5 months ago, George, our resident Boar, became the proud father of 58 piglets in 48 hours (see posting of 7th October, 2009). George has been up to his old tricks again, but this time the 5 sows have produced a scarcely believable 62 piglets. Because George is a cross between a Saddleback and a Gloucester Old Spot the offspring of the Red Tamworth Sow are multicoloured – ranging from pure white to pure black with speckles in between. This video shows Sara holding one of the day old Middle Whites, followed by a clip of the Middle White sow with her litter and of the Tamworth sow with her multi-coloured brood.

Several years ago, completely independently of each other,  Ifor Humphreys and I both had the same idea- to breed Wagyu cattle.  Wagyus are the Japanese breed whose meat is uniquely marbled, making it more succulent and tender than any other meat- and also much more expensive.  The Japanese are fiercely protective of their breed; they will not allow any cattle to be exported so Ifor and I had only one choice- to use frozen embryos and surrogate cows. I have decided to raise a herd of pure-bred Wagyus, which is a painfully slow process.  Ifor has taken the more practical, commercial and certainly much speedier route of cross-breeding by using a Wagyu bull on Limousin cows.
The first ever  tasting of Wagyu meat from one of Ifor’s bullocks took place  today in Powys College in Newtown, Wales.  I was honoured to be among 40 guests and the only English farmer present.  We were treated to no fewer than 9 courses, all of them of Ifor’s Wagyu meat, cooked to recipes devised by the College’s catering faculty. It was a brilliant occasion.  The meat was well marbled and every course was  utterly delicious.  
Ifor has researched Wagyu’s extensively in Australia, which reflects to some extent the research which I’ve carried out in Japan.  Afterwards, at Ifor’s farm (of which I was privileged to be given a tour) we were able to compare notes and had a most useful chat.

It was touch and go whether we would reach the farm this morning. It had started snowing at 7 (by the way, the sixth heavy snowfall of this winter) and when we set off at 9 in the Warrior, which is a 4×4, the snow was settling on the road- an ominous sign. But we wanted to battle on, partly to make sure that the animals were OK but mainly because our youngest, Sara, had sneaked her sledge onto the back of the pickup and would not be denied her fun in the snow.

When we arrived Jean and Tony’s children were already sledging on the steeply sloping field in front of the farmhouse. The pigs weren’t having so much fun; I found twenty of them huddled together for warmth on the straw next to an old black sow. But the Highland cows were out and about about, shrugging off the conditions in their long shaggy coats. This Flip video captures a few of those moments on this invigorating morning.

Not for the squeamish.  These video clips have been taken by Jean who, sometimes with her husband Tony, and sometimes alone, attends the animals on the farm when they give birth.  The first part of the video is of Jo-Jo, our Jersey cow giving birth to Jasmine.  All dairy cows have to produce a calf every year if they are to continue producing milk (an obvious fact,  but one of which many people are ignorant).  The second part is of Pinky Pie, one of our rare breed sows, on her way to producing a litter of 16 multi-coloured piglets.  Below is a picture of Pinky Pie with her full litter of 16.

The farm is frozen solid, which is not surprising after 20 consecutive days of sub-zero temperatures. Some of the consequences of the cold are serious, not least the fact that there is no running water to the farmhouse as the pipes which run underground from the spring to the farmhouse have frozen. Jean and Tony and their three children are relying on bottled water and buckets carried from from the yard. Because of the ice it is impossible to drive down the one mile long track to the main road, so the children haven’t been able to get to school. But they are more than happy looking after the pigs, which are shown here enjoying the morning sunshine with some Herdwick lambs.

Ten days after the magnificent Cumberland Angus Bull was taken to Ayres slaughterhouse to provide the main course for the Slow Food Burns Night dinner (see posting 30th December 2009), a replacement bull calf has been born. The sire is our Cumberland White Bull (aka Whitebred Shorthorn), the dam one of our Aberdeen Angus cows. The calf, which has the same pure black coat as its sibling, is exceptionally large and promises to be just as magnificent. The mother managed to jump the five bar gate of the barn to get to be with the rest of the herd outside, so we are temporarily feeding the calf by hand, as this video shows.

A massive pile of papers from Defra has arrived on my desk with the new rules for the Electronic Identification of Sheep (EID) which has just come into law. When these proposals were first mooted a year ago they were fiercely opposed and their imposition is a bitter blow to sheep farmers. I have 200 Herdwick sheep at High Lowscales, some of them descended from the herd kept by Beatrix Potter. They are “hefted”, which means that they don’t stray from the land on which they were born. The new law means that all sheep born after 1st January this year must be fitted with two identifying tags, one electronic and one non-electronic. The new law will benefit no-one but will impose a heavy burden in time and money on farmers, auctioneers and abattoirs. This week’s Farmer’s Guardian said: “EID has been branded disproportionate and damaging to the UK farming industry, which fought a desperate battle, backed by the UK government, to stave it off”.
If this proposal was strongly opposed by the UK government how on earth, you may ask, has it become law? It is also opposed by the Conservatives, the Lib-Dems, the National Farmer’s Union and every other pressure group in farming. A letter to our Member of Parliament was a complete waste of time because the law was imposed without a vote in Parliament and because there are no elected representatives of the European Commission who imposed it.
This is depressing, but not nearly as depressing as the thought that the pending election won’t do anything to change this sad state of affairs, whoever wins.

of place in a Spanish bullring. His horns were fiercesome; he weighed just short of a ton. He spent his entire life outdoors on the uncompromising Lakeland Fells. He was part Cumberland White, part Aberdeen Angus, what we called Cumberland Angus, more properly called Blue-Grey Angus, although his coat was black.
The bull was brought to Ayres abattoir, near Newby Bridge, at dawn. The journey from the farm was less than an hour. The travelling time is important because a long journey will lead to stress and stress releases a hormone which toughens the meat. Some commercial breeds will spend 18 hours on their final journey in a lorry crowded with other frightened animals. We are fortunate having Ayres so close to hand so that the stress is kept to a minimum
The bull was released into the building immediately on arrival and five minutes later it was dead- but not before it had exchanged a tender kiss with a cow awaiting a similar fate- as this video shows. The sides of beef weighed 214 and 216 kilos respectively- a total of 420 kilos, which is a formidable weight for a traditional beast.  They will be hung for 26 days and the sirloins have been set aside for the Slow Food “Burns Night” dinner at the Damson Dene on January 25th.

On average rare breed sows such as ours produce fewer piglets than the ‘factory-bred’ commercial varieties such as the Large White. The average is about 10, which is fine, not least because a pig has only 12 teats and might struggle with a larger brood.
But on December 22nd, this beauty of ours produced 16, and they all survived. She started to farrow during the night and finished at about 2am, attended throughout by Jean. Jean’s careful husbandry ensured that they all survived. She knew that if sows are allowed to pig on their own some will inevitably be lost.
The only problem is- there are now too many piglets for the number of teats, so the piglets have to queue, as this video shows.
An enterprising pig farmer in Yorkshire, after reading that the Chinese produce 40 million tons of pork a year, to our 800,000 tons, went to investigate and he found a variety of Chinese pig with 16 teats. He has now crossed this with an English pig to produce the first breed here with 16 teats and the subsequent increase in productivity has enabled him to expand so fast that he now has the largest pig farm in the country. Good luck to him, but I think we’ll stick to our mammary-challenged British breeds.