Mushroom feast

This year has been good for mushrooms. We still haven't had lots of luck with cepes (the french are all obsessed with them) but loads of chanterelles (giroles in French although I thought chanterelle was French) and parasol too. Doug has collected and dried a good number and we have had quite a few to eat fresh too. The round white thing in the photo is part of the dehydrator.

New lamb

One of the sheep (Bella) just had a little boy lamb. Totally unexpected. No photo yet.

Bif has no bollocks!

The vet - or rather vets - have been and castrated Bif. We watched a video how to do it on youtube, but decided against doing it ourselves!

They also burnt of his horn buds with our gas powered horn disbudder. We had been unsure whether it was getting hot enough so had not done it. Benefit also that they did it under anasthetic.

The disbudder has a flame in it and gets hot, the end is a ring shape which fits over the little bud that will become horns

He was a bit sad afterwards but we cannot have a bull in the fields, it would be too dangerous and even without the crazy bull hormones he would be more dangerous with horns and it is much safer and less painful to burn the buds before they really start growing than it is to have the horns removed later. We wish Bluebell had been done as it is worrying when she tosses her head around. We are planning on trimming off the tips at least.

A few days later he is non the worse for it.

Wood

Although it is only early September recent weather and the slight autumnal look on some of the trees has tunes thoughts to winter, Doug has started building the wood at the end of the house up in preperation. It gives us a feeling of security.

Cute pictures

The milk that comes out for the first 3 days or so is called colostrum which is high in fat, protein and vitamins as well as some kind of nice healthy stomach bacteria.

The light isn't very good here, but you can kind of see the colostrum is really really yellow.

The gross yellow stuff is poo after eating the colostrum. It really stinks! The dog seems to love it though!

Lismore IS a girl

Bluebell has had her calf

I knew she was waiting for the very few days in this 2 week time period that I am in London!

Doug had a bit of a stressful morning with it. He didn't sleep to well because he was listening for noise from Bluebell who was looking imminent last night. 

Then when he went out to check this morning (just after 7) he thinks the calf had just been born. He went into the small field where Bluebell has been on her own for some time so we could keep an eye on her, to find her staring down onto the drive and mooing quietly but repeatedly. The little calf (who he thinks is a girl and will be called Lismore - I am worried that his sex identification was based on her having nipples. Boys have nipples too!!) had fallen down the bank and just missed the ditch. He carried her back round to the field. Was knackering apparently as she isn't big, but slimy and wriggling weakly. He then tried to get Bluebell up to a flat area on the field, but she wouldn't as she was standing convinced her calf was still over the edge of the field and wouldn't leave that area. Doug was worried about bonding as Buttercup and Big seemed to have a hard time of it but Bluebell started licking her straight away and the calf stood up and was looking for the teats to feed.

Weather is warm for today so hopefully all good and she will dry off well. She is half highland so has a decent amount of hair for the current coldish nights.