The squashed chicks and abandoned lamb......

 

So, what is Lester up to?

 

 

Feeding a male lamb which had been rejected by his mum.

Still touch and go as to whether he will survive or not,

but at least we are trying.

We had hoped to get him back with the flock today so that he can make friends with other lambs and have a frolic in the sunshine with them,  just so he can be part of the their world rather than ours.

...... on his way out to the field,

 



 

Well it looked like a plan, but it was not to be, because the rest of the flock decided to not like Lester getting too close to them and galloped off across the field en masse.

Oh dear.

So Plan B is to put the lamb into the paddock so he can hopefully join up with everyone when they come in for the night, meanwhile we shall continue to bottle feed him.

 

=======

 

Migrating birds flew overhead today, flying northwards.

A great long skein of them, which must have meant many birds were in flight.

Wow!

 

________

 

It is now the evening of the day, and the lamb is still with us,

but happily staying out in the paddock.

All the sheep and lambs are now in from the field,

and he is nowhere to be seen,

so he must be inside the barn with some of them.

 

At least he has company.

 

______

 

And then there was the hen who took it upon herself to lay a heap of eggs.

In a secret place she did this, so we knew not where it was.

Having not seen her for a quite a long time we assumed a fox had eaten her,

but no, 'twas not a fox that did her unto death,

it was a hay bale that had done the deed,

the hay bale inadvertently encouraged to do so

by Lester needing to feed the cows and sheep

so he opened this particular bale

and took what he needed in his usual manner.

 

 

 

(December 2015, .... the bail on the right has now been eaten)

 

Now once hay bails have had their confining strings cut they tend to go floppy,

which is a good thing in some ways because it makes it easier to get the hay off them,

but not so good in other ways because the hay bail can collapse into a heap,

and thus render any small living being totally squashed beneath the weight of the hay.

Which is what happened to the hen.

For she had parked herself up at the back of the hay bail on the left in this photo,

close to food, but hidden from view which meant she could not be saved from her fate because no one knew she was there.

 

And so it was that last week it came to be the end of another day,

Lester was sitting on the steps of the Tall Barn ( seen in the lower corner of the photo)

filling up the water buckets for the cows to have a drink from.

He heard some faint twitterings,

thought that a hen was hatching eggs nearby,

was able to push the hay back sufficient to have a look,

reached down and pulled out the very squashed corpse of the mum hen,

so thoroughly dead that she was stiff like a plank of wood.

Adhering to the underneath of her body were bits of broken eggshells,

which must have become squashed as she got squashed.

.....And yet there, in amongst the mass of eggy glunk

were three little chicks,

with another one mostly out of its shell but with  a body half flat.

 

Swiftly were they were taken inside the house and heated up.

 

 

A week later, and they are still with us.

 

 

The half flat chick is on the right, but is now no more,

but the others are holding on.

They seem to growing alright, but at a slower rate than normally hatched chicks.

But they are still in life.
 

 Lester is out milking the cows at the moment,

it is 8 in the evening, and it has been a long, but productive, day,

so I need to go out to the barn and keep him company, just for a while,

 

so, bye for now,

Vx