Sunday 25th June 2017
Pluto!!!
Pluto is utterly adorable and we are head over heels in love with him and really enjoying his growing bond with us… he is drinking a good litre of milk a day now and it will be interesting to weigh him on Tuesday. At this stage we expect him to be putting on between half and three quarters of a kilo a week. He was 9.6kg on Tuesday so should be perhaps nearer 10.5kg. If his weight gain isn’t what we expect we won’t worry too much as this is his first week and a rather stressful one at that!
We are now feeding him Golden Guernsey milk as a friend has a load frozen and so to save a bit of time milking Sorrell each day, we are now using the GG milk. Pluto is certainly enjoying it and it has made life a little easier for us. Sorrell was only just giving us a litre a day as she is still feeding Coriander and Tarragon and it was hard sometimes to match her milkings to Pluto’s feeds…
Talking of goats, we have been thinking about our goat plans this last week: we - as in Jack – has complicated matters by getting in the Anglo Nubians (though zero regrets here) and adding what is in effect a FIFTH species to the 4-legged mix. We don’t really want to breed pure AN (despite having Tarragon as a registered entire male) and we are now at the stage where we need to start thinking about separating the males anyway before either of the Boers come into season.
Having lost Saturn this week and now spending a good hour and a half a day feeding Pluto has made us more aware that we have little ‘room’ on our busy smallholding (life in general) for additional tasks such as six/seven-times-a-day bottle feeding! Ideally we want our summer smallholding days to be a little slack and then if we do find ourselves with a bit of extra work, for it to feel do-able!! We are also mindful of the winter and making sure we only take through the stock that we want to and that we can manage. We need to consider any plan for any one set of animals alongside our plans for all of them, to make sure what we are considering is workable and do-able when the weather is at its worst.
Decisions, decisions…
Having lost Saturn this week and now spending a good hour and a half a day feeding Pluto has made us more aware that we have little ‘room’ on our busy smallholding (life in general) for additional tasks such as six/seven-times-a-day bottle feeding! Ideally we want our summer smallholding days to be a little slack and then if we do find ourselves with a bit of extra work, for it to feel do-able!! We are also mindful of the winter and making sure we only take through the stock that we want to and that we can manage. We need to consider any plan for any one set of animals alongside our plans for all of them, to make sure what we are considering is workable and do-able when the weather is at its worst.
Decisions, decisions…