Payback time

Nothing much to report today other than I think my brother may have had words with LMI.

Colin & Sarah have been out for a meal at our favourite Italian restaurant to celebrate their wedding anniversary this evening leaving me to babysit Faith. We've had a great time and she was still bathed and fast asleep in bed before they got back - not bad eh!

Once they were back I decided that I'd go and weigh the babies as it has forecast a wet day tomorrow. Little Miss Irraqouy was not at all impressed when I got hold her her son, Niveous, not impressed was an understatement, she went mad. Stamping spitting and squealing at me I was green from head to toe and as the the smell, words can not describe it.

Paul and my brother thought it highly amusing - that will teach me to laugh at my brother I suppose.

Starting them young

I have been catching up with a few routine jobs round the place today which have been neglected slightly whilst we've had visitors.

The import job of poo picking was high on the list of priorities so I thought I may as well get Faith in training at an early age. Here she is 'helping'.

The only problem was if she spotted any I'd missed or hadn't got to yet she wanted to pick it up to bring it over - hopefully her mum won't read that bit!!

I think before they go home my brother will be suing me. After being spat at by LMI early in the week he got a kick this evening. We were trying to get some fleece shots of the babies, some of them are amazing already. Kazuo didn't appreciate being picked up to do this and got him good and proper where you men would rather he didn't! So that was me in trouble again.

The flies have been really bad today so the sheep and most of the alpacas have had a dose of Crovect to keep them off and to stop any incidence of fly strike.

A paddle before shearing

I had a trip to the seaside this morning with Faith (my brother, and Sarah came too!). We had great fun building sand castles and having a paddle, before an ice cream stop.

This afternoon I have been sheep shearing. I wanted to learn how to shear my own sheep this year, and one of my farmer friends Ken Bell had offered to show me how, today was the day for the lesson.

It was hands on training, he talked me through it and I got on with it, with a bit of help - keeping the sheep in the right place was the hardest part! I was also very worried that I might cut them.

All three sheep are now sheared and I am quite pleased with the results even if I do say so myself. Ken also thought I had done a good job for my first attempt; I don't think I will be offering my services out mind you.

Oops LMI is in trouble!

As I said on the blog yesterday my brother and his family are up for a few days so they have all been getting stuck in to jobs. At lunchtime it went very dull and began to rain so I dashed out to put coats on the latest two arrivals.

My brother kindly offered to help by bringing the coats, I forgot to mention to him that Little Miss Irraquoy was rather protective. I walked straight over and caught LMI's son, much to her disgust and she began screeching at me then turned to my brother who was crouched down about 8 feet away and spat full in his face and all over his top!!!

I know I shouldn't, but I just couldn't help it, I was in hysterics his face was a picture. He was covered in this putrid green gunk, I wished I'd got my camera. Irraquoy calmly turned round and watched me put her baby's coat on then they trotted off. I'm still laughing now as I type - sorry Colin! As you can imagine I now have his clothes to wash.

This evening we had a couple of spit offs and a mating to do, funnily enough my brother was nowhere in sight. Willow made her thoughts on the whole mating situation quite clear and was off like a shot, so hopefully she is pregnant to Legend.

After carrying our his spit off duties Gianmarco's Masterpiece was rewarded with a date with Veruschka. I thought we were going to be there all nice he was thoroughly enjoying himself.

Legend has a son

We have had howling gales today and some rain showers round lunchtime, my poor tomato plants have taken a real battering. This didn't put Little Miss Irraquoy off giving birth though; but we missed it!

We were helping out at a local dog show, Paul was microphone man again; he's developing a bit of a reputation as the man to do all the talking at shows; I'll leave him too it I hate having to do things like that.

Anyway before we left just before 1pm we did a check on the girls, no sign of anything occurring so off we went. On our return four hours later as we drove down our lane I yelled to Paul 'Why has Irraquoy got a baby', whilst undoing my seat belt and jumping out of an almost stationary car! I get told off for jumping off the quad when it's still moving; but needs must.

Trotting along side a very proud looking Little Miss Irraquoy was a very healthy and active white baby. LMI was only at 334 days which is early for us but he is a good weight at 8.17kg. He is from Legend of Spartacus and is already looking very impressive.

My brother who arrived this afternoon with my sister-in-law and niece managed to snap this picture for me this evening. They actually popped in to our house before they met us at the show and there is now some debate at to whether LMI was actually giving birth at the time. Colin reversed back down the road as he thought he could see a head poking out of one of the girls but Sarah said it was another one sat behind one standing - I'll let you decided who you think was right, as we'll never know!

All the excitement has obviously worn Faith out.....

Gabby makes us late with a new arrival

Another busy day, draws to a close. We were taking Hughie and Loki along with our knitwear range to Cambo Village Fair today. Thankfully I'd got everything ready yesterday as Gabby decided that today would be the day that she would give birth.

It's a good job she decided to birth this morning as her cria had one of it's legs sightly stuck and needed a little help. Once I had got the second leg in the right position Gabby popped her (yes its a girl) out.

She is a lovely dark fawn girl weighing a healthy 7.63kg. She was very early for Gabby, she usually prefers her cria well cooked with an average gestation of 355 (based on her previous five pregnancies), however this year she was only 340 days.

This latest cria is our last for this year from our brown stud Golden Guinea, he had blessed us with some lovely cria this year, we are very pleased with his results. Overall he has produced 3 boys and 3 girls for us and clients this year.

Her is Gabby with her new daughter, yet to be named. As you can see best friend Imala is still at her side. Imala has already resumed her baby sitting service for Gabby, hopefully she's just reminding herself of the ropes before she has her cria this year.

On your marks

When I got up to do my early morning check at 4am we had had a considerable amount of rain which was very much needed, by lunchtime you could already see how some of the grass had greened back up.

I thought I'd better get the lawn mower out and cut the back and side lawns. These get used as emergency grazing later in the year so I am hoping to get them to thicken up a bit before the end of the growing season, but without much rain it's not growing let alone thickening up.

Whilst I was driving round on the mower all seven cria were charging round playing chase, typically by the time I'd come back into the house to get the camera the younger members of the gang were having a milk break.

Seeing as I had the camera I thought I'd take a picture anyway. Leaving the pack is Ochre followed by Kazuo, Meketaten and Lucia heading up the rear.

This evening Casiphia needed her second antibiotic injection, she is a real live wire so I decided to wait until Paul got home rather than try and do it on my own. She was a good girl and behaved, her navel does now feel slightly different so hopefully whatever the problem was it is going, she still has the thick shrivelled up umbilical cord attached but hopefully that will drop off soon.

We are off to Cambo Village Fair tomorrow so I've been busy getting my stock ready, there were lots of new items that needed pricing up. I really must get all the new stock shown on our on line shop. That can be on the job list for next week!

Happy birthday Imala

It is Imala's 5th birthday today, she is one of my two 'is she, isn't she' girls.

We have had Imala 3 years now, but in all that time we have only had one cria from her. Her 2007 cria had to be helped into the world by the vet, he had both legs back and I couldn't or maybe wasn't confident enough at that point to rearrange the legs. Sadly over winter 2008 she aborted her cria and when we took her back to be remated (she was one of only three outside matings last year) despite two attempts she did not take. She wasn't happy about sitting on either occasion so it came as no surprise when she sat each time we spat her off.

As the other two girls had taken on their first visit to the stud it was decided that we would leave Imala's outside mating until this year. Anyway towards the end of our on farm mating Imala decided that she wanted to be mated after all and kept sitting at the pen when the other girls were mated so we decided to let Legend do his stuff.

She has spat off ever since, however when the vet scanned everyone he scanned her empty! Imala is acting pregnant however she hides her pregnancy well so it is difficult to tell, in 2007 she didn't look pregnant even to the day she delivered Aodhfin.

So is she pregnant or isn't she................... time will tell, if she is she's 336 days and went 351 with her previous cria; so watch this space.