Farming Friends

John Gossop is an East Yorkshire farmer with over 45 years experience, author of the blog Peakfood and avid researcher of threats to food production. I am pleased to say that he has written a thought provoking article for farmingfriends entitled Efficient Farming.

Modern farms, with their giant tractors and gleaming machinery give the impression of being highly efficient. And so they are in terms of output per man. Each man now produces many hundreds of tons of food, much more than at any time in the past.

However, we must remember what it is that farmers do. Our job is simply to convert the sun’s energy into food energy, something we are now doing very inefficiently and unsustainably.

Up until WWII, most of the energy used in farming was collected by plants that used solar energy through photosynthesis to provide food for the millions of horses and men doing the work. Since then we have increasingly used the solar energy from millions of years ago, stored as fossil fuels to increase our labour efficiency but decrease our energy efficiency.

Amazingly, on average it now needs about 10 calories of finite fossil energy to deliver 1 calorie of food energy. It should be obvious that such a system can only work while supplies of fossil energy in the form of oil and gas are reliable and while fossil calories are cheap compared to food calories.

If we don’t plan now for the inevitable day when oil and gas are neither cheap nor plentiful, we will face a disaster.

Efficient Farming By John Gossop, author of Famine in the West(£6.49) and Peak Food.

If you have a farming story, memory or farm visit that you would like to share or a farming issue that you would like to raise, then please send me your story or article and I will happily include it on a guest appearance post.

Crocus bulbs of different varieties and colours keep appearing in my garden as solitary blooms of colour. Fiona and Danny over at The Cottage Smallholder are enjoying pockets of beautiful wild crocus.

My favourite crocus from this year is the beautiful bright yellow crocus. Do you have a favourite type of crocus?

Join

Gardeners, Plant and Nature lovers can join in every Sunday, visit As The Garden Grows for more information.

The weather, come rain or shine, is free.

The weather is also very important for farmers as weather conditions can affect the growth of the crops. In order to produce a good yield of crops there is a need for different sorts of weather, rain and sunshine are both important to the growth of the crops.

If you would like to join Photo Hunters then click on the image below for more information.

Incubation Period

The incubation period for duck eggs is 28 days.

Incubation Temperature

The temperature in the incubator for duck eggs is 99.5 degrees fahrenheit.

Humidity Levels

The humidity level (wet bulb thermometer) for duck eggs is 84-88 degrees fahrenheit.

Final Day Of Egg Rotation

The final day of egg rotation for duck eggs is day 25.

Please note that all of this information is only a guide and that this information may differ according to the incubator manufacturer’s guide.

Always consult the manufacturer’s guide when using an incubator and automatic egg turner.

Click on the image below to visit Amazon.co.uk to find out more about this book or visit one of the Farming Friends Bookshops.

Guinea fowl males and females make very distinctive sounds.

• Female guinea fowl can make 2 types of call.
• The 1 syllable call can is made by the male and female made and sounds like repeated chattering, “Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah……”
• This call is very loud and is usually made to frighten away predators.
• The 2 syllable call can only be made by the female guinea fowl and sounds like they are saying, “Come back, come back, come back.”
• This call is used to communicate with other guinea fowl and is sometimes made when one of the females has been separated from the group.

Listen to the female guinea fowl call, “Come back, come back, come back!”

I received a comment recently asking for advice about hand rearing piglets.

THIS IS MY FIRST TIME BOTTLE FEEDING A PIGLET AND I’M VERY EXCITED TO DO IT….DOES ANYONE HAVE ANY ADVICE ON WHAT’S BEST OR WORST WHILE DOING THIS ? I’VE GOT THE MILK REPLACER AND BOTTLES AND EVERYTHING I THINK I’LL NEED TO DO IT, I JUST AM A LITTLE NERVOUS ABOUT THE POOR LITTLE THING. IT’S UP AND WALKING AROUND BUT IS SKINNY AND NOT REAL ACTIVE…GIVE ME SOME HINTS PLEASE..I JUST WANT IT TO LIVE AND BE HEALTHY…THANK YOU. KELLY.

My experience with newborn piglets is limited. When Cagney and Lacy farrowed in October, all except one piglet fed from their mother’s so as you can see my hand rearing experiences are limited.

I noticed that my piglets fed from the sow little and often so I think I would make up small amounts of milk and feed little and often.

Bottle feeding can take place every four hours, although in the first 24 hours they will do better if fed every two to three hours. Piglets can be fed sow milk powder, sow’s milk or baby milk.

Make sure the milk is at blood temperature and start with about 10-20ml and then build up to 75-100ml by which time you will only be feeding the piglet 3 or 4 times a day.

If it is possible to get some of the colostrum milk from the sow then that may be good to feed to the piglet. Your piglets chances of survival are greater if it has had some colostrum from the mother, or another sow that has recently farrowed.

Try to get the piglet to drink from a bowl as soon as is possible so that it is less reliant on you. When the piglet is 7/8lbs try to move the piglet onto solid milk feed (creep feed) as this will avoid overfeeding and the possibility of the piglet getting the scouring illness. Once the piglet is on dry food it will then need fresh water.

I would try to make the piglet as independent as possible so I would possibly start with the bottle feeding and then see if the piglet will take some of the milk from a bowl.

If anyone has any help and advice that they can give to Kelly about hand rearing piglets then just leave a comment.

The Farming Friends farm animal penpal scheme enables the penpal recipient to learn about farm animals in an interesting way.

At a cost of only £12 the Farming Friends Farm Animal Penpal will receive;

An introductory letter from the farm animal penpal.
A photograph of the farm animal penpal.
A birthday card from the farm animal penpal.
A Christmas card from the farm animal penpal.

You can choose a hen, pig, cow or guinea fowl penpal.

Recently Linz bought the Cow Penpal as a Christmas present for her step daughter. I am pleased to say that the gift was well received. Linz sent me this comment,

Thank you very much for my step daughter’s penpal letter from Milky. Being 18 she can be difficult to buy for, but on opening the letter on Christmas day, which had been wrapped up. Her eyes filled up with tears. On this response I wondered if I had done something wrong and went to comfort her to find out what was wrong. She thinks that the cow penpal is the most wonderful and best gift she has ever gotten.
Thanks again Sara for the chance to give my step daughter this penpal gift.
Linz

Thanks Linz for taking the time to send me this comment, your feedback is much appreciated.