Our beautiful girl, Miss Rosie has a swollen knee joint. She is limping but still quite bright so after some hands off treatment from Erin at Forth Valley Vets we thought it was time to get hands on and have a look.

Our managers Kevin and Sam and I entered the field and approached slowly. With strategy confirmed (not!) Kevin grabbed her by the wings and tipped her backwards. Rhea’s have a prominent central toe that they can use in defences or attack and she was certainly flailing her legs around.

Kevin managed to get her wrestled to the ground. I used my arm to hold her wings down safely and snuggled her neck into mine. Kevin pinned her to the ground and Sam held her legs down and steady so Erin could investigate.

Now - from afar it looked like some odd game of Twister and attracted many onlookers. We were just a knot of bodies and feathers lying in a field.

What they didn’t see what that it was a windy day and I didn’t have my hair band.

So my long dark hair (with no grey at all this week! 😂) was flapping in Kevin’s face.

Sam commented that someone’s hair smelled nice and as my hair was up Kevin’s nostrils he confirmed.

I apologised profusely but couldn’t do anything about it as we were holding down the Miss Rosie!

As I occupied myself by considering the size of Rhea poo’s and whether we were knelt in any, I could hear Kevin pft’ing my hair out of his mouth. He was trying to speak with Erin who was drawing fluid out of the swollen joint.

Miss Rosie was whimpering in my ear not understanding that we were trying to make her better. I have to say though that she was more than a little dramatic when we let her go fanning her wings and mock staggering as if to faint.

She recovered quickly and we await the results to find out what is wrong.

I’ll update soon.