Livestock atAmber Valley FarmLike all farms, our livestock are the backbone of our existence. Without them, we wouldn't have the resources to feed ourselves and craft our cheese, let alone manage the pasture growth that occurs in the peak seasons.
From the outset, we chose to adopt a natural approach to caring for our animals over the chemical choice after many discussions with our good friends at Red Hill Cheese.
Burke and Bronwyn have been running dairy ewes for some years now and have been very generous in guiding us through a very steep learning curve.
Dairy Ewes & Isa Brown Hens
Dexter Calves & Bull
Dairy Ewes
Quite by suprise, one decided to add to our flock on a mild Saturday afternoon. Say hello to Baabra, our first lamb and fortunately, a little girl..
The driving force behind us moving from the city to a farm was to adopt a better, slower lifestyle. Clearly you can see here that at 3 days old, Baabra likes the idea of it..
Wessex Saddleback Pigs
Confronting for many people, our Wessex Saddleback Pigs are raised for meat. With the exception of Rosie, our Sow, the boys are destined to be high quality, naturally reared pork. We believe in ethical eating and ensure that where ever possible, our animals are raised naturally, free range enjoying a quality life. We do not support the restrictive, intensive farming practices of commercially raised meat. In the case of our pigs, breeds like Rosie and the boys are not favoured by commercial farmers and without the demand, rarer breeds are at risk of extinction
It seems it's a piglet's life! Snooze, run around madly, have a feed and then go back to sleep. All snuggled up of course!
At just over a week old, the piglets venture out into the big outside world.. Dexter Cattle With our original small herd of Dexter Cattle well and truly settled into their respective paddocks, our young Dexter Bull Zorro, has been longingly staring at the neighbours cows for several months. So much so that he has cleared a track along the fence line and the steers he lives with have given up hanging out with him. They simply can't see what all the fuss is about. Thinking about our longer term needs, our Heiffers are at breedign age, but are too closely related to Zorro, so we began the search for some unrelated cows as girl friends for Zorro and to extend our gene pool. Having found one of the original Dexter breeder/importers that established the breed in Australia, not that far away, we have taken delivery of four cows, three of whom have calves at foot and are also expecting sometime in August/September. Meet two of the cows and calves...
Although all of them are tagged according to regulations, our breeder runs a 'friendlier' approach to identifying the cattle and every one of her cattle is named. The naming conventions actually make it quite easy to remember which cow is which and which calf belongs to which cow. The photo above shows Lilly and daughter Lila on the right and Sally and her Dun calf Susie. We'll add a quick video clip below shortly as I happened to be around feeding out some hay when Susie decided it was time for an extended drink....
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As seems to be the case for us, the next birth at the farm was also unexpected. (well the timing anyway)
Rosie was showing signs of being close to delivering, but was not as advanced as her sisters over at the breeders farm.
Needless to say that overnight one Friday, she delivered nine piglets. Unfortunately we lost two. Whether still born or smothered we're not sure, as we didn't get to move Rosie into her 'birthing suite', so she delivered them in the company of her brothers.
The surviving 7 shown here are thriving. 5 girls and two boys seems an abnormally high ratio of girls, but we're not complaining!
