Treathro Blog
Stories from David & Debbie

We are still getting the most beautiful sunrises and sunsets, we are so aware the days are getting shorter we try to make the most of it by sitting on the cliffs with the dogs just appreciating the most wonderful scenery. Sunrise from the walled garden, the hill is Garn Fawr with our weather station...

We separated Tim from the cows at the beginning of this month.  The young calves are growing quickly and are still feeding from their mums.  We have seen a bit of bulling starting amongst the calves indicating the girls are maturing, whilst the other cows had stopped bulling so seemed like a good to time to...

It is probably the same for many farms, life did not really change for us during lockdown.  Day to day management of the animals was the same, the occasional food shopping and just the wonderful opportunity to really appreciate where we live.   The coastal path was empty and nature started taking over so incredibly quickly. ...

Very pleased with our lambs this year, new acquisition of some weighing scales to help us decide when to move them on.  Interesting as sometimes really hard to tell approximate weights just by looking due to the fleece.  Appx half were over 40kg so were taken to market last week and fetched a good price. ...

Finally our first beef from a cow born and bred on the farm, 100% grass fed, with animal welfare a priority. We allow our animals to grow naturally and mature slowly without feeding concentrated feeds (including grains and soya). We pay attention to every aspect of their lives, keeping stress to a minimum.  We find...

Our focus now is on improving the grass on the farm.  Even before this lack of rain some of the fields were in a sorry state.   With such a wet winter there was a lot of poaching, extremely patchy growth and lots of nettles, docks and other weeds.   With this in mind we...

We were able to put most of the ewes and lambs outside towards the end of March.  Most seemed to be doing really well other than one set of twins, on closer investigation it appeared the ewe had mastitis on one side and both were trying to feed off the other teat which was extremely...

LAMBING Most of the month has been spent lambing, unfortunately the grass has not yet taken off so they were all kept inside until the end of this month.  A total of 65 lambs born, fairly trouble free but sadly one born dead.  There was the threat of prolapse with two of the ewes so...

LAMBING SHED Our first lambs are due at the end of this month, so we have spent time preparing the lambing shed. As we have more ewes lambing this year  we have increased the number of individual pens (for ewes and newborn lambs) and set up the main structure in a way that makes it...

Lovely start to the year with the new addition of 6 young heifers from Forde Abbey, who are settling in well. This brings the total number in the herd to 21, 6 of which are in calf (from Tim).  We also have the 6 calves from last year (now about 9 months old), 4 of...

End of December and time to have the sheep scanned to see who is pregnant and who having singles/twins/triplets.  Mixed lot of ewes this time, around half had lambs last time, the others new to it.  Steve has a mobile unit which once set up enables him to scan them quickly and efficiently.  The ewes...

Such changeable November weather, torrential rain followed by blazing sunshine day after day, resulting in some absolutely amazing rainbows.                                                                                                                                              ...

During our first TB test the vet noticed the cattle were slow to lose their winter coats and had a few pale patches. He suggested we had them tested for mineral deficiencies.  We were surprised to find they were all short in copper, cobalt, selenium and iodine.  This apparently is quite common in this coastal...

We noticed that Nora, the Red Devon matriarch was limping a little and realised she had a split in one of her hooves, and one was slightly overgrown.  On talking to others we realised we should be having their hooves checked fairly regularly so contacted a local cattle foot trimmer, Raymond from West Wales Hoof...

It has been a great experience seeing all the new calves and lambs being born with very few problems.  Let’s hope it is an omen for next year!  We now have a total of 6 calves (2 bull calves and 4 heifer calves).   We will be keeping all the calves for about 2 years...

We had some rather devastating news back in January.  One of our cows aborted at the end of November, the foetus was sent off for testing and came back positive for Neospora.  This is a disease caused by a protozoal parasite called Neospora caninum, causing a high percentage of abortion and stillbirth in cattle.  There...

The lambs are now all outside in the glorious Easter sunshine A hot hot day! Almost bigger than her mum already. We have two new arrivals, the calves Wonky and Clyde. Wonky was born rather ….well…wonky. She had been rather squashed in the womb and appeared with a very lopsided jaw and restricted movement in...

This was our first lambing season and as expected it was a steep learning curve although a very positive experience! Ahead of time we split the shed into three areas, the waiting area (maternity ward), the single lambing pens (for the newborns or those needed a bit of extra TLC) and the nursery (for those...

Just before Christmas we had the sheep scanned to confirm dates and to see which sheep were having twins and triplets to help with the correct feeding.  Out of the 30 sheep which had been put in with Trevor (all of whom were first timers) 2 were empty, 14 singles, 13 doubles and 1 triplet....

We moved into the holiday let when the house became impossible to live in (due to the removal of the roof!), this was towards the end of September.  We are now 3 months in and loving it, the most wonderful view from the gable end window, warm and dry with underfloor heating throughout and a...