Relaxed Farming - our farm in your classroom

Sage's kid, now officially named as Ebony, took his first steps outside today. Sage spent most of the morning trying to encourage him to come out of the barn with no success whatsoever, and then when he eventually did decide to venture forth he ended up galloping all the way down to the middle of the paddock: quite an adventure for such a little chap!! We are not quite sure what he felt when he met Jupiter and Neptune but as this photo shows he sensibly stood very still and let them have a sniff. Sage was definitely worried and bleated her concerns. She is our most timid and least confident goat and so shortly after this meeting, she took little Ebony back up to the barn and the security of their stall.
No babies from Onion still: today is day 152 of her pregnancy and so we are starting to get a little worried...
We now have another Muscovy sitting on eggs, she started to build her nest three days ago and as with the first Muscovy (now on day seven of her 35 day incubation period), she carried on laying for three days before then starting to sit properly. Her nest is incredibly full of down as you can see from the middle photo. She is nesting in the same poultry house as Katherine whose turkey eggs are due to hatch on 9th May. Despite being different species, this sharing seems to be working fine and we even have an Indian Game chicken who goes into the house every day to lay her egg. Indian Games make great mums so we wouldn't be at all surprised if she goes broody as well and then we could have one turkey, one duck and one chicken all sitting on eggs in one house!!!
And talking of turkey eggs, our batch of 18 in the incubator are due to hatch this weekend. We have turned the temperature down and the humidly up and stopped the incubator turning. The eggs now need to be still so that the chicks can begin the 'pipping' process which is where they break through the membrane they are in, start to breathe the air in the air sac inside the egg and then break through the egg itself and enter the outside world. The humidity needs to be higher so that the egg shells don't dry out and become too tough for the chicks to break!! Fingers crossed for a good hatch rate!!