Meet The Huskyettes!

Today started just like any other day .. me dashing about trying to get Joe off to West Hampstead and myself off to Penshurst.  David and Mel were busy milking those goatie girls before David got all his toys out of the shed and spent a gruelling day muck spreading.

All those piles of dung have to go somewhere and, in true grassland management fashion, we spread our manure (or FYM, as it is known in the trade!) over our fields to put nourishment back into the ground so that we can make good, nutritious hay for all those hungry goats.  This has to be done in fairly good weather and as this weekend was forecast to be dry and sunny, David decided to go for it!

He uses the smaller old tractor to load the dung into a large muckspreader..

And then he drives it up and down the field behind the larger tractor, flinging it all out of the back.  Which goes something like this ..

 
We have our own muckspreader but it's not man enough for this job and so we have to hire a larger one for a couple of days.  As it's quite expensive to do this, David works absolutely flat out to get everything done.  Poor chap is absolutely exhausted this evening.  And he has another day of it ahead of him tomorrow.

When I returned from market early this afternoon I went straight into the barn to check on young Husky who was due to kid today.  I found her standing around looking very 'goatie' and she chortled when she saw me.  Unusual .. she is not generally very vocal and so this was a fairly good sign that she was up to something!

I kept a close eye on her during the rest of the afternoon and we made her a little pen of her own just before milking started as she was clearly searching for somewhere to settle down.  Barely had we got the gates in place when the first little brown kid appeared!  Closely followed by a second one - a miniature of her mum.

Satisfied that all was well (as she had been scanned for 2 kids), I went to get her a nice bucket of warm water.  When I returned moments later, there was another little brown kid in the pen!!

And so here they are, ladies and gentlemen .. The Huskyettes.  Yes indeed - triplet girls.  Not a bad start to the season!

And young Fenn is a very proud daddy.  His first babies!  Contrary to expectation, Husky has been an absolutely brilliant new mum so far.  Babies were cleaned and fed very quickly and she is very attentive to them.  We shall see how long it lasts!