Billy no-mates

So Harald gets bigger  and is now in the field with the other sheep . The problem is that his 'mother' comes 3 times a day with a bottle and then leaves.

So he needs to find some friends

better luck tomorrow perhaps ?

Firing Blanks

The female turkey has been sitting on some eggs for 7 weeks.

The normal incubation is about 5 weeks ,so we suspected something wasn't right, as we have seen no action and heard no tweeting all.

And she has now left her nest , which gave us the opportuity to see what , if anything had hatched.

And the eggs are the same as they were 7 weeks ago.

So the poor chap is firing blanks.

Or hasn't got the hang of it

Or  something.

putting out and letting out .

So a hen that hatched a  gosling and is outgrowing the box and cage that was used for incubation

And so they have been moved outside

And we decided that the goose and its gosling were big enough to be let out of their run.

And the (male) goose that hangs around decided to get acquinted

A little while later all three of them were going around together.

And finally

And the last expecting ewe gave birth in the early hours of the morning.
All well, it seemed and the lamb had been licked dry and was up and active and trying to feed

The emphasis on 'trying'. Whenever the lamb attempted to feed, the lamb.

And the plan is to go and hold the ewe and  latch on the lamb so that it can feed.
And do that every 3 hours or so, until they both get the hang of what is supposed to happen

one and ???one more

The first gosling emerged here. 48 hrs later there is still only one that we can see.

So  we've risked the pecking , and had a look.

Of the remaining 2 eggs, one is obviously infertile, and we can hear the sloshing sloshing sounds of it contents when gently shaken.

And the other ?

Well we aren't sure. The risk of leaving the egg where it is is that the hen will get fed up andjust abandon it. So we are going to give it another 48 hours or so .

new neighbours

the goose and its gosling have outgrown their temporary home.

And Harald needs more space.

And i don't want to lug sheep hurdles all over the place un-necessarily.

So Harald, Alice (the goose) and the as-yet un-named gosling - how about amarillo, or artichoke, or asparagus - are neighbours

new arrival

We sat a hen on some eggs here 

And we saw some movement this morning

 We will wait a few more days nad see how mnay others we get

2nd time lucky

the hen that was sitting and making broody-noises  didnt like the custom-arranged brooding environment

Not dark enough , not private enough. or something

So we have used one of the empty hen houses and set her up in there with a dozen eggs.

The only problem is  keeping an eye on things and ensuring food and water etc are topped up.

Watch this space  4weeks hence .

And another 430am start

So one of the ewes went into bout over night and by first light it was clear that things had got a static.

looking at the ewe we could see a pair of feet.
And after receiving some assistance a male lamb was delivered.
 And as we were there , we managed to get its first moments on video

one hen a-stting

And one of the hens has gone broody - bit later than normal as its usually mid-April when this starts.
And as some of the hens are getting on a bit we may need to replace them.

So the chick run has been brought back into use, as she is sitting on some plaster eggs. If she is still sitting in the morning, we will put some real eggs under her.

Sadly

one of the ewes epecting twins showed early signs of labour from about 945 pm. As it gets dark about an hour later, there isnt an awful lot we can do . Early labour ( just as in people) can go on  a bit and we thought we'd still be waiting when it got light again ( about 345 am)


We found one healthy, active lamb with   the mother

and the body of the other one  a short distance away

It looks as if it hasnt been licked dry by the ewe, and with the memberanes still around its face , it hadnt tried to breathe.

We think it was a breech delivery ( the wrong way round) . The problem with breeches is that  legs and backsid can coem down wuite rapidly , but the head being much bigger , can get stuck.
And if the umbilical cord comes out and is broken  the lamb is starved of oxygen unless it can breathe - which it can't do  because the head hasn't been born.

So its a stillborn lamb.

But the mother and the surviving one are doing well.

Junior not helping

the first of the ewes due yesterday delivered a singleton in the early afternoon. The one expecting twins was in early labour in the afternoon

At 915 in the evening one lamb had appeared

And she expecting twins .

And 45 minutes later the 2nd one appeared

And the usual behaviour is that the mother will lick the newborn dry,whilst it attempts to stand  and then feed .

But for this one the first twin  go in the way trying to feed, as the ewe was sorting out the second one.

But all was well in the end, with 2 active , standing, feeding lambs

And we need names for this pair.

I thought of halibut and horseradish .

Harald is out

Having become increasingyl noisy and demanding whilst in the house, the Caddie lamb has been moved outside in a pen , with the  goose house having been unused by the goose  as a shelter , hes all set up
 And now is on 3 feeds a day

sadly,again

We were told geese aren't particularly good mothers.

And I found only one of the goslings  up and about this  afternoon.  There were 2 running around at lunchtime

the other one had died lying at the side of the run.  No idea what had  happened to it .

Trodden on by the mother and trapped perhaps?
fallen in the dish of water and drowned ?

A pleasant surprise

one of the ewes showed signs of early labour last last night.  By early this  morning  , it seemed thta not a lot was happening, so wew were just  waiting and watching.
And then instead of the usual lear fluid that appears ( 'the waters breaking' ) , it was bloody.  So we wondered about a APH   ( do sheep get ante-artum haemorrhage ? )  so spoke to the vet.
Who came along and sorted out the malpersentation. Normally both legs are supposed to be forward  -  up by the nose , but in this case one was back . So one that was sorted and the lamb delivered, the vet announced there was another one.
And a few minutes later a lamb was delvered , breech  first - ie wrong way round.

even after a bit of swinging and rubbing for stimulation, the second one took a while to get going.
And i managed to get a clip of it getting going .

 

sadly

 The chick was returned to its mother  last night once they had roosted.

But was found this morning .

the unhatched egg

when we rescued the goslings  and put them and their mother into a chick run , we had one egg that hadn't hatched.
It was cool , but nothing to loose - so it went into the incubator.

and over the next 30 hours

the incubator isn't large enough to allow the gosling to stand , so the intermediate step, prior to re-introducing it back to the mother , now in the chick run  is to use the heat lamp,  and using a small plasic box, allow it to dry out and fluff up  over the next few hours.

Geese and a parenting fail

We spotted the goslings a few days ago , and have been keeping an eye on them from a distance.

the adults went off to have a splash in a falt bit of the burn.

and the goslings tried to follow - and got stuck between the clumps of grass, and unablt to get out.

  So they clearly can't be left to their own devices.

One of the chick runs has been brought  out of storage .

 And at least the  goose and the goslings wont go their separate ways  until the little ones are a bit bigfger and can fend for themselves .

first loss

in the evening yesterday one of the ewes looked  as if she was going into labour. The slightly unusual thing was that thre wasnt the usual clear fluid and bag of membranes that appeared first - it was more bloody than we have come to expect.
But by this morning there were no lambs  and she was seemingly back to normal, grazing. Except for further loss of fluid.
So we got the vet to come and see what's what.
Examinstiaon of the ewe reveled an open cervix and with the help of a lambing rope  (a bit like this )  a lamb was delivered. And there was us all thinking it would be a stillbirh - and it wriggled and gasped and after a couple of minutes was breathing and being licked by its mother.

So that was that - we thought. The scan had initially shown 2 lambs, but   pregnacnise can fail to progress and so we thought we'd ended up with one . But going out a coule of hours later we were surprised 

On closer inspection

So we think that this was the 2nd twin. And the cause of the abnormal labour.
I wonder if there has  been a placental abruption and the lamb and placenta have subsequently died.

The ewe is continuing to pass the placenta - which is  normal -  but instead of being a red colour , its dirty brown colour , probably due to  the lack of blood supply leading to the death of  the tissue.

New arrivals

It started here

When we looked there were  still unhatched eggs under her .

We will hopefully know more over the next couple of days

Hail

So it was a cold night, with hail and freezing rain .

And the 4.30 trip round  identified oneof the lambs born yesterday who lying in one place, nbot following its mother and not feeding.  The  normal temperature for a lamb is about 39 deg C   and this one was at 37 degrees . The traditional treatment for this is to put the (live) lamb  in the AGA .We dont have an AGA , but the stove, lit at 530am , is the next best thing,

So once rewarmed , it went back out into the field with its mother and the other twin . 

but it's still not right - away from the mother, hunched and shivering. 

Clearly it would need to come in again , but taking it away from its mother for too long runs the risk of the mother rejecting it when the lamb is (eventually) put back in the field. 

So we decided to bring the mother and the two lambs into a pen in the shed. By this time it was 630 am so still cold, with wet grass and moisture in the air . 

Once inside and out of the weather it will warm up and start to feed . 

In the meantime , it needs a topup , as it has probably had nothing from the night before 

You can searhc for 'warming box' , but we decided to make our own.

And we constructed our own warming box . The 250W lamp had previously been in action with the turkey poults 

So a night in the shed, with a warming lamp and a mother shoudl hopefully see the lamb sorted , and as the weather is due to improve, back out in the fields tomorrow .

And the next day

Checking on the 2nd twin at first light ( about 3.45am) , and things werent right - the second one was small and still lying  where it had been born , whilst the first one was up and active  and starting to explore.  And when approached the mother and fist twin went off but the 2nd twin couldn't, so it was brought in .

Oh, and it weighs 2.4 Kg.

And here is the problem - its a bit unsteady on its legs and when it falls over , cant get itself up again .

Its clearly not fit enough to go back out with the other one , so some emergency accommodation overnight, and we have a caddy lamb

But over the course of the day it gets the idea about standing and walking