August 2008 - back home to chaos!

After a great holiday in the UK, albeit a hectic one we returned home to New Zealand. the flights seemed endless, but flying business class helped! Here we are enjoying the complimentary drinks..





Our friend picked us up from Auckland airport and told us we had chosen the right month to be away! They had had terrible storms and some huge downpours of rain. As we headed out of Auckland and over the Bombay hills into the Waikato we were soon to see what she meant. The Waikato river had burst it's banks in many places and paddocks had disappeared. Our friend was very concerned about our road, we felt sure it would be fine! Unfortunately it wasn't! This is what we were faced with....

















The bad news didn't stop there! While we were away some friends parents house sat for us. This is such a great thing, someone stays in your home and looks after everything. So it meant that we didn't have to put the dogs in kennels and the cats in a cattery! And you also don't have to worry about your livestock.
The day we got back however we got home to a dead doe, Crystal, my best doe who did well at the Kumeu show. Also Brea, a first time mother had delivered twins that morning!! One was dead and had been buried and the other died the next day. And to top it all Max and Bonnie had killed a chicken! So all in all not much of a homecoming!! And our poor house sitters were very upset about what had happened. After a terrible summer and then a shocking winter, there is always the chance something like this was going to happen

There's not a lot you can do about somethings, so you accept it, as hard as it is and move on.

Two weeks later, we had more kids born. Emerald had twins, but one was dead when I found them! Bugger! I thought, here we go again! I think that Emerald had been so busy cleaning one kid up she hadn't been quick enough to clean the other and it had suffocated in it's birth sac. It would be a doe too!! Damn! We called the surving buck Little Gems Digger



Any way 3 days later Ruby had triplets, all fine. One buck went off to be a pet, we kept hold of Little Gems Darcy and Little Gems Dara



And then one week later Pearl had twins, both fine. So some success at last! And that ended the kidding season for this year!(No photo)Little Gems Dante and Little Gems Della

To end the month off nicely Isobel the Dexter cow had another dunn coloured heifer (brown/red female) We called her Little Gems Diamond



Some decisions were made this month to make some change with the living areas in the house. More to come on that in a separate post.