While the humans struggle each day to keep from regressing into some strange form of winter hibernation (those of us possessing a Y chromosome being rather more prone to such a thing than those of us lacking it …) other large animals on the croft are already planning ahead for spring. And we wait impatiently to see whose mating activities have been successful.
Dulse (left) and Jake (right)
This year is the first year of mating for our new Jacob sheep, and last autumn David took a trip to the mainland to purchase the imaginatively named Jake for that very purpose. Jake was a tup lamb (born early in 2011) rather than a tried and tested tup, and in such cases there’s always a bit of anxiety to know whether he’ll be able to perform or whether the sight of six beautiful young and suddenly available females will be a bit much for him. Jake certainly showed interest in all the right ways, but now we have to wait till April before we know just how successful that particular experiment was. Mr Tuppy, meanwhile, our well-tested Hebridean tup, didn’t seem to mess about, and past experience of his 100% hit-rate makes us hopeful that there’ll be plenty of little black blobs running around the fields in a few months time.
As we wait to see whether Doris and/or Edna the sows are pregnant, we obtained two weaners to grow on who will be ready to kill in March. And that’s the hard part of keeping animals, and one that we struggle with constantly. On the other hand, as we’ve blogged about here in some detail before, if you want to be as self-sufficient in food as is practical, the western wilds of the Outer Hebrides aren’t especially conducive to growing beans and lentils for vegetarian tastes, and we’d rather grow on nice happy weaners ourselves than become sentimentally squeamish and go instead to the butcher or supermarket to buy pork from pigs who’ve had much harder, and usually indoor, lives. So: these two little piggies (one for us and one for a neighbour) have been given a new house, complete with garden, to play in for the next 3 months or so, and we give them as much attention and stimulation as we can.
Two Little Pigs (and hanger-on)
And in a couple of weeks I hope to be blogging about Bridget the Kerry heifer, who is next on our list of crofting acquisitions.
Sharon
