THE last week has brought stormy weather, with a torrential downpour on Thursday evening. It has been very mild and over the last few weeks the motorway has become very audible, indicating the wind has been coming from a more southerly direction. One interesting fact is that for us November has been the wettest month since January.

The hedge-cutter has now been removed from the tractor, to which it has been attached for some time.

Richard says that he still has some roadside hedges to trim, but the tractor was required to do another job. Ian has been taking some manure to one of our fields of over-wintered stubble, where it will be stored ready for spreading next spring.

I have to tell you that Jannie, who recently gave birth to Angus twin calves, had to have a visit from our vet. A few days after calving she developed a temperature and looked unwell, fortunately she has made a full recovery from an infection.

Later in the week our vet spent some more time on the farm, but on this occasion it was a routine visit to do some post-calving checks.

We have recently had some metabolic profiles done on a selection of the milking cows. Blood samples were taken from five dry cows, seven mid-lactation and five freshly calved cows. The results indicated that the energy levels in the freshly calved and dry cows was mixed, probably due to the different nutrient levels ingested by some of the cows just prior to calving. We have been advised to do this by adding to the ration an extra kilo of grass silage and an extra kilo of maize silage per cow. The straw should be decreased by a kilo per cow, but ensure that it is chopped to about two inch lengths. The protein levels in the lactating cow samples were generally low, so we will be correcting this by adding a higher protein concentrate to the diet. The mineral levels in all the blood samples were good.

During the week Kevin came over to erect fencing around some more of our fields in preparation for another three groups of sheep. Richard was able to help him before Mark brought the sheep here using a tractor and stock trailer. We now have four groups of ewes with rams and two groups of store lambs grazing on Manor Farm. Two of the fields being grazed are new grass leys, planted a few months ago.

I noticed that one of the store Llyen lambs has a mixture of black and white wool. After some research into the Llyen breed, I discovered that its roots can be traced back to Ireland in about the 1750s. At the beginning of the 19th century the first Roscommon ewes (originally bred from a Dishley Leicester ram, sent to Ireland to help breed sheep with a more marketable carcass) arrived on the Llyen Peninsula in North Wales, from where the modern day Llyens derived their name.

Before this the two indigenous breeds were the Rhiw and Welsh Mountain. The resulting Llyen ewes had a desirable conformation and good quality fleeces, but the breed almost died out during the Second World War. The introduction of the ploughing quota forced them to buy the cheaper Welsh ewes, which could be stocked at twice the density of the Llyen. They were however saved by a breeder in the 1960s, when steps were taken to safeguard the future of the breed as we know it today. Although Llyen sheep have white fleeces, there is an occasional throwback to its Welsh mountain origins, giving rise to some black colouration in the wool.