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For us, it's very important to know exactly where our food comes
from and that the animal has led as natural and healthy life as
possible.
As a result, we keep, slaughter and breed (where possible) a variety
of animals.
Keeping animals is an absolute joy and although they are all fun
and full of character, pigs are undoubtedly the most fun.
Click below to meet the gang and find out their latest news.
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Pigs |
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Pigs are amazing - they play just like puppies
and have the most wonderful characters.
It all started in 2006 with Delboy & Rodney (a couple
of good ol' fashioned pink pigs). Iin 2007 along came - and
went - Ronnie & Reggie (traditional English "rare"
breeds).
This year, it's Dick 'n' Dom who are standard pink pigs.
Click here to view our pig page
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Rabbits |
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Cute & fluffy and an extremely efficient
animal to raise - although we've had our fair share of problems.
Currently rabbits are the only animals we breed - we have
one lucky male called Rocky and 3 females - Bunty, Mimi &
Sox.
Click here to view our rabbit page
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Chickens
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Chickens were the first animals that we kept.
We started off in September '04 with a few egg laying birds.
When our first egg was eventually laid, some 6 weeks later,
we were so thrilled we took over 30 photographs!
Since then, we've also kept chickens for meat and now we
have 4 rare breed chickens roaming around our pond.
Click here to view our chicken page
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Turkeys |
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Our main reason for keeping our initial turkeys
was so that we could have an entire Christmas dinner from
our garden - and apart from potatoes, we did.
Turkeys are an extremely cost effective animal to keep in
terms of the amount of meat that one can obtain.
But it's not always been plain sailing - in fact, 2007 was
a complete disaster!
Click here to view our turkey page
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Geese |
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In 2007 we purchased 8 Toulose goslings and
just before Christmas we had 5 left (a few died).
Given the size of the birds we expected a huge amount of
meat, but this wasn't to be the case. As a result, 3 geese
still remain and rather unusually, they are not destined for
the freezer.
Click here to view our goose page
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Ducks |
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Ducks are really funny to keep, but we've
never had much luck with them...
...or should it be that they've not had much luck with us
- over the past 3 years, a deadly combination of Indie (our
German Shepard), wild stoats and combine harvesters mean that
we've not enjoyed Crispy Fried Duck as often as we'd have
liked.
Click here to view our duck page
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Sheep |
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Lamb meat is very expensive here, despite
the fields being full of them and a local village's entire
raison d'etre devoted to sheep and associated products.
Unfortunately, it's not very practical for us to keep sheep
on our land. Fortunately for us, we have some friends who
do and so in 2007, we 'sponsored' our very first lamb called
Murray.
Click here to view our sheep page
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