New Twins for Nanny

Nanny and the new kids, not yet 48 hours old here, under the
IR heat lamp.

A text from our good friend Carolyn tells us that her 'Nanny' goat has just landed twins. The timing of these new babies is correct for full term, going off the dates Carolyn has in her diary for when 'Billy' (they do like original names over there!) was with Nanny but they are tiny. Charlotte, currently working full time in Dublin (missed the birth again, Char'!) , juggles some holiday entitlement and races down to assist. One (curiously the larger of the twins) is struggling a bit, is very sluggish, breathes huskily, needs help getting onto a teat and starts to 'scour' (diarrhoea).

Those 2 kids.

They are put under a heat lamp to keep them warm. The vet is called in a hurry and the kid gets 2 injections, an anti-scour dose and electrolytes. 48 hours on he is much better - a bit 'drunk' but trying to do some clumsy bouncing around. Mum is doing a good attentive job but is (understandably?) very wary of cleaning the poo-ey end of the scouring one.

Charlotte steps in to clean him up a bit but Nanny seems to be thinking of abandoning him; Charlotte guesses that it is the new, cleaned, human smell off him putting her off so she smears a bit of the local Nanny 'flavour' back onto him and Nanny re-adopts him. Phew! It's all go in that Maternity Unit. As I go to 'print' everyone is still with us and it's all looking hopeful.

Sibling bonding. The twins nuzzling each other.

Followers of this blog who were with us a year ago will recall that this 'Nanny' is the same goat who spent last winter with us while C+C were moving house and were temporarily without an adequately fenced field to house the pregnant Nanny and her new beau Billy. Nanny gave birth to the big singleton kid 'Henry Óg' under the trees in our East Field. Billy was not, in that case, the sire. Nanny had been pregnant when purchased and collected by Charlotte and I from over by Kiltimagh (Co. Mayo). During the course of 2016, the humans sorted out some field fencing and we shipped the goats to their new home in the summer. Nanny is a lovely, sweet, animal and we have kept 'in touch' with her since, so we are delighted that she has now kidded successfully again.

Meanwhile a new venture for us, trying to organise a bit of a get together of the members of the Facebook group "West of Ireland Smallholders" of which I am co-admin. Pictures in this section have nothing to do with that event; they were just pretty frost scenes from our recent cold snap. Once a 365-er... always a 365-er? Anyway, there are 250 members in the group but these are spread very thinly right up the western half of the country, all the way from Buncrana (Donegal) down to Baltimore (Cork) - a distance of 600 km, or 8 hours driving. It was never going to be easy to get many of them together; would you drive 4 hours to a pub in the middle for breakfast and a chat, then 4 hours home? Nor would I.

Ewes with frosty backs get a bit of breakfast

In a post/thread on the group which was originally about still-born goat-kids some posters got into discussing how we on the group should meet up properly in 'real life'. This happens a lot on the Internet and can sometimes be easy enough to organise but our lot seemed to be fluffing around in "we should do lunch" style and nothing concrete was being set down. I decided to set up a 'straw-man' with a suggested date, time and venue which people could then either accept or argue with different suggestions. I went with today at 11 for 11:30 at Hester's 'Golden Eagle' (pub) in Castlerea which is easy to find, and sells very good, honest "pub grub" and breakfasts at comfortable prices.

Frosty bog-land view to the North from our East Field

My suggestion met with the expected mild flurry of interest as well as a smattering of counter-suggestions and some apologies for, as expected, distance, lack of transport, prior engagements, livestock issues, busy-ness etc. There were enough positives, though, for us to go ahead - we thought we might get a few takers even if there were last minute blow-outs, which there were - one poor friend had fallen badly and smashed a knee while racing to rescue laundry from a hail storm and another had "emergency dentistry" scheduled for the very time we were getting served our breakfasts.

Our willow tunnel. 

In the event, it all went off rather nicely. Half a dozen of us sat down for a chat at 11 am over tea and coffee before segue-ing gently into ordering breakfasts or sandwiches according to taste while the tea and coffee kept coming. It was lovely to meet the new faces and to put real 'people' to the Facebook versions and the chat meandered in a lively fashion around goats, pasture improvement, Tr*mp, Br*x*t and a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, pension arrangements, newspapers and even music. A very pleasant morning's event. Hester's had done us proud (as expected) with the food and drink.

We are not sure where we go from here. Should we make it monthly and see if the numbers build? Should we start to move it around the patch - let someone from a distant corner of the 'West' organise one and start to get a network going? Should we possibly say that, No, we only attracted 4 people so there is not really a demand for this even though people talk a 'good game' on the net? My instinct is to sit back now and see if there is any ground-swell of support asking for a repeat and promising to come to another one. Watch, as they say, this space.

Hay Cart

We like to do things by the traditional methods over here as you know, so when we go hay carting we use the traditional Irish farm implements, the 2CV and pedigree Argentinian miniature horses (!). OK maybe not seriously but we had some great fun getting the baled hay in for Carolyn and Charlotte. The field which is to be home to the 'boys' (Romeo, Bob and Cody) is only yards from the house and is accessible by hard roads and flat dry gate entrances, so it was perfectly good 2CV territory. My little 6 foot by 4 foot trailer did a good job, taking 21 bales on our best load.

Once the morning mist had cleared the hay was beautifully dry and the baler man gave it one last shake through and rowed it up about 1 pm, returning to bale it at about 2:30 to bale it. We got just over the hundred bales off the 2 acres, which is not bad for a field which had not been fertilized or limed recently, all be it the baler man may have had his eye on the per-bale rate and had set the machine up to do them short and a bit light and fluffy, but we'll give him the benefit of the doubt; he may have just been being nice to the ladies he assumed would be carting the stuff.

We went into the field at about 3 pm and we were all done with our 6 loads by half four. Hot work in the sun but when the 'cavalry' turned in the form of another helper with a big 4 x 4 and a stock trailer, there was precious little left for her to do (she didn't mind at all!) and we also had to save 2 bales for Charlotte so that she could have the pleasure of getting mini-horse Romeo back between the cart shafts for a bit of exercise. I got a ride in the cart down to the field, so it was fine by me too!

It was hot work in the sun but, as I said, the bales were smallish and light; none of the lumpy, dense, long things I remember from my student days while sometimes took 2 of us weedy students to lift before we'd built up a bit of muscle tone over the working weeks. We have all the bales now stashed away in one of Carolyn's barns and I was 'paid' 6 bales for my efforts, so I too have a little mini-stack in a barn which will see the geese, chickens and rabbits through the winter (and beyond) for bedding.

In other news I was back at the carpentry today creating 4 more nest boxes. The '8-ball' chickens are now approaching point of lay and I want them to get used to the idea of being able to lay their eggs somewhere sensible. Their aunts are still laying either out in the nettles or, sometimes, in the pile of our own hay in the goose house. That's fine in the hot weather when I wedge the goose house door open with a log to get a bit of breeze onto Broody Betty (who you can see still on station on her duck eggs in this picture; she was completely un-fazed by me turning up with another 4 nest boxes and filling them with wood shavings and hay. She has got her little private drinker there (a sawn-off milk bottle) and her Sussex County crest above her head. She's due a happy event on Monday, 4 days time.

And last but not least, I promised a pic of the dozen baby bunnies - I've got up to 11 here I think, so I ask you for your continued patience. These little whizzers do not stay in one place for long enough to get a picture AND count them.

(Not So) Lucky.

As promised some pictures of our first gosling 'Lucky' now warm and dry, safe and sound after his scary start. If you've not read yesterday's post you will not know that this little guy (we have no idea of sex yet, so he's a 'guy' till proven otherwise - it saves all that clumsy him/her, he/she nonsense) did not have a very promising start. His parents are all young birds, not even a year old and have (not surprisingly) not apparently developed a good parent instinct yet.

This baby hatched at about 5 pm yesterday and we only found out because of a sudden cacophony of hissing and honking in the goose house. When we went to look we at first thought the 2 geese might be fighting over the chick but it seems that, rather, the three grown ups were shocked and horrified at this wet wriggling, cheeping 'monster' arriving in their nest without warning. The Gander raced in at the noise and everyone was suddenly charging out of the goose house and off for a shout around the garden.

Nobody wanted to go back in 'THERE' and face the thing, so there was a risk he'd get cold. Eventually they all did go back in but would not get back on his nest. They stood back at full neck range and hissed at him and looked as if they were going to try a few tentative pecks. The next time I looked he was 4 feet from the nests (which now had the Mums sitting on them looking a bit breathless and ruffled but at least they were on). He looked a bit bruised and still wet, as if he'd been flung there, maybe by the Gander, perhaps mistaking him for a rat.

Thank God then for our helpful friends, Mentor Anne with lots of advice and Carolyn who already had an incubator running with duck eggs and a brooder-box with an Infra Red heat lamp shining on a group of ducklings. He was rescued and rushed down there where he is now doing OK and starting to get some strength in his legs. This takes a couple of days in geese, by all accounts, possibly as a result of them being so scrunched up in the egg and is helped, in nature, by them being close enough to water to go for some physio-therapy swimming. Meanwhile they flop about on their bellies on land building up their strength. Lucky is in with the ducklings but protected from getting trampled by the comparatively active ducklings by being mainly in his own plastic tub. We went down to visit him this morning and take these pics, and he's already starting to rear up on his legs and climb out of the tub. He has had a swim in the (bathroom) bath for his physio. Nurses Carolyn and Charlotte are very happy with him.

Meanwhile, what of the other eggs and those disastrous parents? Well, we have offers of incubation for all the remaining eggs if it comes to that (They are nearly 'cooked' anyway being on Day 32, so this would only have to be for a couple of days) or of just any that start to pip and look like they might also get rejected. There is a chance that after the first horror-struck rejection, any 2nd and third babies might be better accepted but we are under strict instructions to keep a close eye and intervene if that is not the run of things. Any more rescues can be whizzed down to Carolyn's to go stay with Lucky. They see this as fair enough given that we are looking after their 3 mini-horses. Thank you very much, C, C and M-A. It's all quiet at the moment. No more hatches as far as we can tell (as at 13:30 on Sunday) so the Mums are sitting quietly as they have done for 32 days, and the Gander is mooching about quietly just staying in range and keeping an eye. We have no idea whether we will even get any more babies hatching.

Meanwhile I couldn't resist another picture of the Disastrous Dad enjoying his bath yesterday before all this kicked off.

Oh and the 'Lucky'? I commented to Liz that it was lucky she'd chosen to take a break in the back yard just at that moment of the honking and shouting, otherwise the baby would have been lying there on the concrete till morning, presumably chilled to death. "We'd better call him 'Lucky' then!" said Liz. Then, to cap it all, the song playing on the radio as I drove to 'A&E' was that catchy "Up all night to get Lucky" by Daft Punk and Pharrel. Not sure if those boys are thinking of the same kind of 'luck' but we'll gloss over that!