A story of old goats

As you may remember from earlier blogs about Betty and Wilma, some of our goatie girls are getting on in years now and are starting to suffer a little with 'old lady' ailments.  BTW .. Betty and Wilma are just taking life very easy now and are fighting fit and looking great at the moment!

Sadly, the same cannot be said for dear old Daphne goat.  She has not been quite up to scratch for a couple of weeks and has been a little chesty from time to time but she always trotted into the parlour at feeding time and scoffed her meals quite happily.  But yesterday morning was a different story.  She had to be coaxed in and would not even sniff at a nice apple .. that's serious.  She was all fluffed up, struggling to breathe and had quite a bad cough.  She looked utterly miserable.  So, I gave her a good dose of medicine and spoke with our lovely vet Peter who promised to call in later that afternoon.

As is customary on these occasions, by the time Peter arrived, Daphne was in fine spirits and happily stuck her head into a bowl of food as Peter was trying to examine her.  It always makes me recall a famous Monty Python sketch where an old man shouts "I'm not dead yet!!" ...

But the prognosis is not good ... Peter handed me his stethoscope and invited me to listen to Daphne's heart. First the left side ... then the right side.  Thinking that I had put the stethoscope in the wrong place, I said to Peter that I couldn't hear her heart on the left hand side.  'Mmmm yes' said Peter.  But I could hear it beating (very rapidly) on the right side.  'Mmmm yes' said Peter again .... So her heart is on the wrong side! Mmmm yes ..... And that usually indicates that a mass of some kind is pushing the heart over to the other side .. that's why I couldn't hear anything on the left.  Almost certainly a huge tumour of some description.

So, it doesn't look good for poor old Daphne.  There is nothing we can do apart from give her lots of cuddles and treats.  As soon as she starts to feel poorly again, then we will have to take that heartbreaking final decision and let her go.  We have no idea when that might be .. could be days, could be weeks.

This was Daphne this morning ... filling her face at breakfast time!

And tonight my beloved Flora is not at all well.  We are not allowed to have favourites .. but I love Flora dearly and it will be a very black day when she finally goes to that big goatshed in the sky.  She is almost 10 years old now so it is inevitable that day will not be too far away.  But I still hope that she may live forever!!!

As the temperature plunges rapidly towards zero tonight and I have just passed the first gritting lorry of the season, I am destined to spend the night in the barn with my Flora.  Plenty of thermals and a nice warm hat methinks! Although Flora is quite a large girlie and so I should be nice and warm snuggled up next to her.

So if I look a bit jaded at Wimbledon market tomorrow, you will have to forgive me!

Makeup on - let's go party!

Our lovely goatie helper Anita was hard at work trimming feet again yesterday.  She has been busy with the milkers for some time and managed to get the final girlies through their pedicures just before milking.  As is traditional, girls are marked up with red spray - sometimes a dot, sometimes a heart, sometimes a flower.  Largely depends what kind of mood Anita is in and whether the goaties will stand still enough to have a work of art emblazoned on their rump!

But whatever the design, it never fails to be attractive to all the other goats.  They all have to come over and have a sniff at the red mark, just in case they might miss out on something that could possibly be edible.

And the result is always entertaining ... numerous goats with red noses, red eyes and red lips ... Here's a few of the best from yesterday - all a bit Barbara Cartland I feel ...

 

A smiling Shares

 



 

Naughty Figgie

 

And a rather understated collection of 'slightly pink' ...

Husky was keen to help with the milking again this morning ...

She is due in season again this weekend and her pen is already built and waiting for the first sign of that little waggy tail!

But in all this cold and damp weather, Marmite has figured out that the best place is the cushion underneath the bathroom radiator ..

 

I'm definitely coming back as a cat in my next life.

Goatie snacks

Husky was doing her 'sad face' at the rain again this morning so I set up her own little hayrack in the naughty corner of the milking parlour with lots of lovely fresh hay.  It seemed to do the trick and keep her occupied and happy for a while.

 

As usual, we had the usual array of naughty goats coming in for seconds.  Not sure you have met Smiley before .. here she is:

 

 

Her real name is Takira but she has such a tiny smiley little mouth that she got stuck with her nickname!

 

And Humphrey brought mum Valerie in with him for a snack tonight. 

 

And, whilst we're on the subject of animals eating ...

 

Only a few weeks until calving so the Gracies are busy stocking up on grass.  After all, you never know when it might snow and all that lovely green stuff will just disappear!

 

Mud and rain. And plenty of waggy tails!

Lovely weather.  For ducks ... Or mud wrestlers.  Still, not too much damage to anything (as yet!).  Just up to our eyeballs in mud across the farm yard!

Young Husky stood at the parlour door this morning just staring at the sea of mud outside, watching the rain come down:

And as soon as everyone has been milked, she runs back into the barn and bags herself the most popular comfy spot right under the hay rack:

 

Meanwhile, it's time for seasonal musical chairs again!

 

The goatlings have been moved into the main barn to leave the cattle yard empty in case we need to move the Gracie Moos indoors quickly.  They are due to calve within the next few weeks and there is also the possibility that the weather could turn bad very suddenly and we don't want to have young calves struggling out in the field if we can possibly avoid it.

 

You may notice in the picture above that there is a large black male goat in the same area as the goatlings.  This is our lovely Beamish goat.  So what of Hugo with the big ears??  Well, after being with the goatlings for several weeks, we are not convinced that he is doing his job quite properly as there still seems to be an awful lot of goatlings with waggy tails.  We have also put a number of milkers with Hugo and, so far, every single one has returned into season.

It can sometimes happen that the stress of moving house (however lovely the new house may be!) can play havoc with a chap's hormones ... We have seen it happen before when we took on a rather older male goat several years ago.  So, we have moved Hugo out for a rest and put Beamish in to get the job done quickly.  And he is absolutely loving it!  Hopefully, Hugo will be ready to go again next season after a good rest.

Max is also set up with a group of lovely ladies:

Whilst Daramac and Fremlin are keeping Hugo company in their new winter quarters in the front of the hay barn:

 But don't worry - they are not missing out on the fun!  Daramac has already had his share of young lovelies and our dear old Fremlin had a couple of well-chosen ladies a few weeks ago.  I still have a few more of the older girls lined up for him when they are ready.  Looks like there is life in the old boy yet!

Ribbons and brown faces

Great excitement in Ellie's Dairy at the end of last week when our beautiful Xmas ribbon arrived!  This has been specially printed for us and will be used on all our Xmas gift boxes and special cheeses.  I know it's very early to be thinking about things like that but we have to get ourselves organised well in advance .. after all, much of the Xmas cheese has already been made!!

So here we are ... lovely stuff!

 

For those of you interested in such things ... this all came from a very nice man called Bruce Hooper at The Little Printed Ribbon Company in the Isle of Man.  Check out his Facebook page for all the details!

 

Meanwhile, the goaties have been tucking into their new organic garlic lick outside the milking parlour.

And as you can see, some of us enjoyed it very much!  Here's Daphne with a face full of sticky brown stuff!

The babies have been long overdue for mucking out but David has been waiting for the right weather to get everything out and into the dung heap.  After all that hideous weather of the past few days, today was gloriously sunny and so we decided to get all the babies out of their barn so that we could get a clear run at the place without everyone trying to 'help'.

So, they were all thrown out the back of their barn and spent a happy day munching away at the straw bales in the next barn.

I don't think they stopped eating all day.  And then they came back in to their newly cleaned house and carried on eating the new straw in there!  Heads down, bottoms up.

Our little escaping man was not impressed with his new house though as he can no longer reach up far enough to climb out.  He spent some time wandering along the fence where he used to climb out and, as you see, kept complaining that we had changed it all around and spoilt his fun!

Husky's private suite

Well here we go .. as promised ... young Husky:

David built her a nice pen next to the boys but with the added feature of a 'lid' to stop her jumping out.  Much better than the trailer as she can talk to the chaps in the next pen but without any risk!

She is very happy in there as she gets her own food bowl and hayrack and doesn't have to share them with anyone else.

Hopefully things will have calmed down by tomorrow and she can be let out.  Then we have 3 weeks grace before it all starts up again!

Fingers crossed that the worst of the storm will miss us tonight, although I can hear the wind howling already .. Keep safe!

Back up north

Well, I have to say that it's been a very interesting week!  David allowed me a couple of days off and I travelled up to York to attend the autumn meeting of the Goat Veterinary Society.  I managed to find a good deal on train fares and so decided to really make the most of my time and made the journey by train. 

It's been many years since I travelled any distance by train and I have to say that I was very pleasantly surprised by the experience.  When the trains work in this country they work well.  Ashford to York in just over 3 hours!  Stunning ...  And I got a pile of paperwork done on the train as well.

In the couple of hours I had to spare before being picked up by my goatie colleague Sue, I had a little trot into town and visited the sights.  It's exactly 30 years since I was last in York on a student placement - not exactly a frequent visitor!  But it was as beautiful as I remembered with the Minster dominating the town:

 

I was particularly intrigued by this notice outside one of the coffee shops ... obviously must be a problem in York!

Our meeting was held at York Racecourse and it was an absolutely beautiful day as you can see:

 

As always, the meeting was brilliant with lots of excellent speakers.  It's always good to catch up with the vets and large commercial goatkeepers as well.  Where else would I be able to chat to Angus and Kathleen, the owners of the massive St Helen's Farm dairy?!

 

Whilst I was living it up in York (and had a lie in until 6.30am!!), David had help from our wonderful goatie assistants Mel and Anita.  It seems that young Husky behaved herself very well whilst Goatie Mum Debbie was away.  David took this photo of her lying in the milking parlour in the evening.  Apparently she kept falling asleep and sliding off onto the floor!

 

However, she is back up to her tricks again tonight as it's that tail-wagging time of the month again!  David has devised an ingenious way of keeping her away from the boys without having to put her in the trailer like last time so I will get a picture in the morning for you ...

Night night everyone!  Don't forget to put those clocks back and enjoy that extra hour in bed tonight ...