Treathro Blog
Stories from David & Debbie

We have had several clear TB tests and had become a little complacent so it was a nasty surprise when we went down with TB last year.  Although we are in a high TB area, we are a closed herd, with no nose to nose contact with any other cattle and there has never been...

Very sadly Trevor our original Texel ram had to go to slaughter.  He had real problems with his feet and had got to the stage where we could do no more for him.  We will always remember him for his quirky character, nothing he loved more than a bit of rough and tumble with David...

We planned to have our own chickens from the very start of our move here but with one thing and another…….! We know we have 2 or 3 very confident foxes that roam our fields so our main priority was making sure the run and shed were completely fox proof.  David put a lot of...

We had a list of priorities when choosing which breed of cow to bring onto the farm.  They needed to be of good temperament, live on scrubby land (ie coastal!), to be good calvers and to be a native breed.  Our Red Devons have proved to be all of these, again calving was relatively easy. The...

The ewes were brought inside in the middle of February as we wanted to keep a good eye on a couple prior to their due date (lambing due to start 18th Feb).  We had one ewe which had been absolutely huge for over a month (expecting triplets) and a couple which had threatened prolapses.  We...

Work is slowly going ahead on our new holiday let.  We have been thrilled at the reservations and reviews on The Dairy and are hoping for the same response once The Granary is finished (probably end of summer).  This will be substantially larger (sleeping 6/8) but with a similar vibe ie a sympathetic renovation with...

Both cows and sheep have been scanned this month. All but one of the ewes are pregnant – 6 singles (purple spots), 28 twins (red dots), 11 triplets (green spots) and unfortunately one quad (purple and green spots!).   From our limited experience anything more than twins can be trouble, so much for no sock lambs...

At last we have planted some trees, we have been talking about this ever since we moved in 4 years ago, so pleased we have finally managed it.  We bought them from the Woodland Trust, one ‘Shelter Belt’ pack and a couple of ‘Coppicing’ packs, a total of 630 trees.  A mixture of english oak,...

When we bought the farm one of the smaller barns looked like this, obviously needing a bit of TLC!   David has worked his magic and has now built a brand new pole barn on the same site, the planning and ordering of material took a very long time….actually erecting it just a few days!...

The welfare of our animals is our highest priority and to this end they are raised in the most natural way possible on 100% grass, with minimum intervention and minimum stress.  However every year the livestock do need certain medications and interventions to keep them well throughout the different seasons and we need to be...

We have twelve breeding cows, six from the Northmoor Herd and 6 from Forde Abbey.  Tim (the bull) is from the Bollowal herd….. It is really interesting to see the difference in their colouring and build.  All are pedigree and conform to the breed traits and characteristics.  All of our cattle are easy going, easy...

We have discovered that taking a break from farming is the hardest thing to do.  There is always something that needs doing or some animals that need attention, we were warned by several farming friends that it really is 24/7 and they were right even on our small scale.  Farming apart we are having a...

We have 12 breeding cows, Tim (our bull) was put in with them from June until September last year.  A cow is pregnant for approximately 253 days (give or take a few days!) so this years calves were due at the end of March just as lambing finished.  We usually bring them down to a...

We have had a difficult time with one of our welsh mountain ponies which graze the headland…..they are usually very low maintenance and have come from generations of semi wild ponies used to conservation grazing and minimum input from humans.  Unfortunately one of ours developed laminitis this year – very unusual for these ponies,  more...

What a roller coaster it has been!  Having had the ewes scanned in December we separated the twins and triplets and put them on better grass in readiness for feeding their extra lambs.  Looking rather large some of them!! We set up the lambing shed taking into account everything we had learnt from last year. ...

One of the drawbacks of having such a lovely old farmyard with all the old buildings is that there are a lot of old roofs and we live in a very windy part of Wales!  We have had to reroof one area and found that the roof on the barns due to be renovated (at...

Tim came out of the cows at the end of September having been in with them for about 3 months. The cows cycle (called bulling) about every 3 weeks at which time they are fertile (for a brief few hours!), so he had plenty of opportunity.  Before he was taken out there were no more...

During the summer when we had more grass than we needed we managed to get two cuts of haylage.  The cut grass was left in the field to dry a little then baled and stored in black plastic liners.  Over time this ferments resulting in highly nutritious haylage for the cows, which we feed over...

It has been a very odd year for holiday bookings in the Dairy, when we have been allowed to do so we have had lots of visitors all of whom seem to have loved staying here (as we have loved having them).  We have had to make a few changes inside in line with government...

We now have annual hoof checks on the cattle, as they get older their hooves can get overgrown (rather like toenails) making it uncomfortable to walk impacting on feeding.  This can be particularly difficult when they are heavily pregnant or indeed for Tim to perform his duties!  We use West Wales Hoof Care who this...