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Jade Valley Farm A journey towards a self sufficient lifestyle. The lessons, failures and joys of life on the land.

Man. It’s been a rough couple of weeks on the farmlet.The lambs developed scabby mouth which is basically the lamb vers...
18/10/2026

Man. It’s been a rough couple of weeks on the farmlet.

The lambs developed scabby mouth which is basically the lamb version of toddler hand foot and mouth. They will have caught it at their original place of origin when we worked out the incubation time.

It saw them off their milk and just feeling a bit sad with the sores over their noses, around and in their mouths.
They have been slowly picking back up but a couple of the smaller ones just seem like now that their immune system is compromised they are picking up every sniffle and cough going around (like toddlers at day care).
Out of the blue a couple of days ago we came out and found the biggest one dead in the morning. He had been fine the night before, drinking as usual, no sign of bloat and not long dead. He hadn’t even been a lamb that we had been worried about health wise.
The death prompted us though to quickly work and also 5:1 vaccinate them just to tick off things we could now be preventing against.

Also also got our last round of calves for the year and unwittingly also bought with us Salmonella in the calves which spread through half of them. The one presenting first needed to be stomach tubed 4 times a day for 2.5 days to ensure she wasn’t getting dehydrated and we ended up blanket dosing everyone with antibiotics.
Attempted to source Scour ban to help bind them up a bit and slow down fluid loss which leads rapidly to dehydration but all of New Zealand is our of stock which says something about how calf rearing is currently going across the country.
We ended up moving them out of the shed and up to the yards as K1 wanted significantly more room and more air flow around them while they were ill.

We thankfully seem to be coming out of the other side now …. Phew

04/10/2026

How amazing do these clear blinds on the calf shed look?
These were always integral to the design of the calf shed and the wait has 100% been worth it.
Thanks again Knight Outdoors Limited. As per usual we love your work

02/10/2026

We got to experience abomasal bloat in one of our young lambs last night.
Thankfully A did a late night feed which means we found the lamb looking miserable rather than dead this morning.

The abomasum is a lamb's "true stomach" compartment and is a severe, rapidly developing, and highly fatal issue primarily affecting hand-reared or bottle-fed lambs between 2 to 4 weeks of age. It is responsible for up to a 30% mortality rate in orphan lambs before weaning.

We had 3 lambs that were refusing the feeder that we were bottle feeding and our bottle-fed lambs received large volumes of warm milk 3 times a day rather than the other 5 which would have very small amounts of milk continuously throughout the day off off the feeder.

When a lamb’s stomach gets flooded with a large volume of milk it can cause bacterial overgrowth (Certain gas-producing bacteria naturally present in the gut—such as Sarcinia ventriculi or Clostridium perfringens—multiply abnormally fast) and rapid fermentation of these bacteria rapidly feeding on the sugars in the milk.

The fermentation of the sugars produces massive amounts of carbon dioxide gas. Because the gas cannot escape the abomasum it ends up trapped the stomach inflates like a balloon seen in the video. As the stomach swells, it crushes vital internal organs and puts immense pressure on the lungs, which stops blood circulation and can kills the lamb if left untreated.

Because we caught it early and the lamb had very obvious swelling but had not reached the rock hard feeling we felt confident that it could be managed without veterinary support.
We mixed up ½ cup baking soda to ¾ cup water and gave the lamb around 10 mls via syringe slowly to help neutralise the acid. We then massaged the stomach to encourage the gas to move so that the lamb could pass the trapped gas.

This morning the swelling has complete disappeared and to help it recover we kept it off milk and gave it two feeds of electrolytes before giving its last feed of the day a very watered down milk to help support the health of the gut.

As a result of last night, today saw a concentrated effort to try and get the other two lambs feeding off of the feeder and tomorrow this one will also be getting the same treatment.

30/09/2026

Great to see another plan come into being.
We had the old chicken run sitting around for a while.
We didn’t want to get rid of it as we knew it would come in handy….we just hadn’t quite decided how to utilise it.
Then we decided to get lambs again and the ah huh moment happened.

Pretty stoked with how this last part of the garage build is turning out. A cut a large doorway out of the 20ft containe...
29/09/2026

Pretty stoked with how this last part of the garage build is turning out.
A cut a large doorway out of the 20ft container to make a walk in storage area.
We were fortunate enough to score some free industrial shelves destined for the scrap bin to make this part a reality now rather than having to wait to purchase the shelves.

K1 is concerned the babies are still a bit cold at night even in the shed. So now they have a shed inside a shed 😂
23/09/2026

K1 is concerned the babies are still a bit cold at night even in the shed.
So now they have a shed inside a shed 😂

It’s been a busy week with additional jobs and it is only middle of the week.K1 is back to work tomorrow after a couple ...
22/09/2026

It’s been a busy week with additional jobs and it is only middle of the week.
K1 is back to work tomorrow after a couple of days annual leave so she is doing a bit of a push to complete some things.

The calves have all had their 7:1 and B12/Selenium jabs as well as their first drench as they have been able to be out and accessing grass from a few days after arriving here.

The baby lambs arrived and are settling in nicely. K2 is getting a huge amount of enjoyment out of them already.

The fruit trees have all had a thick layer of new mulch around their bases. K1 is looking at ways to prevent codling moth from getting the apples this year. While the method used last year prevented them it also did a bit of damage to the trunks of the trees which was less than ideal.

The new blossoms that are unfurling on the two trees that have become Frankentrees have been getting removed as they appear. One tree has been grafted with multiple different varieties of plum and the other with peaches and nectarines.
These trees had been wedding presents that unfortunately died below the grafts so we are thrilled that we have been able to recover them somehow rather than pulling them out and restarting.

The old baylage has been coming down on the truck and put through the lawn mower to then be added to the garden beds to help make new growing medium. The cleanings out of the chicken run has also been sprinkled through and then some loads of horse manure from the paddocks will also be added before we put a layer of compost and then a thick layer of straw to finish off the beds.

But the most exciting thing this week was confirmation that our old girl Maisie is also pregnant! Bessie and Pippy had confirmation of pregnancy back on the 30th of July so there will be a wee gap between them all calving.

Been a busy couple of nights here processing the deer that A got on his recent hunting trip down South.The mincer, sausa...
22/09/2026

Been a busy couple of nights here processing the deer that A got on his recent hunting trip down South.
The mincer, sausage stuffer and Pattie maker are really starting to earn their keep here.

We processed the deer into back straps, shanks, stew meat, mince and Pattie’s.
We make sure that we break it down into things we will ACTUALLY use.

20/09/2026

Yesterday was dedicated to getting ready for the new babies

19/09/2026

K1 has been busy starting seeds for the vege gardens.
A lot of the small raised vege gardens are currently filled with garlic and strawberries.
The two free ones need weeding, topping with compost before they get planted with onions and beetroot.
The large tunnel garden has been weeded and we are currently rebuilding up the soil level with old baylage, horse manure, old shavings from the chicken run, the last of the compost from the old compost bin that has been removed……we will likely need to buy a little bit of compost to finish getting the beds nice and topped up.

K1 would desperately love a dedicated space for starting seeds. The top of the freezer in the generator shed are currently being utilised.

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