The main part of Kevin's work has been feeding and bedding up livestock.

Ian and Jenny went to New Zealand to visit their daughter Charlotte, now a resident vet in the country. Ian is returning this week, but in his absence Kevin has been looking after our Angus cattle and Melissa looking after Jenny's hens and making sure everything is in order.

We have 100 Angus x calves, which arrived on Manor Farm last autumn. They are loose housed in our cubicle barn, from which the cubicles were removed after we sold our dairy herd.

These animals are being fed a diet of grass silage, a protein mix, some of our home grown barley and some minerals.

Before the calves arrived on our farm they were given a vaccination to prevent them getting pneumonia caused by clostridial bacteria. There are many of these bacteria present in the environment, which can affect animals during times of stress, such as moving onto a different farm. Recently the 100 calves were given a booster vaccination.

We still have some older Angus x steers ( castrated bulls) left to finish. They are being fed a mix of maize and grass silage. They are housed in a cubicles section of the barn as they can comfortably use the cubicles to lie in. During the week another 12 were booked to leave the farm and were loaded onto a lorry with Kevin's help.

As I mentioned earlier the sheep also needed feeding and bedding up, which has to be done twice a day.

This involves quite a lot of work as both early and late lambing flocks are now housed in barns and pop-ups. Lambing the early flock ended on Tuesday, February 7, so all ewes and their offspring are now in the pop-up housing, divided into groups according to the number of lambs they gave birth to.

The lambs are now being fed creep. This means that they are fed a concentrate ration in feeders in the pop-ups which only allow access to the lambs.

Their mothers are given a concentrate ration twice a day in other feed troughs to complement the ad lib hay part of their diet.

As soon as lambing was over Kevin quickly set to work cleaning out the barns the early lambing ewes had been occupying. Once bedded up the ewes due to give birth in March were split into their lambing groups of those carrying singles ,those with twins and the last with multiples.

The young rams still living out at grass with the teasers (vasectomised rams) were moved onto some fresh pasture after sheep fencing had been erected and Kevin loaded two lorries with feed barley from last year's harvest ,which was sold and delivered to Gloucester. There are also 25 lambs on bottles in the nursery.

Just to finish , I have to tell you that the small flock of family pets have also given birth to their lambs.

Hazel, Blackberry, Snowberry and Ivy all had twins. The father of all their lambs is Ed, a ram that was bought two years ago to introduce new genes into the flock.

The old ladies Palini and Rosie have been retired and are enjoying taking life easier at the grand ages of 13 and 11. For sheep these are good ages, as they tend to lose their teeth once they have passed four years old.

From four the incisor teeth will begin to wear, spread and eventually break.

Sheep are ruminants and have no teeth in the front part of their upper jaw, just a hard pad.