Poorly Fred and New Chickens

Fred our cat has become poorly overnight. We had to take him to the vets this morning. He was very lethargic and wasn't purring when he was stroked. The vet said he was dehydrated. They have put him on a drip and ran some blood tests which suggest he has a liver infection. Poor Fred will be staying at the vets over the weekend. The prognosis is a bit uncertain because of his advanced age (18 years). We are all sad and worried.

Happier news now! We went the Spring Rare Breed Sale at York Livestock Centre and bought a pair of new chickens. They are Cochin chickens, gold laced colourway. They have feathered legs. They seem to be very calm and don't mind being handled. Here are a couple of pics of them.

Bottoms up!

Investigating their new home.

They are currently in the garden to isolate them from the rest of the chickens for a couple of weeks until we know they are disease free.

More lambs!

The main lambing period is now over so I can catch up on some sleep and update the blog etc! Here are the next batch of lamb photos. The first pic is of Bethany before lambing, poor girl is as wide as she is tall! Guess how many lambs she will have - scroll down to bottom of post for answer!

Shetland Gooseberry with single black ram lamb

Shetland Ebony can;t be bothered to get up to feed her lamb!

A very wary Shetland Dahlia with her black krunet (white patch on head) ram.

Shetland Echo with her twins - she was reluctant to let them feed at first but got the hang of it after a few times of being tied up while I 'plugged then in' !

Shetland Old Black with Charolais x twins. These 2 are being supplemented with bottle feeding as mum has mastitis and not enough milk.

Shetland Robyn with twins, a black ram and a black gulmoget (light belly and legs) ewe. One visitor described the gulmoget lamb as the Rottweiler look!

Much to our surprise Shetland Bethany only had twins - we were expecting triplets from her enormous belly! Here they have only just arrived!
More lamb pics soon....

Wildlife Cam

We have recently set up a wildlife camera to see what goes on in Railway fields when we aren't there! So far we have captured photos and videos of a fox, roe deer, rabbits and pheasants. Below is a pretty good shot of the fox early one morning.

This week we have had a couple of frosty mornings. This picture of a roe deer looking at the camera was somewhat spoilt by the fact the lens was frosted up - the camera recorded it was -2 oC! Quite atmospheric though.....

When we work out how to edit the videos and upload them we will add some vids as well as pics.

Pony Club activities

This week the children have been doing a lot of Pony Club Activities. On Monday they had a 'behind the scenes' tour of the new exotic animal facility at Askham Bryan College. They were allowed to handle some of the animals included lizards, snakes, tortoises, and skunks. They also saw meerkats, racoons and marmosets. Some of the following photos were taken by son hence the slightly blurry images!

On Friday both children attended an all day Rally. The son on Spike got a 1st rosette for doing the obstacle race fastest and the daughter on Teddy came 5th.

On Sunday the son took part in his first Pony Club Mounted Games competition as part of the Lead Rein team for Vale of York PC. He did really well and the team came a very creditable 4th.

Next batch of lambs

The flooding has subsided and we have had more lambs. Pics below, when breed of lamb isn't given they are the same as their mum!

Shetland Monroe with a single moorit coloured ram lamb

Portland Fudge with a single ram lamb

Soay cross with 2 ewe charollais lambs

Shetalnd Fifi with twin moorit lambs, 1 ram, 1 ewe