Lots to catch up on! The final lambs of 2025, our Spring Festival and much more...
- alice3166
- May 12, 2025
- 6 min read
Firstly, apologies for the long wait - there has been much going on at Rush Farm and between it all we seem to have let our note taking slip through the cracks! Here is a bit of an update on what has been happening, as well as a few paragraphs by our friend and ornithologist Gert, who has been surveying the wildlife on the farm for over 10 years now! We hope you enjoy!
Lambing has been at the centre of the last few updates from the farm, and we are pleased to say that we are now finished! There was a gap of around 2 weeks while we waited for the final ewe to give birth, luckily we had managed to remember that we needed to keep our eyes peeled for new lambs when checking the sheep. In the past we have had surprise lambs well into the summer, but as we were prompt at taking the rams out in the autumn we are not expecting anything like that this year. Our final lambing figures show we had a 173.5% lambing rate, which is right in the sweet spot for a successful lambing of 170-180%. By and large it was a fairly stress-free lambing (barring a few bad days - we did lose one Lleyn ewe and one Shetland ewe, which was very sad) and we are pleased with how the lambs are growing now. Fingers crossed they continue to grow well!
The other big news from the last month has been the Stockwood Spring Festival, which was a great success. It was lovely to return to doing events like we used to with our landlords Stockwood Community Benefit Society, and we returned with a bang! It was so nice to see the courtyard thronging with people (thank you very much to all who came and supported us!) with a good number of stalls from local businesses. We served coffee and cake from a very busy Pantry, and Tom did a stellar job serving burgers from our newly acquired catering trailer. The tractor rides to the lambing barn were hugely popular, with some intrepid explorers climbing aboard many times. The festival was such a success thanks to the many kind people who volunteered to help with everything from food service to traffic management, tractor driving to putting up bunting. Thank you so much to everyone who helped us out! We can’t wait for the next one.
Following on from the Spring Festival, we had our dawn chorus safari, led by Gert Corfield (more from him later). While it was a select group of attendees this meant that we could get more in-depth and enjoyed hearing cuckoos aplenty, along with now being very familiar with the call of the lesser whitethroat. Due to the cold weather the Skylarks were only just waking up as we headed back for a well-earned breakfast, but much interesting conversation was had. Many thanks go to Gert for his time and expertise, and also to those who joined us. Don’t miss out on our upcoming ‘butterfly safari’ in June, which starts at a much more sociable 10:30am!
And now to ’Naturalist’s Corner’, with a few paragraphs from Gert:
"With spring well underway, the majority of summer migrant birds have now arrived. The first Cuckoo was heard on the farm on the 28th April and in the following days 2 were heard. It is the male bird who calls with the female mainly silent, but it will respond with a characteristic 'bubbling' call. As at time of writing it is still calling and hopefully it will find a mate - certainly its likely host species, the humble Dunnock (or Hedge Sparrow to those of us of a certain vintage!) is in plentiful supply on the farm. Swallows are making a home and it is great to see them on the wires again and feeding over the fields. The first reported bird in Worcestershire was on the 13th March which is incredibly early and in line with migrant birds generally arriving earlier - up to 2 weeks over the last 20/30 years.
A male Whinchat was seen on the scrubbier areas of the farm, feeding up before moving on. A handsome member of the 'Robin' family, it is another migratory bird arriving here from central/southern Africa. It will breed in uplands further north - its name is associated with Whin - the northern term for Gorse. Another 'chat' still present on the farm is the Stonechat. It normally overwinters in the lowlands and then returns to more upland areas although it will remain in lower suitable habitat to breed. This chat is not a migrant and its name refers to its call which recalls two stones being tapped together (but beware - the Blackcap has a similar call!) It seems that the male Stonechat present in winter has been joined by a female and carrying food, so a pair have settled to breed on the farm.
Butterflies are certainly having a much better spring than during the wet and stormy spring of last year. Orange Tips and other 'whites' are in good supply and Peacock are also in good number. Hopefully there will be a good show for the planned Butterfly walk on the farm on the 8th June. The moth list is rapidly expanding with some interesting and amusingly named species being recorded. Mocha, a beautifully marked creature, is not particularly common but is present in Gannow Wood, as is Frosted Green - another relatively uncommon moth. Chocolate-tip is a delightfully named and looking moth, but the most impressive looking so far has been a Poplar hawk-moth. There are around 2,500 species of moth in the UK, and their importance as pollinators and food in the form of caterpillars for our nesting birds can not be overstated - there are just a couple or so that are problematic."
Back to the day-to-day work on the farm and we have been trying to ensure our cattle have a healthy and productive year following the tribulations of last year with eye infections and mystery illnesses. We have re-instated a programme of vaccinating the cattle against clostridial diseases (such as tetanus) with all animals getting a booster and calves at foot two doses. Every animal over 8 months old received a mineral bolus to help boost levels of various minerals ahead of the growing season. With molybdenum present in the soil we have to be careful to monitor mineral levels as it binds to certain elements making them “bio-unavailable” for the animals. Indeed we saw this in our lambing this year as there were several cases of copper deficiency in new born lambs. Bolussing is a very intense process that took a team of 4 of us (including a vet!) a day and a half to administer. I think we were all cursing the cows and their uncanny ability to shoot the bolus right back out into our hands, and we were all certainly nursing sore arms the next few days, but if it results in healthy cows then it is more than worth the effort! With unseasonably hot weather we are also on the lookout for flies and the issues they can cause, while hoping to avoid the excessive use of chemicals.
We are also looking at our grazing plan for the year, and will try to follow mob grazing guidelines (aiming to replicate fast moving herds on the savannah) this year, and have been splitting our bigger fields into smaller paddocks using electric fencing. We are aiming to move animals every 2 days, with a limit of 4 days on any one paddock. This is based on research which suggests (logically!) that the more of a grass plant that is eaten down the weaker the roots become and therefore the slower it will re-grow. We need to make the most of our grass growth as the species rich grassland, while very good for wildlife, does not contain as much forage as most grass leys. With record breaking dryness so far this year we took the decision to get our cattle out of the barn regardless of grass growth and move them around quickly. The idea behind this is to minimise impact on the fields while still making use of the fact that cows wee an awful lot! This is an African technique for pasture management that we hope will help our fields along.
Also due to the unseasonably warm weather, our Shetlands have started to lose their fleeces already. Instead of shearing, where at this stage when the fleece is already lifting we risk having a ’second cut’ that will spoil the fleece for spinning, we are roo-ing them, which is basically just plucking the fleeces off by hand. This is an incredibly satisfying job, and you can tell that the ewes enjoy it too as they stand very well for most of the process. As some areas such as the legs are later to lift, it has meant that there are some weird looking sheep at the moment, who look like they are wearing breeches!
Having missed a few weeks there has been much to catch up on, so well done for making it this far! Now that the pressures of lambing and spring events are off, we are expecting to return to our usual schedule of fortnightly newsletters.
Until next time,
The Rush Farm team
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