Relaxed Farming - our farm in your classroom

Dear Ebony still has no playmates. We do think Thyme is quite close to giving birth (she is on day 147 now) whilst Onion just continues to look as though she ought to be too (in terms of her enormous size) but instead spends her days eating, chewing the cud and, bless her, whenever she sees us, waddling over for a back massage (which she adores...).
Doubt has now been raised over the dates we were given from the breeder whose billy we used. You may recall that our girls went to stay with her for just over three weeks at the end of November/start of December and so we have relied on her to give us the exact dates when our four girls were mated. If her dates ARE correct, Sage was very early in giving birth and Onion, as we all know, now VERY late!! This is the first time we have not had males on site for our goats/sheep and of course that has meant we have not been able to work out the expected due dates based on 'seeing' the actual matings. We will phone the vet tomorrow as planned and see what they suggest!
As you can see, Ebony gets ever cuter. His favourite place to be is curled up inside this bread basket!!! We now have three more turkey chicks and two more eggs were piping this evening so we may get more... The original ten are doing really well; they seem to be a very strong group with no obvious deformities or weaknesses!
Finally, success at last with the quail as today we found our first egg!!! It was laid by one of the regular Bobwhites: they have been the most vocal and active and as mentioned we have seen actual matings too. The Mexican Bobwhites live in the cage above them so hopefully they will see what is going on and be encouraged to start laying eggs as well!!!