Some good, some not so bad!

I haven't blogged for a while as there has only been one thing on my mind for the last 11 day, Marietta! she had not been well since a week last monday, the shaking has now stopped but she is still sitting down, she hasn't walked since last Thursday.

The Vet came on Tuesday ............ sat on a bale of straw and scratched his head, the jerking action of Marietta's neck he described as weird and he had never seen anything like that in any animal before except a chicken!  He took some blood and we are waiting for the results, he has given her a shot of Vit b12.......... and the following morning there was a marked improvement,  the jerky action had gone .............Vet put this down to the cocktail of treatments we had been giving her over the last week.  Anyway by Wednesday I was getting concerned that she had been sat in the shelter for over a week and the floor was starting to get wet mainly because Marietta kept  kicking the water bucket over.  I decided to put her outside the shelter where she could get some sun and the floor of the shelter could dry out, so after she had had her treatments I helped her out of the shelter and settled her with feed, hay and water, she looked set for the day and her mates could visit her.  When I came back at lunchtime she wasn't where I had left her, great I thought she's up ................ but no she had rolled, turned or somehow moved about 10 mtrs down the field and she seem quite happy with life, so we left her out.  Over the last couple of days she has moved herself around the field and the rest of the girls seem to stay around her.  We are continuing to give her the treatments and I make sure she has access to water and hay when ever I go back to check on her.  Today she has started to eat grass for the first time for 11 days and she has started to try to move when we approach her, so we are still hopeful that she will continue to improve.

Phoebe on left having breakfast

So that was the not so bad and now the good, last Sunday our first cria of the year arrive in text book style.  When we got to the field Phoebe (259 days) was looking like she was in labour so we started to feed the rest of the herd as usual, Phoebe who very much likes her food saw this going on and not wanting to miss a meal ran up the field ate her bucket of feed and then returned to her previous position, less than an hour later cria was on the ground, a female cria, the fourth in a row for Phoebe, sired by Catons Golden Nugget.  The cria was up, suckling and having a pee within an hour and a half ........... wish they were all like that!

One hour later.

As we are aware that Phoebe never has much milk for her cria we have been prepared with ewe replacer, bottles etc.  Phoebe is OK for the first two days, plenty of colostrum but then not much milk, we can always tell as every time you look at them the cria is underneath and soon starts to have a little bald patch on her nose.  So Monday evening I started to give the cria (no name yet) a bottle which it took with ease,  we only give two bottles a day as we like to keep them it keen to feed of Mum and we only usually have to do this for about three weeks when the crias are no longer keen to take the bottle.  For some reason after this time Phoebe seems to be able to satisfy her babies hunger.