Fighting on

Its been a battle today, a battle to get May who was until mid morning the newest life form at Rock HQ to stay with us. First light she was sprightly enough, as the video clip shows. A midnight a and 2 am force feed had kept her going (I completely missed the 2am alarm, waking only when my beautiful and oh so patient wife tripped over a big dog on her way back in from bottle duty) but this morning she showed even less inclination to drink her milk.

 A helpful call from the nice lady who sold us Trevor (who incidentally having fathered the foal has buggered off over the hill completely neglecting his duty as a new dad) gave us some top tips and since then the mantra of the day has been "In from the side quickly to the front" which describes how you get a teat in the foals mouth. But each time she has taken less and less, and when Tracey decided that hourly feeds was the way forward the rapidly weakening foal looked like she was leaving us. We tried getting it to lap from a bowl (Misty demonstrated this very well demolishing half a litre of white stuff) and suck from a bottle but even if May got a mouthful she seemed loathe to swallow.

Needs must, so rather than faff about any longer and knowing the little scrap must eat or die I decided to syringe its feed direct into its mouth, and the food of choice was goat milk. First go 150ml went straight down, second the same and so on until now, almost midnight where she has had 200ml and looks quite perky. Not out of the woods yet but if she (and we) survive another night then perhaps we might make just make a clearing.

Prize for the newest life form goes to Jason, a new ram lamb, born this morning after Roxy (we tried to keep her from the boys but nature found a way) was ably assisted by yours truly. She had in fact gone into labour yesterday morning but it was a feeble effort and was deficit in essential pushing action. A check this morning revealed no expansion in the tuppence area and so after a liberal application of antiseptic lubricant I copped a quick feel of her interior which revealed a lambs head, still in the bag about a hands depth inside. This was good in so far as the bag was intact, not good as the legs were not presenting and Roxy was not pushing. Hoping my amateur sweep would spark off a new effort I waited, but nothing happened apart from a lot of goo leaking. Another exploration and I could feel the bag had now broken and the head popped out taking a breath and so began a rapid delving to find the legs and extract lamb before it was strangled. Roxy was no help at all other than not running off but finally Jason was in the world, Roxy passed out and refused to play mother so he is in the kitchen under the heat lamp with Izzy. Called Jason because of his golden fleece he is still bigger than Izzy. Roxy is now upright and eating after being pumped full of happy juice and other drugs. I have apologised and she has thanked me for using lubricant for a change.