It's official, spring is in the air... the weanling boys are being very naughty and I'm going to have to split them up from the weanling girls soon or their fleeces will be felted by all the rubbing!
BonBon, one of our best "B" line females, daughter of Bonita and dam of Bonami and Bond, who I had left empty after she had Bonnie this year, is also behaving very badly. She's humping any other empty female that'll sit for her .. with very impressive ogling too, she's getting them all going, and whilst we were dosing them all with stuff this morning we had 3 pairs of females all at it! I don't mind at the moment, whatever turn's them on, but by the end of April she's moving into the pregnant field away from all the other empties, so they settle down ready for the real thing! BonBon will be first in the queue for a 'go' with one of our new Snowmass fawns - I have told her but she still can't wait! It's very easy to tell when she's pregnant as she attacks any male that comes near her and rams into them with her chest.. spitting doesn't come into it, just violence! Anyway, she's given us a pretty good idea who's pregnant in her group and I don't think any have 'slipped' over the winter. Alan, our scanner-man will be checking them over for us soon anyway, just to be sure.
Our fields are so lovely and dry here now that I've been able to get the paddock sweeper out, first time for ages, and with the grass so short it's done a great job and got loads moss and dead thatch out of the grass as well as all the poo, still plenty of moss left on the weanlings fleeces though!
We've been offered some grazing just up the road which is great, now I can take a whole load up there and rest our big winter fields for a few months. I'll be taking around 30 up there next week, it'll seem very odd here without them but I will be visiting them a couple of times a day and they'll enjoy the change of scene, and I won't have to pick up their poo - hurrah!
I wanted to get the whole herd wormed and vaccinated before the rain comes back, and this morning we did the last group of females, it's a nice feeling now it's finished! What's not so nice is all the toenails that need cutting, we've put that off until we get some rain to make their nails softer, I know I'm a wuss but there are a lot of toenails and I have such delicate hands!!!
Not taken many pics lately but here's a few...
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Cotton Fields ( Neifi) Just love that profile ! |
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Enjoying the evening sun yesterday |
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Arrhhh! |