Thursday 16th February 2017
Sunsets and Plans
A glorious day and an even more glorious evening sunset: we could not decide which picture was the more impressive so chose them both.
A day of plans and decisions … mostly good!!
First things first: Garlic was MUCH better this morning and when we took her temperature at tea time (24 hours being an optimum time for the antibiotics and anti-inflammatories to have worked) it was a wonderful 38.5: a degree and a half lower than yesterday. Good advice is to take your animals’ temperatures when they are well and that way you know what their normal is and so can compare when they are poorly! A very sound idea.
Secondly, with the weather set to be fair for a while and with the Cow Pad now being quite hard work to maintain, we have decided to let the cows back out into the 4-acre field. We walked around it this evening and other than the area just outside the Cow Pad itself and around the gate and field shelter, the field is incredibly dry. The grass is obviously very short and so the cows will continue to need hay for a while but we will use their trolley as we did before and simply move it around to prevent poaching. The plan is to put up the electric fence so the field is split in two and give the cows the bottom (and drier) half. The sheep and alpacas will stay in the top half for the moment until they go back into the top 3-acre field (hopefully sometime in early March). The sheep will probably be able to get under the electric fencing which is fine but the alpacas probably won’t go near it!!!
In the meantime we can then get the Cow Pad sorted with ground matting and a heap more woodchip and do a bit of a spring clean on the shelters ready for calving OR, if the weather turns really bad, we can get all the cows back in.
It’s a plan!! We need to sort the fencing and access to water but hopefully by the end of the weekend, this plan will have been actioned.
In slightly less good news, we have reached the very reluctant conclusion that Curds and Pickle and our Boers are never perhaps going to become the harmonious group we would like them to be. Pickle is just too bull-ish and with neither of the dairy girls being pregnant, there WILL be issues when the Boers kid. Either the kids will be at risk of being hurt OR, where the very maternal Curds is concerned, being stolen!!!
We never thought we would do this but we are going to rehome them BOTH and concentrate on the Boers. In the last week we have found what hopefully will be a perfect place for them: a farm just east of us near Rackenford where they will be going to live with five other (non-breeding) goats and three horses. Their new owner is fully aware of Pickle’s behaviour and of Curds’ health problems and is happy to deal with both.
This is a momentous decision for us, especially Jack!! As with losing Rabbit on Sunday, it is the end of an era. We have had Curds since we began this smallholding malarkey back in 2009 and she has taught us a lot!!!
A day of plans and decisions … mostly good!!
Secondly, with the weather set to be fair for a while and with the Cow Pad now being quite hard work to maintain, we have decided to let the cows back out into the 4-acre field. We walked around it this evening and other than the area just outside the Cow Pad itself and around the gate and field shelter, the field is incredibly dry. The grass is obviously very short and so the cows will continue to need hay for a while but we will use their trolley as we did before and simply move it around to prevent poaching. The plan is to put up the electric fence so the field is split in two and give the cows the bottom (and drier) half. The sheep and alpacas will stay in the top half for the moment until they go back into the top 3-acre field (hopefully sometime in early March). The sheep will probably be able to get under the electric fencing which is fine but the alpacas probably won’t go near it!!!
In the meantime we can then get the Cow Pad sorted with ground matting and a heap more woodchip and do a bit of a spring clean on the shelters ready for calving OR, if the weather turns really bad, we can get all the cows back in.
It’s a plan!! We need to sort the fencing and access to water but hopefully by the end of the weekend, this plan will have been actioned.
We never thought we would do this but we are going to rehome them BOTH and concentrate on the Boers. In the last week we have found what hopefully will be a perfect place for them: a farm just east of us near Rackenford where they will be going to live with five other (non-breeding) goats and three horses. Their new owner is fully aware of Pickle’s behaviour and of Curds’ health problems and is happy to deal with both.
This is a momentous decision for us, especially Jack!! As with losing Rabbit on Sunday, it is the end of an era. We have had Curds since we began this smallholding malarkey back in 2009 and she has taught us a lot!!!