Saturday, 13 December 2008
Damp round the edges
All 36 at S5 late this morning - distinctly bedraggled but heading for the shelter of the trees!
Wednesday, 10 December 2008
Full house I think
Wednesday 16.00, I found them in the whale tail happily grazing at roughly T6 but they started walking off as I got closer to count them. I counted over 30 before they made counting impossible by walking away and in front of each other, they all looked o/k.
Tuesday, 9 December 2008
11 seen
I bumped into 11 of the cows (including 'colar' and 'horns') whilst checking the fences for damage. They were by the large pond in the valley (near Long Bottom) at about 14:00.
No damage to fences to report, however someone has been chopping down holly trees in the N29 area! Maybe someone is collecting it for christmas?
No damage to fences to report, however someone has been chopping down holly trees in the N29 area! Maybe someone is collecting it for christmas?
Saw 7 or 8?
Truffle Hound and I were standing on the ridge looking across Long Bottom towards Caesar's Camp and saw maybe 7 or 8 cattle, mainly black with 1 or 2 white faces at about M or N21 in front of the trees. They maybe Richard's group - it was hard to count them from that distance and they kept moving in front of one another. This was about 4pm.
12 in the Whale Tail
Saw just 12 early PM in S6. Pine trees seemed to be on the menu today. No sign of the other 24.
What is supplementary feeding and why do we do it?
Hello everyone,
As Christmas rapidly approaches and we are all busy either buying or wrapping presents or arguing who we should and should not send a Christmas card to spare a short moment to think of the cattle that are still out on site, contentedly grazing away through the ever shortening days and ever more increasingly frosty mornings.
We still have cattle on the majority of our project sites as their eating habits change dramatically during the winter months to when they would normally be on site during the rest of the year. Instead of eating all of the fresh luscious green grass that grows every second of the day, or picking off the leaves that have caused the trees lowest branches to bend to within reach of the cows long tongues, the cattle switch to eating brittle and spiky old gorse bushes, next years tree buds, holly leaves and berries, any bramble leaves which continue to avoid the frosts or basically anything which has some kind of vitamins or minerals in it.
This alteration of cattle eating habits has massive beneficial impacts on the site for the following year by keeping all of the scrub in check and preventing it from spreading out into the more important heather dominated heathland.
Some of you may wonder whether the cattle can get enough vitamins and minerals from just eating these morsels around the site and the answer would have to be no they cannot. Historically the sites would have been so big that they would have been able to support more animals throughout the winter but nowadays with the heaths all being fragmented up by roads, railways and housing they are too small to support the cattle on their own throughout winter.
So how comes we still have cattle on site if the sites cannot support them on their own? I hear you say...the answer is by reducing the number of cattle on site in the winter months and by supplementary feeding them what are known as mineral blocks or licks. these take many forms but a re generally a plastic bucket full with what looks like a big oxo cube. They are made up of a variety of things including ash, and seaweed (for a full list of ingrediants check the side of the bucket) and act in the same way as any vitamin or mineral tablets that you or I may take throughout the year. We would not necessarily die if we did not take them but it certainly cannot hurt us to take them and hopefully keeps away and colds or infections and makes sure we are all fit and strong come springtime and raring to go.
Well now that I seem to have endorsed all vitamin and mineral supplements I should counter that by saying we should all eat an healthy balanced diet of meat and two veg, 5 glasses of water a day, 5 bits of fruit and veg a day and so on blah blah blah.
So hopefully that has explained a little bit more about how we manage to keep animals on the heaths over the winter months.
Elliott
As Christmas rapidly approaches and we are all busy either buying or wrapping presents or arguing who we should and should not send a Christmas card to spare a short moment to think of the cattle that are still out on site, contentedly grazing away through the ever shortening days and ever more increasingly frosty mornings.
We still have cattle on the majority of our project sites as their eating habits change dramatically during the winter months to when they would normally be on site during the rest of the year. Instead of eating all of the fresh luscious green grass that grows every second of the day, or picking off the leaves that have caused the trees lowest branches to bend to within reach of the cows long tongues, the cattle switch to eating brittle and spiky old gorse bushes, next years tree buds, holly leaves and berries, any bramble leaves which continue to avoid the frosts or basically anything which has some kind of vitamins or minerals in it.
This alteration of cattle eating habits has massive beneficial impacts on the site for the following year by keeping all of the scrub in check and preventing it from spreading out into the more important heather dominated heathland.
Some of you may wonder whether the cattle can get enough vitamins and minerals from just eating these morsels around the site and the answer would have to be no they cannot. Historically the sites would have been so big that they would have been able to support more animals throughout the winter but nowadays with the heaths all being fragmented up by roads, railways and housing they are too small to support the cattle on their own throughout winter.
So how comes we still have cattle on site if the sites cannot support them on their own? I hear you say...the answer is by reducing the number of cattle on site in the winter months and by supplementary feeding them what are known as mineral blocks or licks. these take many forms but a re generally a plastic bucket full with what looks like a big oxo cube. They are made up of a variety of things including ash, and seaweed (for a full list of ingrediants check the side of the bucket) and act in the same way as any vitamin or mineral tablets that you or I may take throughout the year. We would not necessarily die if we did not take them but it certainly cannot hurt us to take them and hopefully keeps away and colds or infections and makes sure we are all fit and strong come springtime and raring to go.
Well now that I seem to have endorsed all vitamin and mineral supplements I should counter that by saying we should all eat an healthy balanced diet of meat and two veg, 5 glasses of water a day, 5 bits of fruit and veg a day and so on blah blah blah.
So hopefully that has explained a little bit more about how we manage to keep animals on the heaths over the winter months.
Elliott
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