What's been going on?

Seems like nothing much has been going on lately. We've been enjoying a very welcome dry spell with reasonable temperatures and long bouts of sunshine.

Andromeda enjoying a spot of sunbathing!

After the wettest winter on record, the pigs' pens have more or less dried out and we are able to feed on solid ground instead of pools of watery mud. It makes all aspects of animal husbandry so much easier and quicker and there's no doubt working in shorts and t-shirts is a lot more comfortable than numerous layers of more or less waterproof gear!

Swallowbelly girls munching their vegetables

The exception was yesterday afternoon. We had planned to move two groups of pigs:7  boys coming indoors prior to going to the Big Butcher in the Sky and 5 girls moving to a larger pen with more ark space. There'd been rain in the morning but it dried up around lunch-time. The moment we hitched up the trailer, however, the first drops fell and from then on till the moment we finished our maneouvres (I kid you not) the heavens opened. We were all (5 of us) drenched! Someone trying to tell us something? Today we are back, more or less, to summer again. A friend in America advises that we are in for the hottest summer on record! What do they know over there that we don't? The pigs may be tuned in to the same channel though because, finally, they are starting their summer moult and we are doing silly things trying to gather as much wool as we can before it all drops off. Where it goes nobody knows: it just disappears. I have a theory that they groom each other in the dark and then bury the wool at the bottom of their wallows! No wonder they grin at us in that silly way.....

Who's the king of the castle?

Rocco looking for his friend

Victoria's Father's Day piglets have wasted no time at all in getting out and about. Within a week of being born they were happily running around their pen and a day later had found their way through the fence into the outside world.... tiny they may be but they are absolutely fearless. As for Victoria: having kept them shut inside for 5 complete days she's now like "Piglets? yeh, yeh, yeh... they're fine...". No doubt it'll not be long before they find their way up to the flower beds.....
Rocco, meanwhile, is hoping a new 'friend' will find his way here soon. He's settled down on his own now but he spends great chunks of his day just staring into the distance as if there's something out there that'll maybe eventually come close enough to see .....We have various irons in the fire regarding a companion for him so hopefully before the long summer days are over he will no longer be an only pony..... Even when we're out for a hack he's taken to suddenly stopping, staring into the distance and snorting so I know he's looking ........
As for the rest of the animals: we have 9 young bantam chicks which is unheard of. Usually, like the one here, the hens sit on a dozen eggs and when

"Are you my mummy?"

one hatches it's  case of "job done" and off they go with a solitary chick leaving the other eggs to go cold! Maybe because of the warm weather a couple of the hens actually managed to hatch 8 eggs between them and, even more amazingly, have managed to guard and care for the chicks for nearly 3 weeks.  It'll be interesting to see how many of them make it through the next 3 - like all little things, they keep finding holes in the fencing and one day there may not be somebody there to put them back on the right side again...... We also had 7 ducklings hatch in the main hen house yesterday- a first for two years (the chickens destroy any alien eggs they find).... Their mother's fiercely protective of them and, cleverly, hatched them inside the original duckling pen so here's hoping we can keep them alive to maturity...... just one of life's little challenges.
Other chaps here have been setting themselves challenges too - but that's a story for another day..... Like I said, nothing much has been going on around here.....