Relaxed Farming - our farm in your classroom

For Thyme the waiting is over: these two bonny black and white girls (yet to be named) made their appearance between 7:30pm and 8pm this evening. For Cheddar, there never was any waiting. Despite it only being Day 142 of her pregnancy, she decided enough was enough and gave birth to Bramble and her brother (also yet to be named) early afternoon. We managed to miss both births completely which was very clever of us!! Not!! We knew Thyme was about to produce as she was totally disinterested in her supper, she would not settle and then we saw the initial fluid appear. We left her vaguely settled at 7:15pm and at our next check just before 8pm we found it was all over. The second kid had obviously just been born and poor old Thyme looked exhausted! Both girls seem fine and were suckling within 20 minutes, with the younger (but bigger) of the two impressing us with her lung capacity (yes, she can scream...).
It was a shame we missed Cheddar giving birth as this was her first kidding. She kept the early signs of going into labour very much to herself, as we had no idea she would give birth today. What is incredible about this birth is how much Curds, Cheddar's mother, really wanted to mother the kids herself - so much so in fact, that we brought Cheddar and her babies back up to the barn to 'bond' - leaving Curds, Pickle and Gorge in their paddock - as we were worried that the kids might look to Curds more as their mum as she was making so much fuss: licking them and talking away! Curds has given us three sets of twins in the last few years and has always been a great mum, but because of her arthritis and now only having one working teat (due to mastitis) we decided not to put her to the billy this year. She is obviously missing the experience!!
So, we have gone from three kids to seven in a day and at the moment, the girls outnumber the boys, four to three!!
In other news, we can hear cheeping from under Katherine (it looks as though her turkeys eggs are pipping, the rabbits' eyes are fully open (their cute factor is now very high) and as well as having all the Orpington eggs ready to set under our broodies (see yesterday), we also now have seven goose eggs for the incubator (our payment for the 'permanent' loan of our pair of adult geese to our friend Luke!!). Lots more new life on the horizon...