Animals rear ends

Caring for animals seems to mean an unusual amount of time spent looking at their rear ends for various reasons.

Poppy is still on heat (3 weeks now). Lots of time spent staring at her swollen fanny as she drips blood on the floor wondering - when is it going to end.

I noticed a bald spot on one of the chickies under her tail as she was having a dust bath. I managed to catch one of them a few days later and after rummaging around in the feathers of her rear end I saw that she had lice. Euuuugh. There were loads of them running all over her and hundreds of eggs stuck to the bottom of the her feathers. Poor chicky. I rushed around various shops and the vets before finding a treatment while Doug cleaned out and disinfected the house. We need to treat again in a week but they seem gone for now. I feel bad I didn't manage to inspect them sooner after spotting the bald patch.

No more lambs have been born. We spend time trying to peer under the sheeps tails from a distance - to see either swollen vulva or whether the udders are swelling as they apparently do just before giving birth. We don't want to chase them down and look closely because if they are about to give birth that wouldn't be the best thing for them.

The lambs that have been born we managed to catch one of and have a look at the under carriage. This has shown he is a boy. His twin is a boy too as we saw him peeing which gives it away too. Both definately food then.

Fortunately Sambuca hasn't needed her backend inspecting for any reason recently as she is in a frisky mood. We put her upstairs to deal with some rodents that we could hear scrabbling around up there - presumably woken in the warmer spring weather. There was a lot of crashing and banging, there weren't any dead bodies in the morning, rodents or Sambuca, but the rodent scrabblings seem to have stopped or at least greatly diminished.

Hainoa (the highland cow) we expect to turn up in a weeks time, doubtless she will need some part of her rear end inspecting before long. People dealing with animals often seem to have to stick their arms up cows bums after all. Bags I not doing that!