The chickens seem to be passing some kind of egg laying baton around as there never seems to be more than one laying at a time. We don't think it is always the same one though. All except big chicken (who is still recovering from her moult) have red crests and look like they should be laying, but the cold or dark must be putting them off. Big chickens comb is starting to grow again so maybe she will start laying again soon.
The sheep have been moved a few times on to new patches of grass but the grass doesn't grow much at this time of year so they eat through it very quickly. On top of that, there has been snow on the ground quite a bit, so we have been feeding them hay every day for a few weeks. A few of the male ones are headed for the freezer, so we want to get them nicely fattened up and have been feeding them maize in addition to the hay. As far as we can tell they are not yet as fat as they should be so it would be a waste to slaughter them now. We are keen to get it done quite soon as we want to make their fleece in to sheepskin rugs and apparently if you leave it too late in they start growing their summer coat through the winter one and the wool will fall off your rug.
To find out how fat your sheep are there is a method called 'condition scoring' it sounds quite simple in this explanation, but it is quite tricky to first catch the sheep, then persuade it to stay still as you poke it about and on top of that the fleece is pretty chunky and hard to feel much through. Our sheep we generally think are about 2.5 which is thinner than they want to be for slaughter or for having lambs - which hopefully they will in a couple of months. So all the sheep are on an intensive fattening diet for one reason or another.
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