It's pregnant already and we've got a couple of males coming next week I believe, and maybe more females. So we're going to start line breeding and see how it goes. It'll obviously be a pasture based system we do, but we're not entirely sure how we're going to build pens yet and how we're going to run that. We're going to have some meetings about that soon, but that's exciting. A new chapter beginning at the farm. Everyone's eating roast Turkey after a long day. Well deserved as well. Very interesting moving the pigs just up, moving the cows and sheep. And I'm pretty sure that Clover May there is pregnant and Viola is also pregnant. The brown calf is Clover, May's calf from last year. And Alice the little calf is Viola's calf from last year. Juliet who is Viola's calf from the year before we think might be pregnant. We had a bull for about 40 days here last year and it. We didn't really think he did anything. He was quite small and our cows are very. How would you put it? Well they're characters of their own and you know, they're the bosses as it were. So we didn't really know if we hadn't seen the mounting except Juliet was mounted so we thought she was pregnant. But the others are looking pregnant now. Lambs and sheep are doing fine. Just giving them three nets this evening. They've just been on a small paddock move this morning because we've been needing these nets for the pig move. And I'm setting up the fence for tomorrow. I'm taking the old fence down and setting up the next fence to make it easy for Lucas in the morning. So it looks like a few days of nice weather ahead of us. But very excited for a bit more relaxed weather conditions. As I've said before, we live outside pretty much all the time. So it really affects us when it's cold and windy and hard to get things dry in time. Working gloves and clothes etc. For so many people. We've got a bunch of tree planting to do now. Putting in some more apple, pear, plum and even a couple of hardy peach trees from Finland. We've got more hops to lift and divide. I've done a bunch of the hops already and start planning a bit for the internship and courses that start in about 12 days. We're going to have 50 people at the farm for the PDC. Here's Clovermay coming to say hello. A lot of thatch in this field. This is our neighbour's field we've been grazing through now through this first little field behind the tree line and we're coming through here, taking it in strips and we're going to be out here again. There's another little field around the back here and we're grazing down to the bottom here. These are old Herrscher hay poles for making traditional hay on our neighbours land. And we'll be going back into the farm again 1st of June up onto our land to start grazing around our paddocks. This is really where a pig belongs, not in some concrete barn and not in just some permanently muddy field. Young woodland is the natural habitat of pigs and bores, and they certainly seem to thrive in it. Mama is gathering thatch and straw and it seems like she might be having piglets soon. One of the viewers mentioned that in the comments, and I think you're right. I think there's two of the sows that will be farrowing pretty soon. I was thinking in the next couple of weeks, so we'll see. Well, long day but successful and happy day. And thanks for watching our videos. You can click subscribe if you want to keep up to date with the farm. Find out a lot more in our book Making Small Farms Work. Don't forget to check out Olivia's Kickstarter. He's stretched the goals to order to put more footage on the DVD that's already successfully funded. So well done, Olivier, and congratulations to everyone supporting that. And he also, if it gets up to, I think, 18 or €19,000 that pays for his work and his associates as well, then he'll subtitle the whole film in Swedish, which is amazing. So thanks for your time and see you tomorrow.
