Kanada FR
USA
Großbritannien
Europäische Union
New Zealand
Australia
SPRING HAS SPRUNG
This winter was the longest and wettest winter ever. At least, that's how it feels. We spent most of our time in our waterproof overalls and sometimes had to change into dry coats at lunchtime. Trudging through the mud day after day, getting stuck in the truck, and washing the dog incredibly quickly takes its toll. We just calmly went about our work and did what had to be done. Things can change very quickly. The clocks change and we have more daylight, the first layer of clothing comes off before 11 am. The last young animals of the previous year are sold and the "new beginning" of lambing season is approaching.
To know what's coming, we perform pregnancy scans on our flock at the beginning of the year. Each ewe is marked whether she is carrying a single lamb, twins, or triplets. If the scans go well, it means we can expect a lot of lambs in March/early April. This year the scans went excellently and so we knew that a lot of work would be coming our way from March 20th, and that's what drives us, that adrenaline. Our plan was to take it a bit easier at least a week before lambing to recover from the winter months. The ewes had other plans, and from March 12th, three or four of them started lambing every day - so much for our time off.
It's like a whirlwind - every year. The days fly by, and getting up at 4:30 am doesn't get any easier, quite the opposite! Until the clocks change, the sun rises at 5:30 am, and we can turn over and close our eyes for another hour - that's a blessing! The face is red from the morning cold and burning with fatigue at night. The hands are chapped, dirt and iodine are so deeply ingrained that it takes weeks for them to soften again after lambing. Strangely, this year most lambs arrived within three weeks instead of the usual six. What unexpected luck!
The mood changes with the new life on the farm. When the trees are blooming and the grass is green at the same time, it is positively inspiring. Our ducks have obviously also noticed the change of seasons, as two of them seem to be contemplating mating. I say contemplating because I don't think the two of them have the slightest idea what they are actually supposed to do. Their instinct or hormones just tell them that they are supposed to do something. At first, we noticed that when we let them out of their fox-proof enclosure in the mornings, instead of the 12 or 13 eggs we usually got - which means they each laid an egg - we got between six and eight. We started following them when we let them out at dawn to see where they scurried off to lay their eggs. We both became real stalkers, hiding behind trees and tiptoeing so as not to scare them and deter them from their plans. It turned out they had built three nests. Not particularly impressive nests, but nests nonetheless. We believe they had been laying eggs in the nests for a few days, and we were excited because we thought we could look forward to ducklings in just a month.
We let nature take its course, and before we knew it, there were 32 eggs literally stacked on top of each other in one of the nests. It was time to ask our friend - the "duck oracle," as we call him - for advice. He suggested taking some out and marking the remaining ones. That way we knew which ones were new and which ones we could leave her, so that if she incubated and sat on the eggs, we would at least have a good hatching rate. I promise to keep everyone here updated on "Operation Duck," but I'm keeping my fingers crossed that one day I'll see a duck waddling around with a line of ducklings behind her!
Related Articles