Our Animal Inventory 2015

I thought it might be a fun thing to do an animal inventory. Not an official one of course, I don’t think DEFRA are too bothered about my bunny village but, as a blogger (rather than a farmer’s wife), I do tend to shield my readers from the coal-face of animal keeping.

We have had a few deaths since this time last year. It happens.

This time last year, we had four dogs-three outside-Freddy, Dougie and Archie and my beloved Rosie who lives inside.

Thankfully, all of the dogs are still here. Of all the animals, it would be the death of a dog that would hit me most.

We also had an incident, forever known here as cat-gate where, for one reason or another, cats got spayed and kittens were basically taken without permission from the farm which resulted in less cats and more mice.

As I was close to having the baby, I appealed locally for any unwanted cats. My did the cats come. We now have loads. Some don’t come near the house-they prefer to hang out in the barns and farm buildings.

We have Rocher and Mew who live in the outhouse next to the main house. They are both lovely.

They let you pick them up and stroke them and Mew has just had three gorgeous kittens so we have had no mice in the house for a good year. I’d call that a result.

My dream of bunny village has been thwarted somewhat. This time last year we had Clover, Coconut, Crumble and Carmen.

Carmen died (she was an older rabbit when we got her) and I ended up selling Crumble, I don’t know why because she was lovely.

Hubster built me a more permanent bunny village in one of the barns (two small stalls) and I kept rabbits in one and guinea pigs in the other. We had four guinea pigs and ended up with four rabbits-Clover and Coconut the lops and two Netherland Dwarfs.

Anyway, Coconut dropped dead and poor Clover escaped. We caught her but she ran away again and we never saw her again so we were down to the two rabbits.

Then, one of the guinea pigs died and one got pregnant. We put the pregnant one in a hutch on her own but the sheep were put in the same barn when they were going to market and they managed to open the door to the hutch and eat the hay-nest. There were no babies left.

Then two other guinea pigs died on separate occasions.

We got two ducks last summer-Lord Plum and Lady Pancake. I thought they would be nice for Boo but she didn’t like them and they really, really stank so, after a couple of months, I gave them back to the lady we got them off.

I also got two chickens but Rosie the dog bit one and it died of fright so, not wanting to keep one, solitary chicken, I gave her away too.

So all in all, it’s not been a very good year on the animal front and, apart from the kittens, pet-wise, we haven’t had any babies.

New year, new start though. I am hoping for quite a few baby animals in my own, personal petting farm.

Minty is still here of course. Hubster keeps joking about him being the fattest sheep we have and that he would make a good price at market but I think he does love him as much as we do.

I do have some exciting plans in the pipe line so watch this space.