This is the lovely Thyme! She is just a few days off giving birth and is now resident in the Collecting Area with fresh straw in the field shelter and some very lush green grass. We cannot say she is massively happy: she seems to be missing the others and is not that keen on human contact. We expect she will settle down and of course the arrival of her first calf will change everything. When we brought her into the Collecting Area, we brought the others up too as we decided it was a good opportunity to get ALL the cows to walk through our handling system and then out through the crush. We were VERY pleased how it all went and feel that we are now set up for TB testing. Thyme only just fitted through the crush: she is huge and her udder seems to have doubled in size just in the last few days.
We are hoping for a heifer calf. Thyme was mated to a ‘dun’ (light brown) bull and her previous owners would be thrilled if she had a dun female. Dun is the recessive colour mind you so we will just have to keep our fingers crossed.
Broody chaos again today with an Indian Game sitting on the duck eggs, having totally ousted poor Pear.