Lamb update

• If she falls over , she can now get up
• Much more agile , and keeping up with mother and sibling. 
• As far as I can tell , grazing  as much as the other one . 

But,

• head still held to the side 
• Stumbles  - left front leg seems to give way 
• Sometimes a bit unstady when walking 

a lamb with a problem

One of the lambs got itself stuck in the wire   having t poked her head through one hole, couldnt  reverse out  and was found after ? several hours with her head  out htorugh one holenad back through the next one - ie head at 180 degrees to body.  This is normal degree of movemnt in sheeps' necks.

But this poor lamb is holding its head in this position, and there is a lot of soft tissue swelling - we assume it was struggling a lot to try  and get out .

heres the affected lamb ( at the back ) , with her sibling

 And she doesn't walk normally and falls from time to time.

there is nothing to feel and   its possible to move the head back into the normal position without ( seemingly ) causing any distress

A bit wobbly walking

 and  veers off from time to time

Nothing to do other than wait and see if it gets better. Damaged nerves (at least in people )  can take many weeks to recover.

Growing up

The turkeys continue to grow, food goes in one end and **** comes out the other.  Like babies really. But its time for them to move - they needto be kept warm for the first week or so and then  the ambient temeprature can be lowered. 
So they have been moved to the shed

the 250W  lamp will go over the next week  or so , to be replaced by the underfloor heating of the plant propagator that is their home . 

And their next home has been repaired and prepared for them 

Not 3

So the eggs continued to hatch and we had 2 chicks in the plant-propagator-come-chick-brooder. Its got a 250W lamp suspended above it , to keep the temperature at about 35 degrees C, which is what poults need at this stage .

And the third egg was found with a small hole where the chick had started to peck though the shell,  cold after the not-broody-enough-to-sit-on-the-egg Broody hen decided she didnt want to sit on it any more .


So,  nothing to loose it went back in the incubator and after a couple of hours it started to peck its way though the shell and emerged. But it wasnt right - after 36 hours it couldn't stand and demised 24 hours later.
On close inspection we could see the reason -   there was a bit of a gap where there shouldn't have been  -  perhaps the galline  equivalent of exomphalos.

Tiger

We had a broody hen, and some turkey eggs ,fertility unknown.  So we sat the hen on the eggs. And after 3 weeks ( of the 4 it takes for turkeys to hatch) , she got fed up with this and left. We realised when we found a clutch of cold eggs one morning . 

With nothing to lose, we put the eggs in  our  mini-incubactor to see what would happen . As the eggs had been cold for an unknown length of time , we  had no expectation of hatching anything . 

But 5 days later, in the morning  , we have a turkey chick (they are called poults )

Still wet,  but hatched and chirping . So it was left in the incubator  to warm up and dry out.  So what to do next? 

The others show no sign of hatching (yet ) - perhaps the cold spell has affected them all differently and slowed the development  at different rates .

So what next ?  Well, they need to be kept in a warm environmnet for the first few weeks. So the seed propagator has been  brought into use , and with a 250W lamp to provide the heat , we have a brooder . 

And as it hasn't a mother, it needs to be shown how to peck 

 And what are going to have for Christmas Dinner this year ?

New additions

Weve had acouple of geese for a while - when we had lots of ducks ( before the stoat got to them ) , the geese used to hang around with the ducks
So someone wants shot of their geese .  Apparently the geese eat plants  ( who'd  have thought of it ) and someone needed to pass on his geese because of thier culinary habits .

Hmmm  gardening wife, or geese. Hmmmmmm

So we decided to increase our geese holding. We are told that goose gets a good price at Christmas, so with a gander or 2, the geese wont be futilely sitting on plates  or eggs. 

So we went to get some geese 

and brought them back. Weve put one of the ganders with our 3 geese ( Gloria and Gertie) . So we need a name for him starting  with 'G'. Geoffrey ? Guido? Ganymede, ? Gandalf?

We leave them penned togther and he  will get the hang of having his brood.

Meanwhile the other 4 ( one gander and 3 geese) , have been put togther in a field, separate from the other ones.  Good job we;ve got 25 acres !

 And we will take orders for Christmas 2019 sometime

Simmer Dim

I was driving home just after midnight.
At this time of the year the hours of  daylight are long.  Of course at the end of December its the opposite.......

59 degrees isnt far enough north for the sun not to set . youve got to be above the Arctic Circle for that . The Arctic circle is another 524 miles north .

But we do get prolonged period of twilight , when the sun sets, but not far enough below the horizon  to remove all light.

Its called the Simmer Dim  in Orkney and Shetland

Some pictures I took , going home