Following on from the death of White Hen...
The geese killed one of the ducks. Yeah. We know it was them because already on two previous occasions Danny heard a massive commotion from the geese and when he went to look, the male had a duck IN HIS MOUTH. So Danny rescued the duck twice, but sadly the duck did not learn to avoid that field, and apparently we weren't around to hear the third attempt and so the goose succeeded...
Anyhow, we now have another of our original ducks back and the geese have gone back to where they came from so that is the end of the goose saga. IMO they were not worth keeping -- they poop everywhere, even only two of them, the eggs are too big to be useful, she wouldn't sit on the eggs so no baby geese, and they are murderers...
And then, on Wednesday, Curly's black ewe lamb who I said the other day was turning out to not be black and more about that later -- well, there is no later for her, because she unexpectedly died. She was fine on Wednesday morning. Wednesday evening she didn't come with the rest of the flock so I went looking. She was struggling to breath. Checked her airways, looked fine. Took her temperature, perfectly normal. As I was carrying her into the barn, she just died in my arms.
She's had a post-mortem today and the vet says it was an acute respiratory infection, likely Pasteurella, so going forward I will be vaccinating. I guess I just have to consider myself lucky that I've got away without vaccinating for this long...
So that's three deaths in about a week and a half. Hopefully that will be it for a while now...
AND, for those of you who persisted in reading a lengthy depressing post with no photos, we have had five chicks hatch yesterday -- does that make up for the three animals we've lost? Who knows... Photos to come in a few days -- the weather is appalling and the hen is keeping the chicks too close for me to look properly.
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