My Father and Grandfather and Auntie are all owning the cattle and sheep we have at the moment, But i like to pull my weight around the croft and enjoy it quite a bit will be hopefully owning my own cow sometime soon!!Our croft is in Pennies about ten minutes out of Portree.
We have seventeen cows. Three bulling heifers. Two heifers that are eighteen months old that are hopefully going to there bull this year. We have three calf's left that where born in June this year that were to young to sell this year but maybe sell them in April at the next sale in Portree or keep them for breeding but sold nine calf's that were old enough at the last sale, That is the cows that we have at the moment.
In the sheep department we have forty one breeding ewes, seven Grimmers, nine hogs and two tups/rams.
Everything is wintered out side. We get a contractor to cut the bake and wrap the silage that is around eighty bales, this is all done late August early September.
The cattle are a suckler herd. We keep our own good heifer calfs for breed. The cattle are on the common grazing for summer months and parks the rest of the time for grazing and feeding. The sheep are held in parks or the croft all year round.
A few people think "oh farming that's easy and easy money". That is not the case, it is very hard working and have to be whiling to go out at anytime if problems. For a while there the cows kept knocking there way through the fence and out on the road and even at two, three in the morning you would have to get up and go get them and that can take hours to get them all sorted, they are very strong animals even at young calf's and they are not dumb that other people think.
We do have a collie dog called Molly that loves getting out there and working,but sadly she is getting very old and can not work as much as she used to, even though she does try. She is a lovely collie but does look a bit mad. She can not go out and help move the cows as she doesn't get along with them to well,as she feels cause they are so big she needs to snap at them but course that does not go done well to the cows and puts her in danger so unfortunately it is just us running about move them. The sheep she gets along great with and gets the moved still quite quick. Will need to be looking for a new sheepdog very soon as my Grandad and Father know in a few years they will not be able to be running about as much as they are and getting rid of the croft is not even a question, they both could never do without it all they been used to and enjoy it very much.
Well that's a just of what goes on but there is allot more but not going to ramble on. I will hopefully be able to keep this up to date with pictures videos and information of whats going on such as the breeding progress, what happens at the sales, feeding, ejections and will probably be a few times of the cows escaping again and deary knows what pictures i will get there as once they were at the High School. Will also be writing about Molly and her jobs and if we get a new puppy and its training.
Thanks :)
