New Arrivals.

I had two new arrivals over the weekend. Firstly my last Aberdeen Angus cow gave birth to a really beautiful heifer calf on Saturday morning. She is Pascoe's daughter and very strong and stocky. She was born very quickly and was up and suckling within 40 mins.

I'm going to call her Clover and my plans are to keep her and her mum, and hopefully to learn how to artificially inseminate them, so I can carry on breeding them without having to keep a bull here. I was going to give up cattle but I love having them here and they are the last cattle in the village now. There were cattle here before me and I'd hate not to have at least a couple here. I'm hoping that if I sell future calves after weaning as quality store cattle they will at least pay for themselves, and I am supposed to earn part of my income from agriculture living here. I'd love to believe that there's money to be made in breeding alpacas but I can't see it. The market is already flooded around here.

This is Clover and her mum, Isobel, at around an hour old:








The second is this young hedgehog I found sitting in the road in broad daylight when I took Grace out for a ride on Saturaday afternoon. He's underweight for hibernation and had some blowfly eggs on him, and a gummy eye, so I picked him up and carried him home. He is eating cat and dog food with great enthusiasm so I hope he's going to be OK with a bit of feeding up.

Spike, my hedgehog!