Sunday 15th October 2017
Plans moving forward
It gives us a huge amount of pleasure to be able to give the goats extra browsing like this. It keeps them occupied plus eating branches and leaves is really good for their digestive systems and teeth. What was also lovely here was the lack of pushing and shoving - all five ate from the wheelbarrow quite peacefully!!
Sorel continues to improve (we think) – her poo can at times still be a tad 'wet' and she also seems to vary in how weighty she looks. Her behaviour and general demeanour is, as ever, one of a perfectly healthy and normal goat.
We have good news on the 'billy front'. We are hiring in an Anglo Nubian billy from a friend with a view to getting him to mate with both Sorrel (if we think she is okay) and Onion. To facilitate this we will need to ensure that he doesn’t go near Coriander who is, of course, too young to be pregnant. We are therefore going to separate all the kids from the adults which may well also help Sorrel's weight because Corri STILL does try to get milk from her and this will be putting a bit of stress on Sorrel’s body.
Before any of this though, we need to get Onion CAE tested... and hope for the same result we got back for Sorrel, i.e. negative. We are opimistic as Onion came from a CAE clear herd, as did Pepper, last year's billy, and with Sorrel being clear (and by implication her kids), all should be fine. Having said that, sheep can also get CAE (although it is known as MV - Maedi Visna - in sheep) and we have not tested them!!!! Both diseases are reasonably rare but that is, in part, due to the fact that a lot of owners now test for it and only buy or sell animals that are clear!!!
We have good news on the 'billy front'. We are hiring in an Anglo Nubian billy from a friend with a view to getting him to mate with both Sorrel (if we think she is okay) and Onion. To facilitate this we will need to ensure that he doesn’t go near Coriander who is, of course, too young to be pregnant. We are therefore going to separate all the kids from the adults which may well also help Sorrel's weight because Corri STILL does try to get milk from her and this will be putting a bit of stress on Sorrel’s body.
Before any of this though, we need to get Onion CAE tested... and hope for the same result we got back for Sorrel, i.e. negative. We are opimistic as Onion came from a CAE clear herd, as did Pepper, last year's billy, and with Sorrel being clear (and by implication her kids), all should be fine. Having said that, sheep can also get CAE (although it is known as MV - Maedi Visna - in sheep) and we have not tested them!!!! Both diseases are reasonably rare but that is, in part, due to the fact that a lot of owners now test for it and only buy or sell animals that are clear!!!