Emily settled in very quickly and the goatie girls just loved to have a new person to fuss over. Big old Roz enjoyed a bit of attention and she was quickly joined by KiKi who didn't want to miss out on anything.
Emily was equally popular with the youngsters who all came bounding over to meet her.
And all credit to Emily's dad who hauled himself out of bed at some unearthly hour this morning to get her up to the goaties for early morning milking!
Barely had we said goodbye to Emily this evening when our young friend Leoni and dad Neil turned up in the yard. As you may remember, Neil is a very old friend of David's and his 8 year old daughter Leoni is a big fan of the goaties and an avid reader of our little blog. Whenever they are visiting family in Kent, Leoni always demands to come and visit Husky and the girls and it's a great excuse for Neil to come and chat to David about how they used to be racing drivers!!
Leoni was a great help with the milking and was happy to see her friend Husky again!
The weather over the past few days has been utterly glorious and the goaties have been out in their field from time to time. But many of them are getting very large and lazy now and just prefer to lie around in the barn and relax..
Not sure who that tail belongs to!!
However, as pregnancy progresses and girlies get heavier, some of them start to struggle a little. Our first invalid of this season is young Poppy goat who has been enormous for quite some time. We are not sure if she has hurt her back leg or if one of the kids is just resting awkwardly and has perhaps trapped a nerve or something.
Poor Poppy suddenly went very lame and refused to put any weight on one of her back legs - she was very reluctant to stand or move around at all.
As she was not able to get to food or hay or water and was being constantly trampled by everyone else, we decided to move her into her own pen. This means that she is right next to the others (you can see them on the other side of the gate) but she has her own food bowl and pile of hay that she can just enjoy at her leisure.
She does seem to have improved a little over the past couple of days and is happy to stand up a bit more now. Hopefully she will be back to normal before she is due to kid in around 3 weeks time, otherwise she will just have to be on continued 'bed rest'!
And I just love the way that big round pregnant goats sit on their bellies with their little legs sticking out to the side .. Here's our tiny TiddlyWiddly goat sporting a rather rotund waistline ..
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