Thursday, October 13, 2005

The last few days

OK, so what's been happening, On Monday evening I decided that the goats and alpaca's didn't have enough quality feed and it was effecting them (well the goats anyway, Bully's gut area was looking a bit hollow) so I moved them all down to the paddock with the lambs in, I'm hoping that with the goats and alpacas being browsers and the sheep beening grazers, the paddock should be eaten fairly evenly and hopefully will last until the top three paddocks are ready (fingers crossed). The only down side is that I will have to pick up alpaca poo this weekend as the grass is too long for harrowing it at the moment.
On Tuesday when we got home, the goats once more proved they were goats, Mikey was standing in the middle of the newly sown paddocks. It turned out that he had either worked out that there was a small gap at the intersection of the two fences or that are gates are crap (three bits of tubular steel with electric fence tape as the body of the gate) and pushed his way through. So I coaxed him back through and filled the intersection with branches (yeah right, thats going to work!) and started to walk back up the paddock, by the time I was out of the first paddock, Bully was beside me! Arghhh. This needed the hammer and staples. Knowing that I needed another bowl of food to get Bully back down, I went to the shed, and then started back down to the three tree paddock where everyone was. Bully was calling to the other two all the way down, he was probably saying "More foods coming...". After a few minutes of stapling the fence and rigging up the taranaki gate, I once more started up the paddock. This time I managed to get to the top, and touch plastic, the goats are still there.
Last night, whilst we were putting Markissa to bed (we've been grazing Markissa on the driveway due to lack of grass, and there is a gate that needs closing and a fence to be dismantled when we finish), I was watching the lambs, all four were at the top of the paddock chasing each other and generally being silly, then they all stopped and in unison ran down the middle fence line in a bunch - heading straight for Galiano and Monty who were chushed up under the trees. At around 10m, there was a very short,loud "Get back here" bleat from the older ewe, and all the lambs stopped, turned around and started walking back, that was until Galiano decided to get his own back and chased them. Knowing most of you have never seen an alpaca run, it's enough to scare anything - they look dim and docile whilst standing around, but they are dim, docile and un-coordinated whilst running, it really is a sight - they run in a similar fashion to a camel (well, they are related). The neck goes all over the place and normally a gallop up the paddock has many bucks and random kicks, what at, only they know!
That basically gets us up to date. This morning Steph went down to check on Markissa, only to hear meowing coming from my workshop, Hopper must have been in there when I was last down there, and got locked in, silly cat, and whilst Steph was locking the workshop, she heard Markissa behind her, now Markissa is supposed to be beside the arena and behind the barn, not infront...pesky horse had pushed the fence over, so now it's electric - that should keep her out of too much trouble.
Till later..

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