Father Son stuff...

Daddy blowing...

Joshua blowing...

Joshua 'adjusting' the straw...

Russell and Joshua were outside this morning and were making all sorts of noise by blowing through some blades of grass... And then the straws came out.

Russell tried in vain to find out on YouTube how to make the straws make funny noises but could only find instructions that were difficult to follow... Never mind they both had a ball laughing their heads off anyway.

Amazing how much fun can be had with a straw or a blade of grass...

Cheers Damaris

Closing of one window and opening of another...

Time to go to their old home...
Even hay and the milking machine went as well...

Rooster crowing on top of Sausage yesterday morning...

Today has been a tough day. After going into town early this morning and getting some fruit and other things I quickly raced home again, doing only the speed limit off course. I was waiting for some very important and lovely people to come to my place.

These lovely two people, Judith and Terry have taught Russell and I so much over the last 1.5 years. So much about care for bovine and how to look after them. When we got the two girls, Lavender and Lorray, Lorray was pregnant and Lavender was still on her mum, Lilly.

Now nearly two years later we have had bloat here that Lorray survived thank goodness, Sausage had the runs twice, we have two births and I milked. Today we said Good bye to our cows...

It has taken a while to come to this conclusion and it was not made lightly. It took me a long time to get to this stage and actually talk about it out loud. I still can't believe that they are gone.

We will visit off course as they are only 1.5hrs drive away. We are part of the Magrita Dexter Stud family now. Who knows one day we may have some back again but for now we have to look forward to the future.

When we first got here we knew that we had to plant alot of trees, bushes and shrubs. There are still none here. Sausage and now also Chloe got into them any chance that they got and unfortunately currently we don't have the money to upgrade the infra structure in order to keep them out properly. The electric fencing was not doing its job either. The mums were fine but the calves were a problem for us.

We will still have Sausage for the freezer and another one in exchange for Chloe when the time comes. Russell was not here but the boys and I certainly have had our crys good bye.

I will miss them all... I will always have a very soft spot for them. We though needed to do the right thing by them. That was most important. I still do feel like a failure but as Judith said: "At least you tried". Better than not trying at all.

On a brighter note, tonight our front gate is open for the first time in about a year. Oh how nice it is not to have to get in and out of the car all the time for the gate. :)

Cheers Damaris

Duckies update...

Our seven ducklings
The three mums sunbaking without a care in the world...

The drake, looking through Daisy's nest...

Was asked yesterday to put some pictures of the latest batch of ducklings on Facebook and so I thought I would blog about the babies today as well. They are certainly growing up very quickly...

They will be six weeks old this week. Amazing how they are growing up. A few of the bigger ones are actually already losing their baby feathers. It looks like they are moulting but they are not off course. They are just growing their adult feathers.

They have been outside for a whole week now and have not suffered for it either. I was worried at first as we had a bit of wind here and it was rather cold couple of nights ago but the shelter has a good windbreak on the windy side so that helps them.

The ducks that would be their mums are not paying any attention to them whatsoever, which I find rather curious. The two geese are always near the cage and seem to talk to them. They don't try to nip them, not that they could as the gaps are not large enough for anything to get through, except a fly maybe :) The geese sleep near the cage as well. I don't know if that is because none of Daisy's eggs hatched maybe? They are not aggressive towards them at all though. Rather a mystery for me...

Has been funny to see them develop and all of the seven are gray looking but one. It has stripey feet even. The neck is white and I think it is a product of the gander that we ate recently. I hope it is a female that is all... Not intending on keeping ganders anymore. Just get one in for when I want the eggs and ducklings in spring and eat them other than that...

Yes, Daisy's eggs where taken off her. In the end as the left over drake still kept annoying her and getting her off her eggs she only ended up with two eggs. One was a dud and the other only had a 1/2 formed goose in it. That was after leaving her for six weeks on her eggs. She should have been done after four. Never mind. She will end up in the pot at this stage and we will replace her with another as Chucky is a producer of babies but she is not a producer of goslings. She will make a nice dinner.

Anyway am off to feed the little chicks that are still in my bathroom. Enjoy your Sunday!

Cheers Damaris

Caught Redhanded... NOVA!!!

Showing me her reward for being cheeky...

This little dog is rather a bit cheeky. Don't you think??? I do. Had people over last weekend and had some cut cake out. I love to bake extra so that when I have unexpected company or in my case, had just had an operation on my hand - I don't have to worry about baking something. There was already something in the freezer that I just had to defrost.

Once our visitors left, one of them had left their chair out from the table. Off course as far as Nova is concerned that is the perfect invitation...

So up she jumped and helped herself to a piece of cake. Then she comes and shows it to me, rather proud of herself... She even posed really nicely for me so that I could take the picture of her with the cake stuffed in her mouth.

Cheeky girl but not her fault. Leave a chair out and that is what you get. Now Bailey on the other hand doesn't even bother to jump up... he waits for odd crumbs to make it to the floor and he cleans that. Different dogs, growing up different ways I guess... Plus for him it would be too much hassle...

Anyway today will be another lazy day. The second dust storm in one week came through yesterday and today we have a horrific amount of wind still. Just the leftovers of the dust storm are left behind. Made it hard to breathe yesterday and hope that all people with breathing problems coped alright. I made sure the house was shut up all day so that Joshua would not suffer too much and he seemed to cope alright. Though his breathing last night in his sleep was a little more noisy than normal and a little laboured...

Cheers Damaris