It is incredible to believe that over the last six weeks, the number of 4-legged animals on the smallholding has virtually doubled, going from 23 to 45! And today with so much fabulous sunshine around (we have been seeing a lot recently), it was very easy to get the camera out and get some great shots. These are two of our favourites: a wonderfully ‘cross’ looking bull calf with milk covered lips and nose and a very grown up ewe-lamb (our adopted Mule/Suffolk cross) out on grass for the first time. Jack realised tonight that her afternoon/evening rounds take as long as the morning now (1 1/2 to 2 hours), simply because it is so hard not to spend as much time as possible with all the animals!!! The cows are thoroughly enjoying being back in the bottom 3-acre field. The grass here is very lush and very long and it seems very unlikely they will want to even look at any hay now. It was fun getting them all sorted yesterday though. It sounded simple: get Parsley and Sage ‘swapped’ (Parsley out of the Collecting Area and Sage in) and then all except Sage out of the 4-acre and into the 3-acre) but it wasn’t. We had hoped NOT to allow Parsley and Sage to meet but just when we thought we were almost there with Sage in the Collecting Area with the gate shut and Parsley and her calf outside, it all went a tad pear shaped. All we had to do was to get Parsley to join the other cows in the 4-acre and then lead them all to the bottom where an open gate to the 3-acre awaited. Female hormones were running high however, we had one protective mum and one about-to-be mum and we watched in horror as Sage leapt the Collecting Area fence (almost four foot) and then began really head-butting and shoving Parsley. We had of course witnessed this before just before Parsley gave birth. What we weren’t quite prepared for was that Parsley, despite having a calf now, was obviously not going to resume her top place in the herd. Whilst at first she gave as good as she got, after a few minutes she began to capitulate. Sage took no notice and kept going but at least this made it easier for us now to separate them. We turned our back on Parsley, who was happy to be able to back off, and then shoo-ed Sage backwards and away. Food played its usual role as once Sage realised we were not allowing her back near Parsley she focused on the feed bucket and meekly trotted into the Collecting Area. We shut her in and then focused on getting the rest of the cows away down the field and into the bottom 3-acre.
Thyme and Parsley had a bit of argy-bargy too but it was short-lived and the sight of all that long grass proved to be the helpful distraction we hoped!! Cow hierarchy is indeed very brutal. Had we not wanted to separate the cows, we would have had to leave them to it in the ‘sure and certain’ knowledge that they WOULD sort it out for themselves. This, at any rate, is the words of wisdom from experienced Dexter owners who all agree that herd introductions or re-introductions can be very ‘full-on’ but there is no way they can be avoided!!
It was a relief today to watch far more gentle play-fighting as lambs and kids all played ‘king and queen of the castle’ on the mini assault course we have built for them (photos will be coming soon…).