All Safely Gathered In

Too busy this week to do any work on the new barn or on the house. Sid cut the grass on Tuesday and has turned it and spread it over the week. Saturday was time for rowing up before the contractor arrived for baling.

The contractor arrived on Saturday afternoon and we ended up with 230 small bales of lovely sweet smelling hay

With the forecast so good we decided to leave the hauling until Sunday when help was summoned so that all was safely gathered in.

We finished the week with a relaxing barbecue and Holly cooling off in her paddling pool

Time Flies

Well its two weeks since I managed to update the blog.
Our little cria, who was born two weeks ago today is a stunner. We have called her Toad Hall Skye Blue - her dam is Toad Hall Blue Ember who is by Wellground Imber and her sire is Cambridge Buckingham - a wonderful combination. Blue was our second cria born here at Toad Hall and after a diffult birth was bottle reared. She is a superb mother - if she thinks you are a threat to her little one you are quickly covered in green spit!!!!!!!

Hiccup continues to give us cause for concern. She seemed to be making a slow but sure improvement but she is now back to square one. Her knee and elbow joints fill with fluid which makes movement very difficult. Unfortunately blood and fluid samples have not thrown any light on the cause of the problem so various anti flammatories have been used. Hopefully we will get an answer soon from somewhere. Any suggestions gratefully received.

Our next cria will be from Cambridge Bluebell (Blue's mother) who is due in July but her previous two pregnancies were three weeks over the expected date and we had to bottle feed both of her cria. Very stressful as we didn't actually live here then so sleeping in a shed on a mattress was not the most pleasant way to spend the night!!!
We did not breed from her last year in the hope that it would give her system time to rest after two difficult births, hopefully things will be more straightforward this year.









In the meantime we will enjoy watching Toad Hall Skye Blue exploring her surroundings.

Surprise, Surprise

Today has been a glorious day, not only because of the lovely sunshine but also our surprise package which was delivered while we were both out this afternoon. When I arrived home about 5.15pm I looked out at the animals, good all is well, all accounted for. Then I went through to another room and looked out again and there behind the adults and much to my surprise was a wobbly cria. Across the paddock I went to see that Toad Hall Blue Ember had given birth to a solid white female during our absence.

Blue's pregnancy was rather hit and miss. Last year she was mated to Cambridge Buckingham three times, did not give a definite spit off test so she was scanned to make sure but on two occasions this was given as negative.

When we went to mate her to Scriptwriter she was very indecisive so that was abandoned. In March she was behaving very strangely so the vet was called - a scan this time was positive. So going by her last mating date she was 326 days today, we hadn't expected an arrival for a couple of weeks.