Weather
Spring 2024 has been particularly challenging for all farmers due to the horrific weather conditions country wide. Not only livestock farmers trying to lamb and calve in brutal gale force winds and relentless rain but the Arable farmers couldn’t get their Spring crops in the ground either. At Kilmacolm Farm Tours in the West of Scotland we expect an annual rainfall of 90+ inches, however this Spring it was very unusual that the whole country was being affected by the same weather conditions.
Lambing
Lambing commenced on 29th March with 420 North Country Cheviot ewes expecting over 630 lambs. We welcomed over 650 visitors to the Lambing Experience in 3 weeks during this extremely busy time of the year. We lamb 100 ewes indoors & many of our visitors experienced live births and lambs of just a few hours old. The remaining 320 ewes are lambed outdoors and due to the horrific weather conditions this provided a huge amount of extra work and still resulted in us rearing approx. 60 less lambs than previous years.
On a positive note ‘Lily’ our pet lamb (now 3yrs) gave birth to a huge ram lamb which we have called ‘King Billy’ who is quite a character as can be seen in the picture above!
Calving
During May our Sim/Luing beef cows have produced 22 gorgeous Aberdeen Angus & Charolais calves which you can meet during the Farm Trailer Tours which are running all Summer until the end of September.
Due to one Charolais calf being huge, coming backwards and upside down (everything that could possibly be wrong) we had to call the vet in the early hours for our fist caesarean section since 2011. Thankfully ease of calving is one trait we select for when choosing the sire so this was unusual for our farm. I’m pleased to say both the cow and calve are absolutely fine and after a few days were out grazing in the field with the rest of the herd.
New Products
We are continually reinvesting in the business and are delighted to say that we have purchased a selfie board which has proved to be great fun and very popular for all age groups.
In addition we have installed a refrigerated vending machine which now stocks a selection of merchandise and the fantastic ‘3 sisters bake’ home baking for purchasing alongside you complimentary drinks.
