As extensive animal keepers and all round animal lovers some of the highlights of the summer for us this year have been attending the various agricultural and horticultural shows. This is something that we have done occasionally before but this year we have made a point of attending as many as we can.

The latest show was the Sedgefield Show 2008 which we attended yesterday and despite the dreadful weather with frequent heavy rain we still managed to have a fantastic time.

As is usually the case at shows I spent the majority of my time looking at the wonderful sheep on display. While the Sedgefield Show cannot compete in numbers and varieties on display with the larger shows it does have the advantage of being more personal, which allows you much more time with the animals and a better chance of speaking in detail with the owners and breeders.

At this year’s Sedgefield show one breed of sheep particularly caught our eye which was a rare and special breed sheep, the Oxford Down. These are a pretty rare breed of sheep with only 70 small flocks in the whole of the UK, but they are totally adorable and apparently have a great temperament and for those who consume their animals I’m told that they produce excellent meat.

I certainly plan to look into this breed of sheep in more detail and would be very interested in possibly getting some of our own, as pets but with the option to possibly breed on a small scale and some point in the future. You can see an Oxford Down sheep ewe and lamb in the pictures.

I did manage to move on from the sheep eventually to see some of the other animals on display which included some lovely cattle, poultry including game fowl, guinea pigs, rabbits and dog trials. The rest of the family spent much of the day in the dog section and watching the fascinating dog trials on display. The lovely brown and white Border Collie above wasn’t in the show but was gorgeous nonetheless and the owner was good enough to let me take a picture.

As well as the animals there were a whole host of other activities including prize vegetable, flower, cake and crafts and tasting sessions from local farm shops with many delicious meats and cheeses to sample. It was certainly not a day to be watching the waistline.

Other interesting activities were a demonstration by some fox hounds and horses, fun run and a fancy dress competition for horses and you can see one of my favourites in the picture at the top of this post.

All in all the Sedgefield show was a fantastic day out and is already in the diary for next year, as I just check what is next in line for this year!!

John

Animal Lovers Web

More often than not as I am sat going about my business in the study I have the constant companion of background radio, usually talk radio as my taste in music is rarely well served by the daytime music channels and I find it less distracting. Every now and then though, the words strike home and the background noise becomes compulsive listening.

This happened to me this morning whilst listening to the Victoria Derbyshire show on BBC Radio 5Live when she had studio guest presenter, Ryan O’Meara managing director of the well known dog magazine K9. The reason that the listening became compulsive was the amount of sense that he was talking about how to increase the levels of responsible dog ownership in todays society.

The debate had been triggered by a call by the RSPCA to be given greater powers to punish the owners of dangerous dogs, which is fair enough, but I tended to agree with Ryan O’Meara that rather than than just beating unfit dog owners with a bigger stick after the event that a better and more effective solution must be to improve the education for dog owners and would be dog owners.

He even went so far as to say that some form of assessment of an would be dog owners suitability to own dogs should be introduced and that this should involve some form of dog test assessment before qualification is granted. Victoria Derbyshire then asked him to come up with five questions that may be typical of a “responsible owners dog test“, you can see these questions for yourself and have a go at them in our dog discussion forum, I think you will agree that they are pretty difficult.

Difficult though these dog questions may be, I think few could argue that by learning to answer questions such as these we would all become much better informed dog owners and that could only be a good thing. I think his idea was to have an assessment procedure similar to that for obtaining a drivers licence, which is not too unreasonable if you think about it. You need to prove that you are capable of being in control of a potentially dangerous vehicle, so why not for a potentially dangerous animal?

Obviously, no one in life wants even more hassle, assessments, red tape, legislation or bureaucracy but if it led to better dog owners and through this better behaved and safer dogs then surely it is a target worth striving for?

John

Animal Lovers Web.com

]]> http://www.animalloversweb.com/blog/responsible-dog-owning-take-the-test/feed/ http://www.animalloversweb.com/blog/our-pigs-and-sheep-finally-meet/ http://www.animalloversweb.com/blog/our-pigs-and-sheep-finally-meet/#comments Tue, 13 May 2008 21:44:47 +0000 John http://www.animalloversweb.com/blog/our-pigs-and-sheep-finally-meet/ So pigs are clean animals are they?  No-one bothered to share this fact with our two Kune Kunes, Betty and Lottie! Delightful they certainly are but, after 2 months of living in our dog run and thrice weekly mucking out, the time had definitely come for a change of accommodation.  The poor girls had finally worked out that it would be far more pleasant to get off their lazy backsides and do their number twos outside in the run but still didn’t seem to see the point of urinating there too!!

We spent a very hot day last Saturday “pig proofing” our sheep field with spare planks of wood nailed at obscure angles with pig wiring tacked on top.  Our five sheep looked on bemused by the whole affair - little did they know what was to come.

Once we felt assured that the pigs weren’t going to be able to make a run for it through some narrow gap in the fence, the question of how to actually get the pigs from the dog run into the field became a matter for debate.  At four months old, Betty and Lottie are still just about light enough to pick up but our recent attempts when we had to vaccinate them didn’t fill us with much confidence with this plan.  Trying to catch a pig, pick it up and transport it safely from A to B seemed a little risky and was bound to be EXTREEMLY noisy!

Plan B was to lure the little darlings with food…hmm, this could be even more risky.  We would be reliant on Betty and Lottie following a food bucket for about 30 yards without being distracted by a) the chickens/rabbits/dogs, b) the lush green garden, c) our strawberry patch…Plan B didn’t seem such a good idea after all.

And so onto Plan C.  Our large dog crate was carefully placed at the entrance to the dog run with a bowl of their pig pellets inside.  As sure as night follows day the pigs couldn’t resist trotting inside to feed their piggy faces, unsuspecting that they were the victims of a cunning plan!!  With the crate doors firmly bolted we were finally able to carry our girls into their new home.

Well, Betty and Lottie thought they’d died and gone to heaven!  With grass as far as their cute little eyes could see, they couldn’t eat fast enough.  Our sheep however were less than impressed and charged over for a closer inspection of these little black creatures that appeared to be taking complete liberties over the whole food situation. If you thought pigs could eat fast, they can also eat AND run at some speed too!  What ensued was a game of cat and mouse, sheep panting and out of puff, a few head butts thrown in for good measure and squealing pigs tearing around the field (obviously with grass in their mouths!). You can see the fun for yourself on our video “Kune Kune Pigs Meet the Sheep”.

Anyway, after the initial rush of blood to the head, everyone (including ourselves) calmed down.  Betty and Lottie are loving all the extra room to play and, more importantly, the continuous sea of food that they now inhabit.  The sheep seem to think that they are really above it all and quite indifferent to the whole situation and so harmony is restored, for now. 

Diane
Animal Lovers Web.com

The world of animal lovers is not, as you might imagine, always full of sweetness and light. There are times when as animal lovers we can all get a little hot under the collar. We have found that baby hamsters can be a particular trigger in this regard.

We all know that the internet is a wonderful medium that can empower anyone with a computer, a modem and an ISP to become a publisher. It provides the ability for almost anyone to air their thoughts, feelings, views, interests and activities not only publicly; but to a global audience! Obviously any tool this powerful must come with some downsides - that’s just one of the laws of nature.  You could liken this to the well known truism that there is no such thing as a free lunch or possibly even more relevant - every silver lining has a cloud!

Being well aware of the way of the world and not exactly wet behind the ears it should not really have come as any great surprise to us then to discover that when you put yourself “out there” in any arena where people have strong feelings and care about something a lot, not everyone is going to agree with everything that anybody does or says and that, of course, includes us. That is not a problem to us, in fact, anything more complicated and of more consequence than boiling an egg (actually there are even different opinions on how to do this!) will have a whole gamut of opinions on which is the best way to do it. That is a good thing and by the courteous and constructive sharing of information and views people can modify their behaviour and that is how progress and improvement occurs.

What we were not quite prepared for when we first launched our animal website in November 2007, was the strength of response that can unintentionally be provoked amongst fellow animal lovers. By actions and behaviours that are very well meaning and with the best intentions towards animals and that these are not always expressed courteously or constructively.

Social networking for example is everywhere these days and obviously to have a presence on these sites involves the risk of adverse or inflammatory comments. In our experience YouTube almost has a monopoly on this. I’m not saying that YouTube is not a wonderful resource, it is, and it is financially free. It does come though at the price of sometimes ill considered and groundless flame comments being posted, criticising one thing or another in some people’s perceptions of your videos, often without having read the video description box and these comments are mostly left by people who have posted no videos of their own!

YouTube is not the only place where strong opinion is expressed we have found that emails, forums and blogs are just some of the other vehicles by which people will let you know what they think. A good example recently started with what I thought seemed like a good idea, to do a photo journal of the development of a baby hamster in pictures on a daily basis for the first two weeks in the lives of our latest litter of baby hamsters. This started well on day one and day two when we posted some nice pictures of the baby hamsters all huddled up in the nest, pink, hairless and cute in an almost ugly kind of way at this stage. On day 3 the brown stuff hit the fan…

Now we don’t think entering hamster breeding accidentally is big or clever, but despite multiple reassurances that our original dwarf hamster pair were same sex - within two weeks of having them we had we accidentally become hamster breeders. We didn’t think we were big when this happened and we certainly didn’t feel very clever. We know only too well that there are already too many homeless hamsters in the world and that there is very little justification for breeding yet more, particularly by first time or amateur breeders. However, it had happened and we couldn’t reverse that. Our first step, of course, was to separate the parents; this resulted in practically demented and agitated behaviour from both mother and father, so we relented and put them back together again. They have been a sweet and happy couple ever since and we have predictably had more litters, most of which we have kept ourselves and any that we have re-homed have been in single sex groups to good homes and with reassurances about no further breeding intentions.

Perhaps we were naïve but we certainly were not aware that there are certain types of baby hamster pictures that some people think should not be shown (or taken?)… Back to the day 3 pictures…

From our experience of our other hamster litters and the bond with the parents that we have developed we have been fortunate enough to be able to handle the hamster pups from the very early stages. So to show the detail of the baby hamster, which was partly what the photo journal was all about; the day 3 pictures included some pictures of us handling some of the young hamster babies.

It quickly became apparent the strength of feeling that some people can have about pictures like these.  We can understand some of the logic and reasoning behind this belief but cannot agree with the view that pictures of baby hamsters before the eyes open or being handled should not be shown at all. Surely that is a form of censorship and to not show pictures of young baby hamsters does not mean that they do not exist and it is naïve to think otherwise. The pictures are interesting and educational and with adequate warnings regarding hamster breeding and the small risk of cannibalism in dwarf hamsters, we believe that it is perfectly legitimate and justifiable to display these pictures of baby hamsters. We are also not aware of any evidence that displaying baby hamster pictures encourages people to breed hamsters or that in dwarf hamsters after the first litter that handling the hamsters encourages cannibalism. This experience is also echoed by other experienced dwarf hamsters breeders.

We believe that animal welfare is always uppermost in our thoughts, feelings and actions and with the amount of animal neglect and cruelty that exists in the world we sometimes wonder why people with the time and energy to go on crusades against perceived wrongs in the animal world don’t direct it towards the places and people where it would do more good.

John

Animal Lovers Web.com

Easter time last year was celebrated with the arrival of our lambs - it doesn’t seem five minutes ago that they were clambering over each other to be the first to get their bottle of milk each morning!  What a difference a year makes. 

And, as for this year…well no new lambs - yet.  However, the latest additions to our farm, two 10 week old Kune Kune piglets (Betty and Lottie), seem to have settled in really well.  It’s been almost three weeks since their long journey south from the SSPCA in Scotland.  Currently living in our dog run, which seems to have housed most of our animals over the years (rarely our dogs!), our pigs have had access to grass for the first time and are living up to their reputations as ploughing machines on four legs.  We were under the impression that Kune Kune pigs were grass eaters rather than rooters.  I don’t think anyone bothered to tell them this fact!

Betty and Lottie are slowly getting used to us and will happily enjoy a good scratch on the back whilst troughing into their dinner. However,  they have been a little more wary this week after we had to pin them down, quite literally, to get their worming injections.  They’ve only themselves to blame.  After turning their noses up at their dinner laced with worming medicine, we really had no choice but to resort to the needle.  I think a pig refusing to eat their medicine was a first for our vet - whoever heard of a pig refusing to eat anything!!

Well, we’ve injected sheep before but a pig is a whole new ball game.  Despite weighing a mere 13kgs, our attempts to restrain the little swines turned into a wrestling match which we just about won.  I think that the demonic screeching emanating from their ever-so-sweet mouths, just ratcheted up the stress levels for everyone and our neighbours must have wondered who was being murdered!!

Rather like the tantruming child that gets the candy, as soon as Betty and Lottie were released from our clutches, normality suddenly returned - for them at least.  My heart was still palpating an hour later!  AND we’ve got to repeat the whole process again in the next few weeks with further vaccinations.  Can’t wait!!

With mixed feelings, we have had to say a fond farewell to our cockerel, Primrose.  Despite our best intentions, he was struggling to fit in with our other chickens and our older cockerel, Tiger was making his life a misery. 

Determined that he would continue to live a happy, free-ranging lifestyle and avoid the dinner table, we weren’t too optimistic that advertising locally would find Primrose a new home to fit the bill.  So it was with great relief that we received a call from a like-minded animal loving family, who were just looking for a cockerel to keep their hens in check. 

Primrose is now happily strutting around in an acre of woodland with eight hens for company as you can see in the picture above. He is also soon to have a new and more appropriate name, more  in keeping with his new manly role in life! But he will always remain Primrose to us.  For us, peace is restored back in to the hen house at last and we can enjoy the more tranquil spring birdsong once again.

Diane

Animal Lovers Web.com

After a long wait we have finally managed to collect our two rescue piglets from the Scottish SPCA rescue shelter in Balerno, Scotland after coming across them in a Google alert. The poor young piglets, part of a litter of seven, had been waiting for several weeks for us to be able to collect them, as the RSPCA had delayed doing an assessment of our facilities to approve us to have the pigs.

It was a long drive to collect them as the shelter is almost two hundred miles off so we went up the night before and stayed at a friend’s. The next morning, armed with a large wire meshed dog crate and a bag of straw for bedding, we set off with excitement but also a little trepidation, as we didn’t know exactly what size piglets to expect or how they would cope with a 200 hundred mile car journey!

The wait for the piglets turned out even longer than expected as we had some difficulty finding the rescue centre and we went round in circles, albeit in some lovely Scottish countryside, before asking a local farmer who pointed us in the right direction. At long last we got there and one of the staff welcomed us and said “would you like to see the piglets the then?” -  would we? Too right we would!  Although, before actually meeting our piglets we were taken to meet the parents. The parents had been part of a circus petting zoo before their rescue and the piglet’s mother is a pretty pink-with-black-spots Kune Kune sow named Fiona. Their father is a black pot bellied boar called Shrek, a real handsome chap. The litter of piglets were all either all black like their father or pink with back spots like the mother.

Then the wait was finally over and we went to see our piglets. They were in a brick outhouse with a walled off concreted yard and the first we saw of them was their little black snouts poking up out from some straw. They look gorgeous but a little apprehensive as they had just had their ears tagged that morning, which were probably still a little tender and I’m sure they were thinking “Oh no, what are they going to do to us now?”  Our first impression was that they were much smaller than we had expected but they looked really cute and gorgeous.  Now we were sure that the dog crate that we had bought specially was more than big enough for them. In fact, they were going to look a little lost in it. After meeting them and taking some pics and videos we had to go off to the office and complete all of the paperwork. This involved giving our DEFRA holding numbers and there is a pig transportation form that has to be completed when pigs are moved, we had brought this with us. With the boring bit out of the way it was off to load up our piglets.

This was when the squealing began, as soon as one of the staff tried to catch the piglets they both squealed like banshees. The first piglet stopped squealing as soon as she was caught but the other piglet squealed at the top of her voice all the way to the car. As soon as they got in the car they settled instantly and just tried to bury themselves under a pile of straw. So off we set on the long journey home. Before very  long before it became clear that one of the piglets had had a bowel evacuation…what a smell!! This is not a smell that you want to experience at too close range, like cooped up in a car! With the windows all lowered and sun roof open we proceeded and then one of the piglets must have become car sick as it started to go the way a dog does just before it vomits and sure enough, proceeded to empty its stomach contents as well as its bowel. You can imagine how the car smelled by now! We had to make a stop and throw in a lot more straw which neutralised the smell to some extent and then called for an emergency care air freshener.

The rest of the journey proceeded without incident, apart when we stopped for a break and a snack which we ate in the car, to keep an eye on the pigs, and with the smell we nearly joined the pigs in throwing up!

Anyway, finally we arrived home with the two gorgeous piglets intact and we introduced them to their new home. While they are so small we are keeping them in our dog run which is ideal having an indoor sheltered area and an outdoor grass run. They seem to like it although are more than a little timid at the moment, it seems they are pigs by name and guinea pigs by nature! But we’re sure our piglets will soon become tame.

You can see a little video of us collecting the piglets below.

John

AnimalLoversWeb.com

We had been hopeful that both boys would see sense - they have a huge free-ranging area to live in together with seven hens to share.  In fact, Primrose didn’t seem to take any interest in Tiger’s harem at all and stuck to entertaining our other two hens, Amber and Velvet, that were hatched out at the same time as Primrose.

As an interim measure, our old dog run has been transformed into a chicken house and Primrose the cockerel, Velvet and Amber our hens are now settling into their new accommodation.  Unfortunately, the fencing around the run isn’t as high a challenge as we hoped and I seem to have spent most of the day rounding up chickens who really don’t seem to appreciate that we are trying to do our best for them!

In the end, the scissors had to be sharpened and Primrose, Tiger, Amber and Velvet have all had a lop-sided haircut and said goodbye to their flight feathers.  Problem solved…

…I wish!  Went to lock up the hen “houses” this evening and couldn’t locate Primrose in the dog run.  My worse fear was that he had run away for good and so it was with slightly less anxiety that I was to find him perched back in the old hen house with the other chickens.  Tiger, thankfully, was giving him a wide berth.  Fortunately it was dusk, otherwise I think that he would have had Primrose for supper!!

Poor Primrose doesn’t know if he is coming or going (it’s not surprising with a name like that, I suppose!).  I think that I might have to try trimming his other wing tomorrow and, ultimately, a new home may be the best option for our darling young cockerel in the long run. It really does appear that keeping two cockerels is indeed one too many!

Diane
Animal Lovers Web.com

Despite all the recent media interest in the welfare of British poultry, it is still sadly apparent that our consumer society demands that prices, profits and productivity come before animal welfare. 

At Animal Lovers Web, our chickens are kept purely for their eggs and will, fortunately, never see the inside of a slaughterhouse.  Even when they get old and decide that egg-laying is too much like hard work, they will be able to live their twilight years with us, pampered, loved, safe and secure.

We don’t live in a utopian bubble and recognise that, for our chickens, life is far removed for the commercial poultry farmer’s huge barns containing thousands of chickens that never have and never will see the true light of day.  It is encouraging that more and more farmers are trying to change their farming methods to support the RSPCA’s Freedom Foods Standards, but this obviously comes at a price.  Supermarket bargain-buy chickens mean that for every bird sold, the farmer makes an unbelievable 3 pence!  This cannot be right! How can commercial poultry keepers hope to compete, yet raise their standards of husbandry?

Keeping a few back garden chickens, whether for eggs, meat or both is becoming increasingly common in the UK and abroad.  Animal welfare concerns, an increased awareness of the origins of our food and a desire for self-sufficiency, are some of the drivers influencing this practice.  It’s not just a hobby for the small land owner or stereotypical eco-warrior! 

A couple of small laying bantam hens require very little garden space and you soon realise the benefits with a fresh, tasty egg for breakfast each morning.  For those with a slightly stronger constitution than us, it must be very satisfying eating your own bird that you know has had the benefit of a good quality of life, to free range, peck and forage and enjoy being able to express their normal behaviour.

In reality, the vast majority of eggs and chickens are acquired via the supermarkets and stores.  Is consumer power strong enough to influence how these birds are raised?  Does the consumer indeed really care enough to forfeit the price of a pint of beer and a Coke for the sake of a better cared for bird - after all, who doesn’t like a bargain?  We don’t necessarily care enough about human welfare to not buy a pair of £5.00 jeans that may well be the product of child labour in some far-flung country that we can’t even pinpoint on a map.

Certainly, the publicity campaigns in recent weeks, driven by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Jamie Oliver, have increased demand for a better welfare bird and free-range eggs.  However, whilst cheaper products are available, cheaper products will be bought.  If the supermarkets thought outside the box a little more often and placed heavy discounts on the better welfare chickens, they may be less likely to score an own goal and do more for their own reputation as responsible providers to their communities.  Ultimately, an increase in demand for these better welfare chickens and free range products, would to help to drive down the costs for everybody.

Living in a democracy allows us to all make choices, even if they are not necessarily always the right ones.  Unfortunately, the same rights don’t apply to chickens. Some get lucky and have a wonderful free-ranging life ahead of them - the rest are stuck with their lot. 

Until governments take action to introduce legislation to ban intensively-farmed chickens (and their importation) and thereby remove from the equation our poor choices, then the majority of chickens will continue to be stuck in a life that bears no resemblance to living at all.

Diane
Animal Lovers Web.com

It was held in two massive halls where around 3000 small animals, mostly rabbits but with a fair number of guinea pigs and much fewer hamsters were on display. We were free to walk around and view all of the animals and  we could also get up close and handle the animals, when they were on the judging tables. The animals owners and the judges were extremely approachable and willing to chat and give information regarding the animals, which made for a real friendly and informative atmosphere and they were also happy for people to take picture of their animals.

As well as the show animals themselves there were a number of trade exhibitons with animal feedstuffs, housing and various other animal related bits and  pieces. Around the perimeter of the halls there were also stalls manned by various animal breed clubs and societies, where the club members were happy to discuss their particular breeds of interest. There was even a television celebrity vet, Matt Brash from ITV Yorkshire’s Zoo Vet At Large who was also very approachable and happy to chat with the attendees including ourselves and my daughter even had her picture taken with him, and, of course, we had to buy his book, which he duly signed!

Although rabbits outnumbered all of the other animals by some margin and there was a fantastic array of beautiful rabbit breeds of all sizes shapes and colours, I particularly enjoyed the guinea pigs. I saw for the first time a number of guinea pig breeds that were new to me, including my personal favourite the Lilac Fox. This was a stunningly coloured smooth coated guinea pig with lighter eye circles and a very light coloured belly. I spoke in some detail with the breeder and look forward to hearing more about this breed from him and quite possibly acquiring one or two to add to our current pair of guinea pigs.

The only dissapointment for us was how few hamsters there were on show and nearly all of the Syrians were just curled up in a ball in their cages trying to get some sleep. Maybe what the Syrian hamsters need is a nocturnal small animal show to really shine! There were quite a few dwarf hamstes and a few long haired Syrians, which were nice as we hadn’t seen to many of them in the flesh before. Anyway it certainly made a great day out and we have already pencilled in it in the diary for next year and plan to find a few more similar small animals shows to attend in the spring and summer.

John 

Animal Lovers Web.com

It’s going to be tricky spotting exactly when Amber and Velvet do start to lay, as all the hens seem to have adopted a special area of their own in one of our barns as their new nesting area.  Usually, each morning, they will all take turns to sit on any laid eggs and plop one out themselves.  We could do with a webcam being honed in to see if either of the new chicks join in the morning ritual! 

Our laying hens all produce very similar sized brown-coloured eggs.  Maybe if we’re really optomistic, Amber and Velvet might surprise is with something a bit different, just to show us how unique they are!

Both of our young hens are still a little smaller than their older hen-house mates and have some growing yet to do.  Primrose, our third baby chick, is gradually changing into a magnificent mini-me cockeral version of his dad, Tiger. Our concerns about infighting between the two cockerels are yet to be realised. Primrose seems to be happy having Amber and Velvet to himself and Tiger tends to leave them alone - he has five other girls to keep him occupied! We suspect feathers may fly soon if Primrose’s pending sexual maturity causes him to encroach on Tiger’s territory - we’re going to have to keep a close eye.

Despite Primrose’s less than masculine name, he is starting to try and “cock-a-doodle-do” to emulate his dad’s decibel-crunching cries every morning..afternoon..evening…!  It is rather a pathetic effort at the moment and he does have some serious competition, poor soul.  His attempts rather remind us of a pubescent boy’s struggle to control a breaking voice, all to no avail!

All our chickens are looking a bit bedraggled, windswept and weatherbeaten at the moment.  They can’t resist trying to dig up juicy worms and bugs in their waterlogged grassy run even when there’s a force 10 gale blowing outside.  We’re sure they probably have the same opinion of our appearance really.  Farm life goes on, whatever the weather and chickens poop won’t clean up itself.  However, the reward of a delicious runny egg curtesy of our beautiful, friendly feathered friends makes it all worth while!

Diane

AnimalLoversWeb.com