Black Jaquinto Cria

Hurrah, a black Jaquinto boy was born today. One of my older black girls Hecuba finally consented to give birth. She was taking a long time so Chas hiked him out a few minutes ago. He’s a big cria and is trying hard to stand but more to the point is a solid black. I just looked out of the window and he is up, very wobbly, marvellous. The lovely Gaia has just moved into the birth paddock – she will be the mother of the first Jaquinto Tulaco Centurion cross. The hope is that we will get the amazing Centurion brightness and density with the very high frequency crimp and tiny fleece staples of Jaquinto. Hope is a permanent condition of animal breeders, sometimes dashed, sometimes realised.

Joshua and I did more logging yesterday after Chas gave his new chainsaw an outing. The old one is dead due to ‘operator error’ or some idiot put the wrong oil in it. Joshua splits the big cakes and I load them in the wheelbarrow and make more walls in the wood shed. We are now on the third wall and we have finished attacking the shrubs in the garden. We had an excellent bonfire last night and Chas didn’t shout at us at all as we hardly burnt any grass on the bank in the process!

The time is fast aproaching where we have to tackle the cock bird problem. We have far too many and three of them are running around raping everything in sight. We want to hang on to the big cockbird, the Buff Orpington and the Aracauna but the others will have to go. Chas is not keen on killing things particularly after the torrid time he had trying to deliver the coup de grace to a road-kill pheasant who turned out not to be as dead as we thought when we opened the boot. I think it is going to be down to me, oh dear.

We ate a very nice road-kill rabbit the other day. Joshua said his friends would be horrified but the rabbit was newly dead and it is a form of tasty recycling. Our cats are hoovering up some of the baby rabbits here. The ginger tom, an ‘it’ now, sits in the roots of a big ash tree a few feet away from the hedge and waits for the little ones to emerge. Unfortunately the one he caught yesterday was stolen from him by the big tom belonging to our neighbours, probably for the best as otherwise we find headless rabbit corpses in the barn. Why do they eat the head first?