Tomatos with love

It has been another lovely day today so I finally got round to putting my tomato plants out for good, I am sure they will appreciate their new pots.

This afternoon there seems to have been some improvement with Alice allowing her cria to feed a little more. They still don't talk to each other but at least he seems to be getting a bit more milk, fingers crossed we are beginning to turn the corner. I will keep them shut in for another day and see how things go.

As I mentioned at the weekend we have begun mating. We kept our three intermediate girls empty over winter despite all three being big enough and showing plenty of interest in the boys. It made more sense starting breeding them in the spring rather than towards the end of our birthing schedule.

Following the birth of Gianmarco's Masterpiece's first cria at the weekend, who even at this early stage looks to have a very impressive fleece. It is all the way up his neck with lovely tight ringlets. We had decided that Gianmarco would cover Lualeni who herself has a very impressive fleece with a micron count of 14.8(AFD) 3.1SD 20.8CV & 0.4%>30μ she did very well at the 2009 BAS National Show.

Initially Lualeni was not quite sure what she was supposed to do, but as soon as she saw her two friends sitting she was soon down and had the longest mating of the three.

Princess Mallika, despite being the youngest (22 months) was clucking away to Legend before he'd got himself in the pen. We decided that Mallika needed more density and some character in her fleece and Legend has plenty of these attributes. Having won supreme Champion at the Scottish National Fleece show last year we are hoping that Legend will pass on his fantastic credentials.

Sienna, our Brown Champion from the 2009 Yorkshire show had a date with Golden Guinea as we are hoping to produce another high quality brown to add to the herd. Guinea doesn't usually mate for as long as the white boys but he was determined to keep going so he wasn't the first man standing. His quickest mating was an outside mating and only took 6 minutes with the resultant cria due any day now.