Relaxed Farming - our farm in your classroom

Today has definitely been a very mad day with animals misbehaving, not doing what they should be doing and in the case of Neptune and Jupiter here, just being plain bonkers! These two munched on some lovely fresh grass for half an hour at tea time and then, encouraged by the pygmy goat kids tearing up and down the paddock, decided to join in. The site of little Apricot, Raisin and co galloping alongside alpacas with feet the size of their heads, was utterly brilliant. We are not sure who enjoyed it more!!! The photos don't quite do it justice - we must get a video next time!!
Elsewhere on the smallholding our golden bantam (who we have decided to name Queenie after the book by Bob Graham) continues to steal any eggs she can. It's funny because if we let her sit on any new ones, they would of course not hatch at the same time as the original five. In our experience, once the first chicks hatch, the broody tends to only stay sitting for another 24-36 hours, after which she leaves the nest and any remaining eggs. This makes sense if all the eggs began their incubation at the same time because any not hatched after a day or so, probably means the eggs are infertile or the growing embryo/chick has died for some reason. However, any eggs added later would of course not actually be ready to hatch and would need the broody to continue sitting on them. For some reason, it seems there is not an inbuilt behaviour that tells the broody NOT to add any eggs once she has begun to incubate the first ones. We wonder of this is true with all poultry?
Josephine is now sitting on 19 turkey eggs - not in the compost heap but in a house that we shut her in to encourage her to start sitting. She had a great first day but today she was off the eggs for a good 2-3 hours, enjoying the sunshine no doubt, but eventually we felt the need to put her back and shut her in again. Incubating eggs can survive time without the heat of the broody but 2-3 hours is quite a long time, especially at the start of the process!!
Aside from all this we have had pygmy goat kids sneaking into the dairy goat paddock, adult pygmy goats slipping through an open gate into the poultry paddock and a Legbar cockerel who is definitely getting too big for his boots - more on him another day!!!