Relaxed Farming - our farm in your classroom

Exciting news: 'he-who-needs-a-name' now has a name!!! We have had a fair few suggestions via Facebook, in person and from emails and we have decided that we like 'Marmite' the best - so a massive thank you to Nicola Plummer for this suggestion. Marmite (the billy) is definitely a 'marmite' colour in places: dark brown and a bit like the marmite spread, people either love or hate billy goats because of their smell and somewhat revolting habit of weeing on themselves... okay, revolting to us but female goats love it (see our Dairy Goat section for more on this...). Those of us that love billy goats by the way, don't love them BECAUSE they wee on themselves, we just accept that is a part of their mating behaviour....
Marmite is a sweetie BUT has proved to be an escape artist and unfortunately yesterday he escaped INTO the paddock with the rest of the herd. The bad news here is that he MAY have mated with one or more of the girls and if that is the case, it will mean we will be having kids mid-February, not the end of February/March as planned. A goat is pregnant for approximately 145 days - if you do the maths here you will get to 15th February 2015!!!
We don't 'think' any of our female goats were in season yesterday but a couple of days ago Thyme was acting as though she might be soon... The really annoying thing is we don't know how Marmite got out of his paddock so today he had to stay in the barn whilst we tried to sort it out. Our current thinking is he may have squeezed under the fence in the same place that we have a badger coming in and out as the badger has made a slight dip in the ground. We will keep you posted on this one...
And so to photos two and three: these two beauties are from a brood hatched in April this year. They are six months old, both now laying eggs but neither of them ever spends any significant time in the poultry area at all: they really are truly free range. In the photos they are on a bank just outside the barn where you can usually find at least one dog having a sniff and a wander. Yesterday they were both having a scratch and a peck on our driveway and today when we went down for afternoon feeding, one of them heard us coming and flew BACK over the fence from the moor where she had obviously been exploring!!! Funnily enough though, they always seem to be around at corn time!!! We wonder why!!