Hatching Chicks...

Hatching eggs is surprisingly easy with a good incubator and little bit of patience...

Quail take 17-18 days
Chickens 21 Days
Ducks (Except Muscovy) 28 Days
Muscovy Ducks and Geese 35 Days

We have had 18 chicken eggs in the incubator now for 21 days...

The incubator has been kept at 37.5 degrees Celsius and 55% humidity and now they are starting to hatch...

The young chick breaks free from the egg...

The chick is left in the incubator for a short period of time to dry out...

Now dry and fluffy the chicks are placed in a heated brood box with fresh water and chick crumbs

...

Try our Tasty Sausages...

At Redborne our primary aim is education, but we also produce some very tasty products. these include, a range of pork and lamb products such as our very tasty sausages. Currently we are selling Sweet Chilli sausages and Lemon and Herb sausages...

Here are a couple of tasty serving suggestions...

Sweet Chilli Sausages with Fresh Pea Shoots, Spinach and Butter Bean Puree

Lemon and Herb Sausages with Homemade Coleslaw

Perfect for those summer days we are all hoping arrive soon...

Pig News...

It's been a busy time of it lately when it comes to pigs...

With two more beautiful litters of Saddleback piglets, we're busy tending to their every need.

Our Managlitsas have lots of fresh new grass to eat and root through and a new extension to their paddock...

Our two September gilts have been very successful at the Suffolk Show, winning best Saddleback and gaining 3rd and 4th overall amongst all the breeds in the rare breed category...

Liam in the ring...

Despite the attrocious weather, team work prevailed and the show pigs did us proud...

First Time Swarm Control and Top Bar Hives...

Our friends at Cardona and Sons asked if we would like some bees to fill our Top Bar Hive. The only catch was...

That we had to help catch our own swarm...

The Swarm decided on a somewhat unusual temporary home...

The swarm was found on a traffic island right in the middle of a major junction and was in such a worrying position we even had our very own police escort. I don't think it was their usual call out...

It was 8pm and getting cold so the swarm was collected together for the night and there was a low chance of leaving any stragglers. Having sprayed them with a little sugar solution to encourage them to wake up a little, we collected the swarm into a frameless Nuc box and gently wrapped them in a sheet...

The Swarm was taken back to the school and gently tipped into the newly prepared Top Bar Hive. We tipped them at the end farthest from the entrance so that they were warmer and left them some fondant to get them started...

The top bar hive is different from a national or commercial hive in that it does not have frames but allows the bees to build their own combs in a more natural way. It also allows inspection of the hive with only a small amount of exposure to the colony. That said it does have it's limitations in that standard frames cannot fit into the hive and you can't just keep adding supers on top...

The Top Bar Hive...