Relaxed Farming - our farm in your classroom

This is Banana with some of her full brood of 11 ducklings (one more hatched overnight). In total, we have four yellow ones which as explained yesterday, have come from eggs laid by Apple, our white Muscovy. A couple of the seven brown and yellow ones have a lot more brown than usual so it will be interesting to see how they turn out. Banana is perhaps a little more attentive to her ducklings than Orange and Pear, and at times today it has looked as though 'she' has been looking for the ducklings rather than expecting them to keep up with her.
In photo number two Chestnut is teasing Neptune. Each time Neptune came to get some hay from this rack, Chestnut would nibble his head: it was hilarious to watch and at one point Neptune looked at us as if to say: 'please will you get him to stop doing that!!' Chestnut is actually 'standing' in the hay rack, no doubt feeling very proud of himself. It really is quite interesting how the pygmy kids really do seem to take on their mother's characters: Onion, mum to Chestnut and Silver Birch, is definitely our most mischievous pygmy goat. Pepper, her son from last year is very like her and so too are this year's kids: always getting into places they should not be in and being really inquisitive and cheeky. So, do they copy mum, is it in their 'genes', is it coincidence?? We would need to do a lot more breeding to draw up some definitive conclusions but we do believe in part it must be passed on from mum to kids...
And finally to our turkeys who having discovered they can 'perch' now spend their days perching EVERYWHERE: on sheep hurdles, wire fencing, the tops of hutches, old branches... They are not quite as good at perching as the chickens and spend a lot of time rocking back and forth until they get comfortable and balanced. Once they are balanced though they do then look rather regal, don't you think?