Old McDonald
Member
- Location
- Harray, Orkney
Wherever I have farmed over the last several decades I have come across something different to make life "interesting".
In Northumberland an extremely heavy snowstorm on the night of 27 December 1978, followed by more snow for several weeks, caused me heavy sheep losses. I simply could not find them, mainly due to not being able to get around, and many perished. Obviously I was not alone in having losses.
I moved to Australia the next summer - drought (and you ain't seen nothing until you see an Aussie drought); kangaroos; rabbits - easily fixed with a few tons of carrots and lacing the 5th or 6th feed with an organophosphate poison; a mouse plague and (fortunately) the very edge of a couple of locust plagues. Scotland next, free range hens, so foxes of course, but also a Mountain Lion. I had to admire that beast. My wife saw it pick up a hen less than 10 yards from me and I never knew it was there. My best estimate was that it took about 300 over almost a year. I am pleased it was not partial to people!
Today I found a new one. Wild pigs are eating the lower nuts from the almond trees. Masses of broken shells, but the kernels are gone and so are the hulls (the green fuzzy covering that some drupes have and the kernels of which we eat as "nuts"). It is not so much the loss of the crop, but the damage they have done to the young trees. Several snapped off completely, so they have eaten all the nuts on those, and most of them with lower branches snapped off. I was last in the orchard (2 ha) on Monday, so only 3 days ago. From the amount of droppings and the quantity of nuts eaten there have been a lot of pigs in there. They can reach a reasonable height up a young tree by resting their front legs on a lower branch - probably the reason so many branches are broken off.
A couple of weeks ago I noticed a dark patch on an otherwise bright two year old "pig netting" plus barb fence. I went to have a look. A pig, or pigs, had been climbing over the top of the fence and the dark colour was mud all the way up the fence. Pigs might not fly, but I never knew they could climb.
This made me wonder - what has been the weirdest problem other TFF members have had?
In Northumberland an extremely heavy snowstorm on the night of 27 December 1978, followed by more snow for several weeks, caused me heavy sheep losses. I simply could not find them, mainly due to not being able to get around, and many perished. Obviously I was not alone in having losses.
I moved to Australia the next summer - drought (and you ain't seen nothing until you see an Aussie drought); kangaroos; rabbits - easily fixed with a few tons of carrots and lacing the 5th or 6th feed with an organophosphate poison; a mouse plague and (fortunately) the very edge of a couple of locust plagues. Scotland next, free range hens, so foxes of course, but also a Mountain Lion. I had to admire that beast. My wife saw it pick up a hen less than 10 yards from me and I never knew it was there. My best estimate was that it took about 300 over almost a year. I am pleased it was not partial to people!
Today I found a new one. Wild pigs are eating the lower nuts from the almond trees. Masses of broken shells, but the kernels are gone and so are the hulls (the green fuzzy covering that some drupes have and the kernels of which we eat as "nuts"). It is not so much the loss of the crop, but the damage they have done to the young trees. Several snapped off completely, so they have eaten all the nuts on those, and most of them with lower branches snapped off. I was last in the orchard (2 ha) on Monday, so only 3 days ago. From the amount of droppings and the quantity of nuts eaten there have been a lot of pigs in there. They can reach a reasonable height up a young tree by resting their front legs on a lower branch - probably the reason so many branches are broken off.
A couple of weeks ago I noticed a dark patch on an otherwise bright two year old "pig netting" plus barb fence. I went to have a look. A pig, or pigs, had been climbing over the top of the fence and the dark colour was mud all the way up the fence. Pigs might not fly, but I never knew they could climb.
This made me wonder - what has been the weirdest problem other TFF members have had?
