Em Nau Farm BLOG

Christmas is a Distant Memory

Here we are at the end of January 2014 with the past two months flying by.  To think we only have 328 days (at the time of writing) until Christmas 2014.

Plenty has happened over the past couple of months. 

Firstly, and sadly, we lost Benny the bull calf on 16 January.  He was looking a little forlorn for a couple of weeks and we thought it could be worms.  We gave him some medicine and “pour-on”, which perked him up a little but on 14 Jan he stood down the bottom of the paddock and didn’t come up for his normal bottle.

The next day he was conspicuous by his absence so on the 16^th I went hunting for him down by our creek.  I found his body under a tree, where it appears he fell and could not get up.  We are glad he didn’t suffer and that we found him as it would have been sadder not to know where he was.

Another event during the past couple of months has been the construction of a temporary duck enclose.  The duck absolutely love their new home which has a double swimming pool, a long run for the night housing requirements and a yard to run around in during the day.  We plan to make a more permanent enclosure when we do the new permanent chook housing later in the year.

We have also have had five new additions to the cattle family – firstly in mid December we welcomed Patty, Selma and Ned to the farm.  They have enjoyed the run of the home paddock and are very inquisitive when we do the milking, so much so we need to keep them distracted so they don’t try to “latch-on” to Beaudette or Daphne whilst we get the calf’s breakfast/dinner. 

The second lot of arrivals are Eddie (Edwina) and Patsy whom we picked up at the Woodford sales last Monday (27 January).  Eddie picked up the feeding routine very quickly and hooked on to the bottle with no second thoughts.  Patsy on the other hand didn’t take the bottle on the Monday night and when Heather went to feed her on the Tuesday morning made a great escape out of the calf enclosure.  She was last seen disappearing through our western paddock in to the long grass neighbour’s house yard.   I went hunting for her after I got home from work on the Tuesday afternoon and was worried that she was gone forever.  Just as I was giving up hope of finding her Eddie (over in the calf enclosure) gave a “Buuurrr” and Patsy gave a response.  I called out for her and up popped a head from in the long grass.  I climbed through the fence to try and get her but she bolted down the hill and back through the barbed wire fence into our bottom paddock.  Back through the fence I went and Patsy, sensing capture was imminent, shot across the bottom paddock and around to our eastern paddock.  It took me about five minutes of huffing and puffing to catch-up with her and she let me get within about 50 metres then shot off up the hill into our other neighbour’s paddock.

By this time I was a lather of sweat and thought that chasing her was only going to drive her away again, so I rang the neighbour and asked he keep an eye out for her.  I then went about the afternoon milking, feeding, egg gathering chores and about 2 hours after Patsy disappeared over the ridgeline Eddie started burring again.  Patsy returned the call and found her way back down the hill into our place and wandered back around to the western paddock where she spent the night close to Beaudette and Daphne.

When Heather went to do the morning milking on Wednesday Patsy was in the pen, having climbed through the fence to the top paddock and hooking up with the other two then following them in when they came to be milked.

In the afternoon when I went to do the milking there was no sign of little Patsy.  It was not until just on dusk, and after feeding Eddie and she started burring again, that Patsy wandered around to join the main herd at the bottom of the eastern paddock.  I think it will be a long and intriguing battle to get Patsy back up into the calf pen.

Finally we are getting a eight more ducks (Saxony) in the next couple of days but there will be more on that in a future blog.