Relaxed Farming - our farm in your classroom

Back on 31st May, we counted the total number of 'young' animals on the smallholding, young meaning born in spring this year. At that time we had a total of 102 and now little Satin here is just one of very few left. Let's have another count: four lambs; one pygmy kid; two dairy kids; five baby rabbits; 24 chicks; six turkey poults; and no ducklings; giving us a current total of 42 - well under half compared to three months ago!!
Most of what is now left is destined to become meat, although it might be good to sell a few more chickens as 24 is lot for the freezer. The lambs and turkeys have always been destined for meat and the rabbits too if they did not get sold as pets. Three of the remaining five are females so we could do another sales push on those maybe? The dairy kids Hips and Berry are due to go to their new home any day now and then there is Satin!!!
As you can see she is getting bigger and ever more beautiful although she is still very shy. She is now very much a part of the herd and what is fascinating is how Sage, seen with her in the first photo, has totally accepted her - to the point of demonstrating affection (as the photo clearly shows). And why? Well, Sage is VERY close to Parsley (second photo) and as Parsley is Satin's mum, Sage appears to be happy that Satin is now the third member of the group. We have never seen Sage behave this way with any of the other goats, even when some of them were kids, so our conclusion is that her affection for Satin is directly linked to her affection for Parsley!!
We have commented before on the mother/kid bonds that seem to carry on even as the kids get older: Thyme and Nutmeg are still fabulously close as is Onion to Pepper and Garlic. Of course this is a very small group of animals and the question has to be asked, if it were bigger, what difference would that make? If Sage still had one of her own kids with her, would she have become so close to Satin?
Whatever the answers it is a joy to watch the relationships that have developed and of course the next question has to be, are we going to be able to sell Satin???? Goats should never live on their own so she would have to go to an existing herd and ONE goat joining an existing herd can be quite stressful until the pecking order is established!! The other issue we have is our lack of success in finding a male pygmy billy for mating this autumn... we have actually been looking for a while and have not found any within a reasonable distance.