Monday, July 2, 2012

Animal Babies at the Farm

It has been a good spring for animal babies at Brightwood Vineyard and Farm.  We began the season with the arrival of our Spanish Goat kids-  all 23 of them!  They love to run and jump from place to place, and 'king of the mountain' is their favorite game.


Next to arrive were the lambs-  six so far with probably one more on the way.  Our Tunis lambs are always a rusty red color when they are born and gradually lighten in color to the creamy white of the adults.  We were surprised when one of our first lambs was white with brown spots-  not something we were expecting!  The lambs are up and nursing within a few minutes of birth and following their mothers out into the field soon after-  pretty amazing!



Two weeks ago we received our  day-old chicks in the mail.  They traveled well and are growing by leaps and bounds.  They have started trying out their new wing feathers by doing a powered run across their cage-  pretty impressive!  They will be moving to an aviary in our front yard this week where they will have lots of room to exercise, and grass and bugs to eat, too!  For this year's addition to our flock, we chose buff rocks, white rocks and partridge rocks as well as some cuckoo marans.  By next spring they will be laying along with our older hens.

Day old chicks

Two week old chicks