Relaxed Farming - our farm in your classroom

A mad day that began with THREE goats bleating furiously, all looking longingly at Briar, and all furiously wagging their tails!! Yes, we had three goats in season and ready to be mated with. One was Cheddar (right hand photo) which was great news as we want her to be in kid so, after breakfast we got her and Briar together and supervised the mating!! Cheddar was delightfully shy... at first!! The other two weren't quite such good news as one was Parsley (left hand photo) who has just returned from three weeks away with the billy and supposedly pregnant. Their mating was meant to have taken place on Wednesday but obviously she was not fully in season at that time or there was something wrong that meant the mating was not successful. After a quick call to the owners of said billy, we organised a return trip to try to make sure that we do get her in kid for the spring. The sales of pygmy kids do go a long way to helping with feed costs and so we do want to ensure each female is bred from every year.
The third goat was little Nutmeg again and unfortunately once more her cries had to be ignored: no mating for her until she is 18 months old!!
The morning continued to be noisy as after six days and nights we have abandoned the idea of the fox trap and decided to let all the poultry out to free range again. The noises the birds made as they all ran around flapping and jumping was fabulous. They were all sooooo pleased to be out. We turned the fox scarer back on and kept everything crossed. And that leads us to the alpacas again: we had a great chat with a breeder in Devon who thinks he may have the perfect pair for our needs!!!!