You know you have hit the final run towards complete madness when you receive a Mothers' Day card from your hens.
Oh yes! Yesterday morning, amongst the chocolate, flowers and book voucher was a card - "No one used to give me caterpillars and sit on me quite like Mum." Signed Primrose and Daisy.
(I would like to point out at this moment that I have NEVER say on a chicken. Cat, maybe, but never a chicken. Can you imagine the mess???)
Anyway, Heather insisted on taking me out for lunch yesterday, which was jolly nice. 'Anywhere you like,' said she, nominating a new little eatery in town amongst a couple of other very civilised sounding places.
Which was how we ended up at our local agricultural college, standing in a freezing open barn watching Mummy Sheep having their babies. (Andy, who spends his whole life surrounded by animals, though not sheep, was thrilled, as you can imagine.)
So there were lambs a-plenty, all skippety-hoppity and running around as new lambs are wont to do, using their mummies as climbing frames and testing out their bleating skills. And lots of pregnant ewes in the central arena, mostly oblivious to the crowds and doing their sheepy thing like eating and sleeping, and sleeping and head butting and eating and sleeping and occasionally popping out a lamb, eliciting a collective 'aaaaahhhh!' from us spectators. We saw one being actually born, and one that had only just been born. It was all very lovely and appropriate for Mothers' Day.
But it was freezing cold and the wind did whistle around the nadgers something chronic.
It still is. Flippin' snowing. I can do without it, to be honest. This Winter has been going on in England since, ooooh, last August.
'ENOUGH!' I say, says I, 'ENOUGH!'
Kayleigh has announced that she is going to come and live with us. She visited on Saturday and was quite insistent we got her inflatable bed from the loft. We didn't, because that would be another sign that we were heading towards madness, being held to ransom by a three year old. It's bad enough being relegated to sitting on the living room floor so the cats can have spread out on the sofas. So she had to be satisfied with feeding the hens, eating grapes and participating in a fairly intense jigsaw puzzle making session.
But I am hosting her 3rd birthday party on Friday. Well, what else are Grans for?
Lovely new pic, top right!
ReplyDeleteWe did three lambing seasons while living on the farm. We used to walk up to the barn after dinner and see what was happening.. a lot are born overnight.
The sensible ewes kept their legs crossed so they could spend another night in the (relatively) warm barn.
I certainly think that sheep have got popping babies out down to a finer art than us humans!
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