Relaxed Farming - our farm in your classroom

Here are some of the many faces on the Relaxed smallholding: Mrs White, Sage, Curds and Neptune... a fabulous looking bunch we hope you agree. Today has been one of those 'wander around' days - it is great to take time out and enjoy our animals.
Thought we'd also take the opportunity this evening to provide everyone with a bit of a catch up...
Today was pretty much the last day when, if they weren't pregnant, the last of our pygmy females would have come back into season - none of them have so, at the moment, we are nervously optimistic that Marmite has indeed successfully mated with them all. We now have to play the waiting game!! You can get livestock such as goats, sheep etc scanned, just as humans get scanned when pregnant BUT we don't usually do this, preferring instead to wait and see (it becomes pretty obvious after three months!!).
In NOT such good news, Gorge and Cheddar who were both in season in the last few days, were not happy to be mated with by Ginge, the billy goat they were taken to visit. We are not sure why: we think the stress of being away from the smallholding may have been too much. Neither of them has ever been away before so it must have been a tad strange for them. We are going to see if we can find a billy to come to them and arrange this for when they are next in season, in about three weeks time.
Finally, we are arranging for Jupiter and Neptune to be castrated in the next few weeks. It is usual to castrate male animals that you don't want to use for mating as it makes them calmer. In the case of alpacas this also means they should fight less. Whilst Neptune and Jupiter don't hurt each other when they play fight, their fighting is quite rough and we would rather their play fighting was a little calmer, just in case!!!
Is there ever a quiet time on the smallholding: we don't think so??