CRIA UPDATE

 The week has consisted mainly of coping with the weather and it's affects on the nursery field. With all this heavy rain, the mums and crias have been in the shelter a lot of the time and I believe this upsets things as females get grumpy with the wrong crias bumping into them and being cheeky and consequently they get grumpy with their own crias and stop feeding them. 

Polly

Beulah has had a sore udder and so wouldn't let Bamboozle feed, so he's been on the bottle and she's had antibiotics and metacam to keep her comfortable, things are improving there but still not quite right yet.

 Bettina had her cria on Monday and was fine with her for a couple of days and then decided to run away from her instead of feeding her, so she was stabled for a couple of days until she re-bonded and now she seems fine and her cria, who is a cute little black girl, is putting on weight and running about.

  Another to birth this week was Selene who has had the most gorgeous little brown boy by Nyetimber. She needed just a little bit of help with the birth as there was one elbow stuck, after that she managed on her own. Being a maiden I kept a close eye on her and with bad weather on the way decided to keep her in for a couple of days, she seems a bit confused by the whole mothering thing. Just as well as her milk supply wasn't great to start with, but she seems fine now and little Solstice has also gained weight and Selene dotes on him.  

 The last edition to the herd this week has been from Bretta, who waited 'til I'd gone out on mobile matings and when I came back she had a lovely little beige female who had obviously been up and fed already - a highly protective mum, I braved the screaming banchee to weigh the cria - she followed me with her nose in my face and I was just waiting for the green stuff to cover me, but thankfully she didn't spit - I was a bit deaf by the time I returned them to the nursery field.  We have called her cria Brie. 

Now for some photos, this time all taken by Rebecca as I was otherwise employed on the end of the sucky mucky tube!

Callista and Crystal

Mila

Brie

Cotton Fields

Cotton Fields

Very pretty flowers

A very bad hair day and thats winter clothes I'm wearing in mid June!

Solstice 

Selene and Solstice

Bettina and Cherry Berry or Berry Cherry - re-bonded

Berry Cherry

We had Paul Vallely from AAFT here on Tuesday who gave a really excellent Seminar and test our fibres for us. We were very pleased with our fibre results - we are definitely heading in the right direction with our breeding programme and the tests results bear out the judges comments on our show team too.    Everyone who came seemed to really enjoy the day and we will be repeating another one next year. Sorry I forgot to take photos at the time.