Our own Cade

It started quite well - the Boraray ewe gave birth to twins.

The first one was born with the  legs straight back rather than bent forwards. Lambs in this position often cant be born without assistance but nevertheless, all three doing well in the first 24 hours . But then one of them was rejected by the ewe ( it happens from time to time - the ewe is happy with just one) . Had we left the lamb with her it could have been seriously injured by the ewe.

So we now have our own caddy (orphan) lamb .

After exploring the kitchen

He has been brought inside and need to be bottle fed 4 hourly for the first few days and have somewhere to sleep.
And someone to hold it and help keep it warm.

incubator update

there was a good reason why the  remaining chick hadn't got out of the egg. whilst under the broody. ive no idea what it might be, but even with us breaking the shell  a little to help it out , it was unable to get out of the  shell and died.


the other one similarly struggled. And something isnt right - there was still some of the yolk sack  remaining in the shell .

 Usually chicks come out in a few hours. this one has taken 24 hours to exit the shell, and still hasn't fluffed up , dried off and stood up.

But it it still making an effort ,so we will keep it  warm in the incubator and see what happens.

And the remaining 4 eggs are coming to nothing . No cheeping from inside the egg. We  will have a look later today.its our first venture with  an incubator , so we suspect  there are some subtleties to doing it right that we have missed. probably the eggs got too hot or to cold sometimes over  the last 3 weeks.

But another hen has gone broody , so she is sitting on some eggs

chick update

  10 it is.

1 remaining chick has started to peck through the shell .

It has been transferred to the incubator  to see  how it will do .

Mother and 10 chicks doing well so far, and transferred to  a chick run. So we expeect them to be out and eating tomorrow

Update from the incubator later.

Animal woes

We have a hen sitting on some eggs as shown here. The hen is in a broody box , ensuring that she doesn't wander too far and forget what she is there for .

But there are problems - there isn't a lot of room and they sometimes end up standing on the eggs before settling down over them .  And we found a cracked egg.  As the chicks aren't due to hatch for another week  or so  the chances of survival are slim - it went in the incubator
but after a few hours it was clear that the chick hadn't survived .

  And one of the ducks didn't look right. We managed to catch it and have a look.

 I imagine it cant see much out of this eye. But it is still active, going round with the others and  eating anything that is in its way. So for the time being we will leave it with the rest of them


And we've got a guest . A limping pheasant

this pheasant has been hanging around for a few days. It limps, but can still fly away if you get too close to it. So its harmless and we will leave it hanging round .

Sadly

The duckling was alive first thing this morning, but at lunchtime we found it dead in the run.
And the mother hen was still dutifully guarding it.

Either it wasn't strong enough to survive, or there was a problem anyway ( which is why it ended up in our pond)

At least it didnt get attacked by the local hoodies whilst it was alive.

see what we found

Out early  in the morning , we found this  duckling trying to get out of the pond.   No sign of its mother, or any other ducks ( ours were still locked up) . Ours get counted in and locked in every night , so we don't think one has surreptitiously been sitting on some eggs. Although the eggs will probably survive if left for couple of hours  and then re-incubated  , they wont survive left overnight, 

So we think its a wild duck that has hatched some and this little one got separated, or lost, and go carried down on the stream.

So what to do ? We could just leave it and let it take its chance  of either the mother finding it (very unlikely) or it succumbing to the hooded crows (very likely)   or it dieing of cold and starvation (very  likely). 

So what we did is  take the eggs off one of our broody hens and  put them in the incubator

 and  slipped the duckling under the broody hen.  She seems to have accepted it and they have been moved to the chick run and  given access to food and water  

  So we shall see what happens.

Brooding

So a couple of hens have gone broody.
We've put one in a broody box . Heres the box

If you remove the lid

There are some eggs

The hen is taken off and given some space, food and water,  twice a day.

They will sit for 3 weeks .
 Watch this space