Animal Lovers Web Blog

As extensive animal keepers and all round animal lovers some of the highlights of the summer for us this year have been attending the various agricultural and horticultural shows. This is something that we have done occasionally before but this year we have made a point of attending as many as we can.

The latest show was the Sedgefield Show 2008 which we attended yesterday and despite the dreadful weather with frequent heavy rain we still managed to have a fantastic time.

As is usually the case at shows I spent the majority of my time looking at the wonderful sheep on display. While the Sedgefield Show cannot compete in numbers and varieties on display with the larger shows it does have the advantage of being more personal, which allows you much more time with the animals and a better chance of speaking in detail with the owners and breeders.

At this year’s Sedgefield show one breed of sheep particularly caught our eye which was a rare and special breed sheep, the Oxford Down. These are a pretty rare breed of sheep with only 70 small flocks in the whole of the UK, but they are totally adorable and apparently have a great temperament and for those who consume their animals I’m told that they produce excellent meat.

I certainly plan to look into this breed of sheep in more detail and would be very interested in possibly getting some of our own, as pets but with the option to possibly breed on a small scale and some point in the future. You can see an Oxford Down sheep ewe and lamb in the pictures.

I did manage to move on from the sheep eventually to see some of the other animals on display which included some lovely cattle, poultry including game fowl, guinea pigs, rabbits and dog trials. The rest of the family spent much of the day in the dog section and watching the fascinating dog trials on display. The lovely brown and white Border Collie above wasn’t in the show but was gorgeous nonetheless and the owner was good enough to let me take a picture.

As well as the animals there were a whole host of other activities including prize vegetable, flower, cake and crafts and tasting sessions from local farm shops with many delicious meats and cheeses to sample. It was certainly not a day to be watching the waistline.

Other interesting activities were a demonstration by some fox hounds and horses, fun run and a fancy dress competition for horses and you can see one of my favourites in the picture at the top of this post.

All in all the Sedgefield show was a fantastic day out and is already in the diary for next year, as I just check what is next in line for this year!!

John

Animal Lovers Web

Wow, what a day we’ve just  had! My daughter and I went to the Bradford Small Animal show in Harrogate in the  UK today. It is an annual event where they competetively show rabbits, guinea pigs, hamsters and some other animals. We had never been to a small animal show before so we didn’t know quite what to expect, but we really enjoyed the day and we had an absolute ball.

It was held in two massive halls where around 3000 small animals, mostly rabbits but with a fair number of guinea pigs and much fewer hamsters were on display. We were free to walk around and view all of the animals and  we could also get up close and handle the animals, when they were on the judging tables. The animals owners and the judges were extremely approachable and willing to chat and give information regarding the animals, which made for a real friendly and informative atmosphere and they were also happy for people to take picture of their animals.

As well as the show animals themselves there were a number of trade exhibitons with animal feedstuffs, housing and various other animal related bits and  pieces. Around the perimeter of the halls there were also stalls manned by various animal breed clubs and societies, where the club members were happy to discuss their particular breeds of interest. There was even a television celebrity vet, Matt Brash from ITV Yorkshire’s Zoo Vet At Large who was also very approachable and happy to chat with the attendees including ourselves and my daughter even had her picture taken with him, and, of course, we had to buy his book, which he duly signed!

Although rabbits outnumbered all of the other animals by some margin and there was a fantastic array of beautiful rabbit breeds of all sizes shapes and colours, I particularly enjoyed the guinea pigs. I saw for the first time a number of guinea pig breeds that were new to me, including my personal favourite the Lilac Fox. This was a stunningly coloured smooth coated guinea pig with lighter eye circles and a very light coloured belly. I spoke in some detail with the breeder and look forward to hearing more about this breed from him and quite possibly acquiring one or two to add to our current pair of guinea pigs.

The only dissapointment for us was how few hamsters there were on show and nearly all of the Syrians were just curled up in a ball in their cages trying to get some sleep. Maybe what the Syrian hamsters need is a nocturnal small animal show to really shine! There were quite a few dwarf hamstes and a few long haired Syrians, which were nice as we hadn’t seen to many of them in the flesh before. Anyway it certainly made a great day out and we have already pencilled in it in the diary for next year and plan to find a few more similar small animals shows to attend in the spring and summer.

John 

Animal Lovers Web.com

So are we, which is why we spent today on a pig husbandry course in Northumberland. It is a fairly new course ran by a pig farmer and breeder Sarah Dodds, who specialises in Tamworth pigs. These are a gingery/golden red colour pig with a lively character and are thought to be the oldest pure English breed of pig. There are said to be only around 200 in existence in the whole of the UK.

I went on the course together with Diane and Laura, my 10 year old daughter, as we wanted to learn more about pig keeping to see if it might be for us and also to have some fun. The course kicked off with some of the rule and regulations about keeping pigs required by DEFRA and Trading Standards here in the UK, before a look at some of the equipment required in keeping pigs.

It wasn’t long though, before we got to the really interesting part – off to meet the pigs. The pigs were fantastic. They were much larger than I had imagined, although, I have been up close with pigs before I had forgotten just how large they really are. One of the many interesting facts we learned to day was that a fully grown pig will weigh up to about 25 stones! They were indeed very lively and noisy, making incredible squealing noises and they were intriguing to watch (see an example in the video below). We were then told all about the fencing, housing and feeding requirements of the pigs.

Then it was off to see the piglets and weaners and to learn about the farrowing (delivery of the pig by the pregnant mother) and to view the facilities required for the process. The young piglets were wonderful, lively and cute and must rival lambs as one of the loveliest young animal. We also had a demonstration of tattooing the weaners (marking their ears for pedigree purposes) and an offer to have a go, which we all declined, we were happy to watch the experts. Following this we fed the pigs and learned about the feed requirements at various ages.

Finally we had a demonstration of the products of a butchered pig, together with some interesting revelations about the financial difficulties in commercial pig production and why it can be fairly difficult to make an adequate living from it.

In addition to all of the interesting information and advice that we obtained on this course we were well catered for from a culinary perspective too, with a lovely lunch and afternoon tea and cakes included.

We certainly learned a lot about pig keeping and are going to go off now and do some further research before probably getting a couple of pigs of our own, possibly in the spring time. We will keep you posted on any developments, both here and on our animal website.

John
www.AnimalLoversWeb.com

We are John & Diane and it is only 3 days to go to the official launch of our new website Animal Lovers Web on 1st November 2007. This is a website which is a site dedicated to animals.
We are smallholders who keep a variety of animals including sheep, chickens, dogs, rabbits and hamsters. We wanted to share our animals and our experiences with them with other smallholders, or anyone who is just interested in animals.
We plan an active user forum to discuss any animal related issues and we have a special area dedicated to kids the “Kids Zone”. My daughter Laura will be in charge of the content here and hopefully this will contain a lot of fun things for kids in relation to animals.
We also wanted to run a blog in parallel with the website for frequent updates and entries about what is going on here as with all of our animals life is never dull.
So if you are interested in animals be sure to have a look and see what is going on here. We also would welcome any comments or suggestions that you may have and you can leave either here or on the main website.

John
www.AnimalLoversWeb.com