At Cormonochan Croft our animals are at the heart of everything we do and are the key to managing our land hopefully becoming as sustainable as we can. We chose animals that work with the land they contribute to the forest regeneration and improve plant biodiveristy.
Our Crazy Goats
Goats were the first animals to arrive on the Croft. They are the perfect beasts for the land. Goats are browsers, not grazers, this means they prefer to eat from the knees up. They also don't stay in one place for long. They are perfectly suited to move amongst our young forest, browsing on the leaves and branches but not making too much of a heavy impact. Even more helpful, goats LOVE all things weedy - the more prickly the better! Their absolute favourite - brambles! We have those in abundance and they need controlled.....bring in the Goat team!
We use 'no fence' collars with our goats, this allows us to keep them in certain areas and move them around without the need of physical fences - handy as they are brilliant escape artists.
This years addition to the herd is a milking goat. So watch this space for all things Goat's milk related, starting with our beautiful Goat's milk soap, already available from the shop.
Our Goats are really the heart and soul of the Croft. They are Jen's passion, if you get her talking about them she wont stop! We have 3 main breeds and they all serve a different purpose. The very first to arrive on the croft were the little Pygmys - these are minature goats and people always confuse them for baby's, but they are actually our oldest goats! Next we have our Boar goats, these are a large and heavily muscled goat, bread primarily for meat. Our very handsome Billy goat, Vincent is a Boar/Cashmere cross, the cashmere makes him very hardy, keeps him warm in the winter and makes our kid goats very fluffy and cute. Our newest addition to the gang is a beautiful Golden Gurnsey goat, this is a dairy breed and this is our first year milking her. We are already producing goats milk soap and hope to be able to make our own yoghurt and cheese from her lovely milk. If you want to know more about the goats check out our blog for all their antics and learn their individual names!
Pigs
We rear Sandy and Black, rare breed pigs. We chose this breed as they are a slow growing, heritage breed that are great 'routers'. This means they enjoy digging. This is great for our Croft as they play an important role in clearing some of the bracken which can take over everything else. They also disturb the seed bed and allow for greater biodiversity.
We produce a small number of pork packs yearly for local customers.
Chicken Team
We absolutely love our team of Chickens. We have laying breeds and provide a weekly delivery of eggs for our local community. But we LOVE all the different characters of the different breeds of chickens and the beautiful colours of eggs they lay, so we are not fussed about chickens that pump out the most possible eggs a year, we like a bit of variety and we also don't keep our chickens under artificial light in the winter to keep them laying. Instead we have hardy breeds that actually like laying over colder months while the other girls take a break so we can keep our egg deliveries going. We also have a couple of handsome Cockerels to keep our girls happy - Henry and Edward.
Bees
We are in our 3rd Year of Beekeeping and it is an endless learning curve! The climate here on the West Coast of Scotland is not exactly ideal for bees with little sunshine and lots of rain! But, when we do get a good honey harvest, the honey is second to none, with the flavour of all the wild flowers and heather coming through. We currently have a waiting list for this year's honey.
