Archived News

20th May 2012

It’s been a few weeks of births and deaths, all part of farming life but never the less quite sad when a calf or lamb doesn’t make it or when a pheasant who’s minding its own business is blasted by gunshot in front of your eyes.  

The good news has been the birth of four beautiful Belted Galloway calves born in the most atrocious weather but doing well, nine Hampshire Down lambs

(this is Barny being bottle fed, he was the first born lamb and had entropion or inturned eyelids)

and Polly who quietly farrowed in her arc during Friday night and is taking great care of ten tiny piglets.

A pile of Polly pigs

A small field next to the yard has been ploughed but proved to be too wet to power harrow, so with the weather remaining dry this job should be completed in the next couple of days in readiness for maize drilling. We are in and out of the fields on a regular basis, checking pigs and sheep, so it came as quite a shock when a pheasant was bombarded with gunshot in the maize field yesterday. 

We really enjoy watching the pheasants as they saunter along the field edge in search of food, but as shot after shot sounded out, feathers and dirt blasted into the air leaving one pheasant dead in the field whilst others desperately flew up, possibly injured as they tried to escape this attack. 

With one pheasant down, the bullets continued to rain in on the poor bird and then pummelled back and forth along the edge of the field.  The direction of fire was clear to see.

If death occurs in the countryside it shouldn’t be at the hands of a mindless thug.  This person has broken a number of laws in shooting pheasants as they quietly fed on private land and clearly making it unsafe for our staff and family who could be in these fields at any time.