Another glorious day on the weather front. It has definitely not been a month of showers and in actual fact we could rather do with a bit of rain – and that CANNOT be a phrase often uttered in April!!! But the ground in places is rather dry and hard and the grass, whilst growing, would probably do better with a bit of damp. We have not even been getting early morning dews.
After taking photos of the lamb races on Thursday, this evening we had great fun watching the kids on the pallet assault course. It is the sound of their feet dancing around that brings a smile, as much as the sight of all that shoving and pushing and leaping. All six kids appear to be doing well, we are due another weighing session soon and are hoping to see average daily gains of 200g which seems to be the norm. Garlic however seems to have developed a bit of a limp. It has been on/off for a while and we think must be a strain of some sort. We have given her a shot of anti-inflammatory medicine to ease the pain a bit and fingers crossed, we should see an improvement.
Thyme continues to be wobbly as well. We spoke to the vet (Alan) today. Rachel had spoken to him after her visit to us on Wednesday night so he was up to speed. We concluded that either she has strained herself in some way OR, the calf could have slightly moved and be pressing on a nerve which is then causing pain. Alan said that this is not uncommon for cows at this stage of their pregnancy. Either way, we cannot help Thyme: giving birth will sort the latter and help the former but we are four weeks away from her due date which is rather a long time! We will continue to monitor and hope that things resolve themselves sooner rather than later. As with Garlic, anti-inflammatories may help but unless she gets worse, we won't use these just yet.