Students, visitors and little fat goaties

This week saw the arrival of our first student of the year.  Emily wanted a couple of days work experience on a goat farm as she has an ambition to own and run one herself.  She already helps to look after a couple of goats for a lady near where she lives - and it turns out that these goats originally came from our dear friend Mary!  Small world eh ...

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 ..
 

Happy Valentine's Day!

From all of us at Ellie's Dairy.  Especially our little Hokey goat who has that wonderful heart-shaped patch on her forehead!

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

Just waiting ....

At milking time there was big old Florence waiting to come in for her dinner ... snuggled in behind one of her oldest daughters Figgie who is always the first in the queue for milking, she was totally relaxed and was happily dozing off with her chin resting on the gate ..

Then there was Marmite cat, sitting in the window of our new flat, waiting for me to come home.  Spot the little brown and white face in the right hand window:

 At night as I drive in, I can always see her face at the window.  She peers down (to check that it is me, perhaps) and then disappears.  I know that she will be running down the stairs and that as I open the front door, she is there waiting for me.  Always a nice welcome!

The day the scanning man came to call ..

Out of the dark and cold a red van appeared on the horizon and a strange man emerged, muffled against the biting wind in multiple layers of hats and trousers.  Michael had spent an exceedingly cold Monday scanning around 2500 sheep and so, by the the time he got to us, he was ready for a nice hot coffee and 5 minutes rest.

But then it was all hands on deck to unload his special scanning crate .. easy to use with sheep but not really tested on goats.  Looks like a spit roast to me!

Michael sits in front of his scanning screen and the goaties pass through on his right hand side.  Some of them needed a bit of coaxing to get through the gates and narrow passageway but they soon got the hang of it.

Hugo was looking rather anxious as the scanning started - after all, this was a test of his manhood. Given that he failed in rather spectacular fashion last year to get anyone at all in kid, his reputation as a big stud male was firmly in question.

But he needn't have worried - all his ladies were well in kid and many of them are carrying triplets.  That's the Anglo Nubian genes coming through!!  Ellie goat (granddaughter of the original Ellie) is apparently carrying quads, as is big old Florence goat.  There had to be a good reason why she is so large that she can barely fit in the milking parlour!

So, in total, we are expecting around 180 babies to arrive in the spring.  Looks like young Husky should kick things off around 8 March with her twins, closely followed by Meryl (twins), Quince and Daisy (twins) and tiny little TiddlyWiddly goat who is carrying just a single baby.

Bearing in mind that Hugo is the father of many of the babies, we can expect a lot of absolutely ridiculous ears to appear this year!

News from the new herd in Herefordshire is that some of our young goatlings have already kidded and so they will all be well into the swing of things in a couple of weeks time.  They also have 120 milkers arriving from Sussex next Wednesday ... rather them than me!

And a milestone was reached yesterday afternoon as my little white van hit 200,000 miles on the clock.  And still going strong!!

Fisherman's friend

Over the years my toes have become more and more of a problem in the winter.  Standing at markets and in the milking parlour inevitably leads to frozen, white and very painful toes.  I have tried everything .. chilli, ginger, gingko, thermal socks, 'engineered' socks, mountaineering socks, neoprene boots etc etc .. all have improved the situation slightly but nothing has ever conquered the problem.  Until yesterday ...

Balham market was like a ghost town yesterday .. not really surprising as the weather was windy, freezing and sleety.  Very sensibly, most of the good Balhamites stayed firmly indoors.  And so there was plenty of time to chat to the other stallholders.  In the course of conversation with a pig farmer, I was bemoaning the problem of my frozen toes.  Heated socks was his advice ... never fails.  Easily available in fishing shops.

On my way home, I happen to pass a fishing shop between Beckenham and Penge.  One of those shops that you always notice on your travels and wonder if they do much business ... Well, am I glad that they do!  I stopped off on my way home, feet totally numb .. and entered an Aladdin's Cave of angling wonder.  An extremely nice man accompanied me to the footwear department.  Sadly there were no heated socks but he produced a pair of long green socks that he recommended personally ... he always wore them in conjunction with a pair of thermal lined boots.

My ears pricked up .. THERMAL LINED BOOTS?????  Oh yes .... and he waved a pair at me.  GIVE THEM TO ME NOW!!!!  I shouted, in a rather unseemly fashion .. and snatched them from his hands ...

And, boy oh boy have these boots changed my life .... For the first time today I have had warm and toasty feet all day .. standing all day at Blackheath market in freezing temperatures and then tonight in the milking parlour.  Feet still warm ... And all due to these little beauties (and the green socks) ...

Boots ...

and liners ...

Next week I fully intend to go back to the fishing shop and give the nice man a big wet sloppy kiss ..

One of the people who did brave the elements yesterday was my dear friend Sal.  That woman is a saint .. cocooned in a large black scarf and winter coat, she arrived with a thermos pot of hot Algerian coffee and large tubs of Polish salad (to which we are both completely addicted).  She also brought back one of my cheese price labels which I have in picture frames - it makes them look nice, keeps them clean and (most importantly) stops them blowing away in the wind.

As you may remember, we won a Gold Medal (and Champion Goat Cheese) at the International Cheese Awards last year.  Sal decided that a gold medal winning cheese should have a gold frame and so she had stolen it away last week to take it home and gild it for me.  And it was returned to me at Balham yesterday .. stunning!  Makes our cheese look like something very special!

As you know, milking goats is usually a very entertaining business and tonight was no exception.  One of our new little goatlings ventured up into the stalls to have her tea ... framed on one side by huge Pandora goat and on the other side by huge Roz, she was dwarfed!

Needless to say, there was the usual bad behaviour ... Pavarti decided that her neighbour Charlotte must have something far more interesting in her feed trough ..

Tomorrow is scanning day and so we will find out which girlies are pregnant and which are not .. It's going to be an action-packed afternoon!

The emperor's new clothes

Or Beamish's new coat, to be more accurate.  You may remember that our lovely Alpine male Beamish has a bit of a long term problem with his hair.  Or lack of it .. He is like a rhino and so, last winter, we got him a nice calf coat to keep him snuggly in the cold weather.

This worked really well and he was very happy wearing it but gradually the other boys managed to break the straps and the fastenings and, by the time the warm weather came, the coat was just about hanging on.  Time to find a new coat for our old chap!

A brief trial of various dog coats soon led me to face the fact that I really had to splash out and buy Beamish a proper goat coat.  Not cheap but then it makes me so happy when I see him all warm and comfy that expense doesn't really matter.

So here he is, along with the special 'extension' straps to get round his belly!

As usual, there was great excitement as Hugo thought there was a new goat in the house but he soon realised that it was just his old mate Beamish.

Still on the subject of boys and their hair ... A few days ago I noticed that Handsome Humphrey had few bald patches on his rear end.  Not sure if you can see it very well but the hair on his back (to the right of the pic) is quite long.  The hair on his bottom (to the left by the tail) is very very short and worn down.

Why was this?  He didn't seem to have any strange skin condition, no itching or soreness ... What could be causing it?

Well, it didn't take long to find out ... Seems that Humps is rather popular with the ladies (despite his lack of male 'attributes') and they spend a lot of time rubbing their heads on his bottom!  Allow me to demonstrate with a short video taken this morning ..

And that, dear readers, is why Handsome Humps has a baldy bottom!

Still on the subject of bottoms ... It's that time of year when the young goatlings are all starting to get plump and sprout udders.  Our young Husky goat is no exception .. she is getting very round and that little udder is now clearly visible.  She certainly looks like she is in kid but we will find out for sure next Monday when scanning man Michael comes to check out all the girlies.

We had the first flurries of snow at milking time this evening and it certainly is a chilly night out there tonight.  Nowhere near as much as the rest of the country but David keeps on hoping that he will get a chance to go out and play on the snow plough!

Needless to say, Marmite cat has spent most of the day in the warmest spot in the house .. on the top shelf of the airing cupboard.  I have still no idea how she manages to get right up there!

Ellie's Dairy has a holiday ..

Well here we are - back in the land of blogging.  Seems that it was not only me who was having the problem.  I did a little bit of internet research last night and put my teccie hat back on.  Seems that Google/Blogger have decided that we should all be using Google Chrome to write our blogs ...

So, I have reluctantly upgraded to Chrome and (fingers crossed) all seems to work again at the moment ..

Anyhow, enough ranting ... what do you reckon to this blog title then?!  Not often you read all those words in the same sentence!

Yes indeed folks .. David and Debbie have had 2 brief holidays since we last spoke. Leaving Auntie Anita and Milking Mel in charge of those goatie girls (or was it the other way round?), we went off to spend a couple of days in London last week.

The original plan had been to drive to East Dulwich, park up outside Franklins Farm Shop and then hop on a bus into town.  But the transport union managed to scupper this idea by calling a 24hr bus strike. Plan B ... drive to Blackheath and park up at the station.  Hop on a train into town and then tube to Kensington to check in at our hotel.

The main purpose of the break was to enjoy the Cirque du Soleil at the Royal Albert Hall - this was our Xmas present to ourselves!  So, we just extended the visit and booked ourselves into a rather nice hotel just round the corner from Albert.

We managed to check in early, dropped our bags off and then skipped across the road to Imperial College to find some of our friends at the South Kensington Farmers Market for a scrummy lunch.  Then David was treated to the 'Debbie Walking Tour of London' as we tramped for several miles to see the sights ..  Here is a passing tourist at the Queen's house ..

And another one!

The Albert Hall was as stunning as I remember it from years ago when I used to live in London and was a regular season ticket holder to the Proms.

And the show was just incredible.  Utterly amazing.  If you ever get a chance to go and see the Cirque du Soleil, then go!  Unbelievable acrobatics, dancing, music and costumes.  A night to remember.

After a very comfortable night (and several text messages from Auntie Anita to assure us that all goaties and Gracie Moos were all surviving very well without us!), we set off for the Science Museum to peer at exhibits and play with things.  Of course, we had to look round the Agricultural section!

In true Ellie's Dairy style, food obviously played an important role in our little break and so we set off to find Casa Brindisa for a delicious lunch of tapas and wine.  And the photo on the wall above our table was an added bonus - mountain goats in Spain!

And finally, a taxi ride to visit fellow traders at Borough Market and wonder at the sheer height of the amazing Shard.

Back home and back to reality for a few more busy days .. then off again to Herefordshire yesterday to take some more of our little goatie girls to their new home.  We took 13 of the newest babies to join the 130 youngsters that we moved in September.

It was great to see Andrew and Diane again and the goatie girls just looked amazing.  Lovely and round and most of the goatlings now well in kid.  They are due to start kidding in a few weeks and, thankfully, Andrew almost has the new milking parlour finished and ready to go.

I would love to be a fly on the wall for those first few milking sessions - it's going to be chaos!!  Maybe we should send some of our older girls down to train the youngsters in parlour etiquette.

A brief overnight stay at the same lovely farm B&B as last time - Lowe Farm - and then back home to Kent via the scenic route round the Malverns and down through the Costwolds.  Utterly gorgeous.

So that's it for the moment!  Two nights away in two weeks .. who would have thought it!