100 Days to the Olympics!
Seb and Shelley are born at Hadleigh Rare Breeds Centre
Today, Friday 11th May 2012, I visited Hadleigh Farm Rare Breeds Centre to see the “kids”. Seb and Shelley, the Golden Guernsey Goat kids, are “coming on fine” according to Emma Sayer, Manager of the Rare Breeds Centre. Born exactly 100 days before the start of the London 2012 Olympics, in pouring rain, the twins were named in honour of previous Olympic champions: Seb after Lord Sebastian Coe, who is organizing the London 2012 Games, and Shelley after Shelley Rudman, the winter Olympian.
All animals born at the Rare Breeds Centre this year have names beginning with the letter “S”: this makes it easy to work out their ages.
At present Seb and Shelley share their home with recent arrivals:
Kids – Surprise, Summer, Spring and Sid.
Lambs – Sapphire, Steel, Splodge, Snowy, Sharon, Samson, Sonic, Shaun and Sammy.
Eleven piglets have recently been born to Daisy the Gloucester Old Spot sow. Her neighbour the Blonde Mangalitza, Izabella, is due to give birth very soon; today she was nesting and feeling a bit fed up with herself!
As well as Emma and Isla Pells (a tutor at Hadleigh Training Centre), I also met Tarah Killin and Danielle King, who were both busy looking after the animals and visitors. Some of Isla’s students were cleaning out animal feeding bowls. Isla says: “My students like to be ‘hands-on’ with the animals and I am so proud of the way they care for the animals; sometimes they notice potential problems before the professionals!”
To see the latest photos of Seb and Shelley go to Facebook and put Hadleigh Farm or Rare Breeds Centre into “Search”
To find out details of opening times, charges etc. go to:
http://www.hadleighfarm.org.uk/visit-us/rare-breeds-centre
To see Emma talking about the birth of Seb and Shelley follow the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzGS6djEX5U
Birth of kids at Rare Breed Centre, Hadleigh Farm
Click on the photos in the gallery to see more of the Rare Breeds Centre.
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It’s nice to see some fantastic pictures of all our animals at the Rare Breed Centre. I’m glad to say that the Mangalitza piglets have now been born – 6 of them in fact – and they are all doing really well. I am also pleased to announce that Cassie our Greyface Dartmore Sheep gave birth to Snoopy and Sweetpea 6 weeks ago. They were a big surprise because we were not expecting any more lambs so late in the year. In the next few weeks we are also hoping to have some more ducks at the Rare Breed Centre. These will be Appleyard bantums and they are due to hatch in the next few weeks!
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