Busy Tuesday

Mike had to go to the hospital this morning for a check on his heart so Nick and I got on with all the animal tasks.   We finished  condition checking the herd and found that the Chardstock 6 and our boys are in just as good condition as the girls.  The only exception really was poor old Bono who seems to be fairly well now but is still very thin.   As a precaution we gave him a wormer.

We checked the weanlings and they are all as fat as butter so it seems that they have not suffered from leaving their Mums so far.   Cordelia, our lovely brown female, is still quite distressed about losing her cria but the other mums have just got on with their lives.

We have lost three chickens over the last few days.  One had a prolapse presumably due to laying over large eggs, one just died but it was one of the ones we rescued from an intensive "free range" farm so it was probably programmed for a shorter life.   The third must have been locked out of the henhouse when the automatic pop holes shut and seems like a fox or other preditor got her. 

One of the kids was limping yesterday and when I checked her front fore I found she had a big lump of dried mud between her toe but also her hooves needed trimming so I  got Mike to sharpen up the toe nail clippers and Nick and I trimmed  all of the kids' hooves. I need to register them with the Angora Goat society before the end of December.   We have the prefix for the herd of Laurels, like the alpacas, and I am trying to think of a theme to use.   The older goats are all named after places apart from Drake the buck.  Nick suggested trees, but Laurels Oak for example does not sound very romantic.  Maybe birds? They will all be girls names as until we have an entire male (as opposed to a gelding) we will not be registering males.

Mike and Nick have nearly completed a shelter for Alario, who sadly spent all last winter in a paddock with out shelter as he is the one who fights the other males.   He now has three pregnant female companions and little house.  The shelter is "temporary" because it is actually just screwed to the fence and the fence forms most of the structure.   Mike  brought some roofing panels from the garage and used them to fill in the sides and  back and because it is so well weathered it looks just like the wooden shelters from a distance and cost about a tenth of the price.