Lampshade and the Chocolate Drops

Curious title eh?  Takes me ages to think of things to amuse you ..

This is Lampshade:

And with his friends ..

We do not know what happened to little Lampshade but we found him one morning with a bad injury to his lower back where all the skin seemed to have been ripped off.  A clean injury but quite nasty - possibly he had been sleeping under something and had got caught.  We will never know.

But the following morning we found him with exactly the same injury to the other side of his back.  Very odd ... We cleaned him up and put lots of cream on the wound but he would not leave it alone.  Only one thing to be done ... hence the name.  Poor little Lampshade.

The wound is healing nicely now but he has to stay in his collar for a little while yet.  He has figured out how to eat and drink with it on and so seems perfectly happy.  He shares a pen with a few other 'special needs' babies.

As it has been quite chilly in the barn, especially at night, David rigged up the spare patio lamp so that the special needs pen keeps warm and cosy.  The light reaches into most of the other baby pens as well so everyone gets the benefit!

So that's Lampshade.  Who or what are the Chocolate Drops?

Well, our lovely simple Marcie goat had the two most gorgeous chocolate brown girlies.  The photo doesn't do them justice - they are just so beautiful!

As is the case at this time of year, the joy of the new arrivals is sometimes balanced by the trauma of poorly mums.  We sadly lost Klarah, one of our beautiful big Mary goats.  Struck down by a nasty illness, she had been fighting her corner and was doing so well.  But on Friday night she took a turn for the worse and it was clear that she was going downhill rapidly.  One of the emergency vets came out to put her to sleep and so we tearfully said goodbye to our lovely girl.

Our current invalid is Patty goat who has looked utterly dreadful for a few days.  Nothing obviously wrong with her but she has not been eating or drinking at all.

Wrapped up in her warm coat, she has been just lying around not taking much interest in anything.

But the good news is that she stood up by herself this morning and has been eating and drinking little bits and pieces all day.  Hopefully, we have turned a corner and things are getting better for young Patty.

And finally - the obligatory cute baby picture ..  A little girl delivered to Trixie goat a couple of days ago ..