Away from the sadness of losing Banana and her duckling (still hope we will go down to the poultry area and find her..), we have been watching the kids playing a lot today. What has been lovely is the sight of Pepper joining in – he is only just over a year old and so still very young and whilst he usually ‘wins’ the king of the castle competitions, the ‘kids’ definitely seem to enjoy the challenge of squaring up to ‘dad’. Garlic and Onion continue to do a great job of feeding their triplets although Onion in particular is looking a tad thin. We took some poo down to the vets today to check for intestinal worms again. The goats are due to be tested in a week or so (we try to test every 5-6 weeks throughout the spring) but due to the skinniness of Onion, we felt it might be wise to check a little earlier. Heavy worm burdens can cause weight loss but for a lactating female, even a medium worm burden can have a bad effect on overall body condition. Fingers crossed for the results tomorrow.
Elsewhere, our eight Indian Game chicks continue to thrive (we are still not allowing them outside yet though, even with mum). We also have pipping occurring in earnest under our errant broody in the hedgerow!! And today we put some of our own Indian Game eggs under the latest broody, herself an Indian Game. There were five in total, laid by the only IG out of the four we have, who is in fact still laying. We will now leave her eggs in the nestbox where she lays them in the sure and certain knowledge she will go broody fairly soon as well.