Just what we ordered

To say we have been busy would be a understatement, we had 3 days at Devon County show which was very enjoyable and successful.  We took 6 animals and came away with a 1st, 2nd and 2 x4th which we were really pleased with.
Since then the weather has been great and if I dare say it slightly too warm especially for working, but we had work to do as well as topping the fields as the grass is growing a pace.  Our holiday cottages have been a bit hectic with several short breaks which are always a bit harder with all the washing etc but at least it was easy to get it dry.
We have been on Cria watch for several weeks now with three females in their birthing window, Lily was due first.  Loopy Lily as she is affectionately called, is dark brown with some grey patches now showing through as she gets older, she has been mated to Humming Rolex who is a Rose Grey.  Steve has been saying for months that she is going to have a rose grey female, so it was becoming a bit of a joke every time he came back from the field.  So last Wednesday I was doing a change over in the cottages before going to work, I checked Lily before I left and she was grazing near the top fence, fine I thought I was only going to be a couple of hours so I could check her again then.  I drove off to my job which was five minutes down the road, I had just parked the car when the customer came out and said "Steve said its a rose grey female" I laughed then it dawn on me that they didn't know the in joke!  Steve had gone back to the field just after I left and saw a huddle of females so when to investigate and found Lily had dropped her cria and yes it was a rose grey female, just as he had ordered.

So while I had to carry on working Steve spent the next couple of hours sitting in the sun watching Lily and her cria doing everything just as the text book says.  When I got back cria was up and just about to find the milk bar, I asked Steve why he decided to sit and watch as we usually give them some space, turns out I had driven off with his car keys so he couldn't have gone to work anyway!
Once we had seen the cria suck we went off and did another job, the weather was very hot, too hot for strimming long grass but it had to be done.  We got back to the field and the cria was flat out, I hate it when they do that! this time though it was flat, Steve lifted her up and she was all floppy, alive but very weak.  So we carried her into the field shelter with Lily in hot pursuit, firstly I thought she may be dehydrated so gave her some boiled water then I check Lily had milk, she had a very full udder so with a little bit of a struggle I managed to take some milk off and feed her that. I checked her temperature that was fine so we decided to leave them in the shelter and go home for a while and watch on the camera.
This is a bit long winded but after a while the cria sat up and was trying to get up, we went back to check her properly before it got dark, she was very weak still so I rubbed some honey on her gums, fed her some more milk and left them for the night, dreading what I would find in the morning.
Really didn't want to look at the camera first thing but I still got up about 6am to see cria sat upright with Lily next to her, so I made a cup of tea, took the computer back up to bed and watched for a while before the cria got up and had a good feed from Mum.
When we got to the field both Mum and babe were stood at the gate waiting to get out,  They ran off down the field to the others, the cria had not quite got control of her legs bounded after mum and did a great impression of Bambi when she tried to stop at fence.

To cut a long story short, she has gone from strength to strength and is now terrorising all the other females by barging and jumping on them, she really needs a playmate. She now has a name Hummingbird after her sire.