Baby animals

The quail eggs are hatching - they are hard to get a good photo of as it is dark in the incubator and very red under the heat lamp, and they are all bombing around like mad. Always a worry for the not yet hatched ones as their siblings crush them...

The baby rabbits are 10 days old now and doing fine. They pogo all over the place if the nest is disturbed so counting is hard, but I think there are 7. They have a reasonable amount of ginger fur now, and their eyes should open in the next few days.

5 of the 6 Ouessant lambs (the little black sheep) we hope for have been born and are doing well. Only Tiree hasn't had hers and she is quite small so we are not 100% sure she will manage one. 4 of the 5 are definately girls and we think the 5th might be too! A friend has goats and had only boys, so we are making up for it.

The other flock have only had one lamb. It is a boy who we call rug as we have been wanting a white lamb so we can have a white sheepskin rug. We will let him grow to a decent size, maybe about a year before we take him to slaughter. We thought this showed that Harris was definately fertile, but thinking about it we are not sure as it could have been fathered while he was out of action - which would mean one of last years lambs (now in the freezer) was the father. It is now 5 months since Harris went back with the flock so we hope for more (up to 4) lambs any moment. Otherwise we will be eating hogget (which is sheep between 1 and 2 years old).