Friday 25 February 2011

Malt's first lambs arrive!


Just had to do a quick blog to say that the first of Millhouse Maltster's lambs were born last night - but not to me! Do you remember the four Wensley girls that belong to my friend Kirsten?


They came a visiting in October in order to take advantage of Malt's services! Well, Elisha, who we thought had not been served as she had no raddle marks on her (a raddle is a harness that you put on the ram which holds a coloured crayon - this crayon marks the girls backs once he has served them) gave birth to triplets in the early hours of this morning. She did it all on her own, first time lamber, and had 3 beautiful girls! How amazing is that?


Mother & 3 girls doing well!

Meanwhile we still sit and wait for Rosie to have her lambs - she looks more like a walrus every day!

Tuesday 22 February 2011

Triplets and More!


Thought I had just better update you on how we are doing on the lamb score! Life has been a little quiet on the homefront - everybody seems to be wanting to hang on for better weather. We did have a natural break at the beginning of Feb but seem to be all stations go again now!

So on Sunday morning, Serena gave birth to a lovely girl - big and bonny - her name is Bea.



And on Sunday evening we had our first set of triplets to another black girl called Mystique - the first one was breach and a little on the small side. He struggled to start with a bit so he had a night under the heat lamp and improved greatly. He is now back with his mum and doing ok - their names are Mary, Mungo and Midge!






All the lambs have been white unfortunately so will not be able to register them. We tried an experiment with our blacks this year putting them to a white ram that we knew threw black lambs last year. In theory we should have 50/50 white and black lambs but so far we are all white - so experiment doesn't seem to have worked this far - we still have some to go so we continue to hope!

This week should be busy with another 7 due to lamb - watch this space for hot off the press pics!

T x

Monday 7 February 2011

And then there were 7!


Just thought I would send you a quick up date on progress .....

We now have 7 lovely lambs - all doing well and seem very contented to be in the world. Mums are doing an amazing job feeding as always.

Here is the role call ....


This is a grown up Josie and her mum Candy - she is huge now at just under 3 weeks!


This is Venus - eyes on stalks as usual - with her boy Mo


Next came Ginger - unaided at midnight - with her girl Nutmeg


On the same night but not with the same efficiency Jessie with her twins, Owen and Jessica


Then late one Saturday afternoon after waiting 7 hours for her lamb came Maizie with her boy Jude who was determined not to be rushed!


And last, but certainly not least at the moment, comes Truffles with her little girl (she always had girls!) whose name is Joanna


We are having a bit of a lull now but normal service should be resumed hopefully later this week!

Just thought I would also pop in a quick picture of Cottontail my lovely Golden Guernsey goat, who is expecting twins on 7th March - now she is enormous and still a month to go!