I’ve been mildly puzzled for a while as to how the horse water buckets manage to get so muddy so quickly – but this afternoon I caught the culprits in the act!

 

I feel a little sorry for the horses, having to drink duck bath water…. and why do the ducks insist on bathing here, and not in their wider, lower troughs? It’s quite a struggle for them to climb in and out of the deep troughs, but clearly they prefer making the effort to easier, more shallow bathing elsewhere… I wonder why? They’re not explaining their reasoning to me.

The black silkies, Charlie and his Angel, are now out of the dairy sheds! I carried them out to the yard the day before yesterday and heartlessly abandoned them by the hen house door, and they’ve taken up residence in the feed room instead. Some critters have no sense of adventure, it seems! They seem quite happy there, anyway, and get first dibs into the horse feed buckets, not to mention occasional extra corn if I fall over them while carrying food for the other poultry!

The plaster in the spare bedroom has dried, so today we brought home the paint and curtain pole to get it finished off ready for Mum to move in. She has finally noticed that we’ve packed up 20 boxes of assorted clutter from the house and moved them out to one of the sheds, but when I explained that we’re keeping a spreadsheet of box numbers and contents, she was okay with the packing. Just as well, really, given we brought another 10 boxes back from B&Q along with the paint….!

All the horses were at the far end of the field this morning, so I fed everyone else, mixed up their feeds and then yelled for them. They all stared, then hurled themselves up the field en masse – somewhat worryingly, given the mud and the low bit in the wall! – but ended up milling about in the orchard paddock, so I fed my lot there and let Rhapsody into the yard to eat in peace. When she’d finished I retrieved her from by the top gate and did a little leading practice with her, while the rest watched from just over the top gate, neatly lined up. After that I led her to the bottom gate, intending to put her back out through it.

The others all lined up just inside that gate before we got there.

I turned Rhapsody round and headed back towards the top gate.

The others all streamed back up the field to meet us, so I turned back hurriedly and got Rhapsody out through the bottom gate before the rest of the Herd caught on!

Another nurse appointment for Mum today – the erythromycin hasn’t helped at all, so now we’ve been given 14 days of cefalexin, with instructions to watch for allergic reactions because Mum’s allergic to penicillin and there’s some evidence of cross-allergenicity between the two drugs… we will, apparently, see it very clearly within 24 hours of the first dose or not at all. The diuretic dose has also been doubled to try and reduce the leg swelling and the lung crackles – so the heart failure’s not improving any, either…

I’ll be spending most of the day at the Croft tomorrow, the hoof trimmer’s coming up in the afternoon so I’ve taken the day off from elder-sitting and I have a list of jobs as long as my arm to try and catch up on.

 

 

I tried taking some photos of Dancer and Poppy together this morning, to show how big Dancer’s getting – she’s possibly only an inch or two less to the withers now than her mum. Poppy’s 14.2 hands, so applying a bit of rule-of-thumb guidelines about horse growth patterns, a dollop of experience and a lot of wild-ass-guesstimation… I’m going to mix my metaphors, push the boat out and say she’s going to make 15.2 or thereabouts by the time she’s 5 or 6 years old and full grown! It’s a fine, useful size for a horse – not too big and not too small, capable of carrying an adult human’s weight but still light enough to be agile. Much as I love George, I have to admit that at 5’2″ I’m going to look like a pea on a drum sat astride his 17hh-plus bulk next year some time!

The problem when I was taking the photos was that George was just out of camera shot to my right, so while one beautiful girl concentrated on looking gorgeous for me – the other was making horrendous faces at George! Here’s a morning photo of the three girls together waiting for breakfast:

Rhapsody prefers what mine eat to what she arrived eating, apparently, and has now stolen feeds from Dancer and Abe, so I’ve started adding some speedi-beet to her bucket as well. I mix a huge cauldron of the stuff (oh alright; it’s a very large plastic bucket) each morning and leave it soaking – 4 scoops of beet and 4 scoops of fast fibre in a 30-litre bucket full of water makes 24 hours’ of food for the horses, allowing for me adding hi-fi-lite chaff for mine topped off with hay nuggets, and Rhapsody gets her much higher-calorie veteran mix and calm & condition pellets (soaked thoroughly) in hers. I have explained several times to Rhapsody that she’s not supposed to eat hay, but each time she’s just gazed at me while chewing happily on mouthfuls of the stuff… so she also gets a net of hay three times a day, out in the field, as mine get nets in the barns. She doesn’t seem to want to come inside – she could, easily, just as mine trek in and out, but she just watches them come in and then whinnies plaintively at them across the yard, she never follows them.

I’m still waiting for the last damp corner of the spare bedroom ceiling to dry completely, but that’s fine. I’ve just dumped all the tack in there for the weekend – I’m moving everything around again. It’s too much hassle keeping the feed the other side of the horses and having to run the gauntlet of starving George twice a day! I’ll br bringing the two remaining bunnies out to live in a hutch against the house for the rest of the winter; I’m keeping Nightshade and an albino doe from Tiger’s litter I’m calling Mistletoe. Fingers crossed they get on okay! A pair of females is the hardest of all the pairs of bunnies to persuade to bond, but Nightshade’s lived with other does before and Mistletoe’s still only seven months old, so I’m hoping hard.

After that I just need to find a good place to put the quail somewhere in the yard and life will be easier. At least, that’s the plan…

 

Almost the moment I got in through Mum’s front door she asked me to help her put her kitchen back where it was, as she hated what had been done by my siblings without asking how she felt and how she wanted her kitchen to be! Accordingly, I’ve moved the freezer, recycling, rubbish bin, shredder, glass bottle crate and spare shopping bag box back into the places they were in before, retrieved the biscuit box from a shelf she couldn’t reach and put it back in the usual spot on a lower shelf, did the same with the cooking oil and squash, brought the outside bins back from the front of the house to the side between two sets of gates and generally tidied stuff back where she told me she wanted it.

After that she had a look through a paint catalogue with me and has chosen the colour of paint for her room. She wants to check it in daylight against the yellow velvet curtains she thinks she wants (they’re an old pair she’s had for years but still perfectly good) and then I’ll go get the paint and a curtain rail. Her room should be ready to paint at the end of the week when the plaster’s properly dry – with application, I hope to have it all ready for her over the weekend.

With luck on the removals people having free time, we could have her settling into the Croft towards the end of next week!

I found Dancer hanging out with Rhapsody in the field this morning – and even when I fed them, Rhapsody came over and muscled into Dancer’s breakfast, so they ended up with both noses in the bucket! I moved Rhapsody’s meal closer so they shared that for dessert.

Poppy ate in solitary splendour in the barn, while Abe and George ate on opposite sides of the yard. It all seems to work for them, so who I am to quibble?

I’m taking on another half dozen hens in the New Year – a friend’s parents are moving to France and were looking to rehome rather than eat their chickens, so I’ll be getting a little mixed flock – an Araucana crossed Pencilled Hamburg cockerel with 6 hens – one black Araucana, one Gold Pencilled Hamburg, one Blackrock and three crossbreds. Apparently they lay a mix of white, green, blue and brown eggs, which will add some nice variety to my flock’s brown eggs.

I shall have my fingers crossed the cockerels all get on, but hopefully they’ll each establish their own territory and not pick fights.

Snowball has decided to move on from asserting his male authority by pulling the hens’ tails and stamping at the ducks, he’s now trying to mate with the hens. I’m not sure how effective he is yet – the hens are taller and he has to jump onto their backs, but he’s trying! Charlie is restricting his attention to the black silkie hen, who has become known as Angel. They’re staying firmly in the sheds and refusing to come out again!

It’s been a while since I posted, for various reasons. Two of my siblings arrived on Friday to (allegedly) help with Mum. In fact they arrived having compared notes without any reference to Mum or me and, plan in hand, proceeded to tear the kitchen apart, throw out a lot of stuff, rearrange all the furniture and assume I was happy to drive trailer loads of stuff to the tip, because neither of them have tow bars.

Strangely, I’d been looking forward to a weekend of less time spent away from the Croft and more time to catch up on work there and, of course, the horses.

Anyway, I walked out this afternoon and basically just said ‘fuck it!’ so I got to spend the afternoon at the Croft. Since they hadn’t asked me anything I returned the favour and simply went. I also blew up at them on Saturday night when I remarked that I will soon have to sell my rifles as I’m going to lose my Firearms Certificate in March, and got the cheerful response “That’s okay then!”

No, it is not okay. I made that abundantly clear in writing on Messenger so they should have it there to refer back to. I have had it with them knowing what I want better than I do, knowing what’s best for Mum without asking her what she wants and assuming that I will meekly fall into line with their orders – particularly when their plans involve putting Mum into a residential home regardless of her wishes and selling her house to pay for it.

Tomorrow I shall ask Mum where she wants all the furniture putting back in her kitchen, in her house, and then I shall sit down and talk to her about what she wants to do with the immediate future, whether and when she wants to sell her house and what she would like to do with the proceeds, if that’s her decision.

On a more cheerful note, the spare bedroom ceiling has been fixed, neatly replastered and is now drying. By the end of the week I should be able to slap on a couple of coats of fresh paint, and then I shall ask Mum how soon she wants to move.

Siblings will not be consulted. Nor will they have any input into my kitchen nor, for that matter, the fixing up of the bathroom or what furniture Mum wants to take with her. I’m still too bloody furious with their attitude to even speak to them civilly.

Anyway, I had a nice time with the horses, in every sense. I got George out, to his delight, and we did some walking around the yard practice together. When I took him back to the yard gate because we’d nearly run out of treats, however, he didn’t want to go back in. While we danced around the open gate, Abe helped himself to outside and pottered quietly off into the dusk, with Dancer on his heels. I managed to shut the gate before Poppy joined the exodus, but that meant Poppy was separated from her darling baby and started yelling her head off, dashing through the barns to get eyes-on again.

I’d let go of George when Poppy came steaming up behind him, because the alternative was being dragged across the yard by a very worried George, so I picked up a spare rope and persuaded Dancer to return to her mum in the yard, then nipped through the big dairy shed and refilled the treat pouch! George came to me very willingly and I coaxed him back into the yard – Poppy was occupied safely out of the way giving Dancer a drink of milk, so he was happy to go through the gate this time!

I didn’t take Abe back to the yard – I flipped a rope over his neck and took him to the field gate, where he happily joined Rhapsody in her hay net.

Excitement over, I gave everyone handfuls of treats and left them to it!

I took the two black silkies outside yesterday. It was a nice day and they just don’t, for some reason, leave the barn, so I picked them up and carried them out, plunked them in the greenhouse where Snowball and some of the hybrids were sunbathing, and left them to deal with it.

That was fine, but when I came home in the evening the silly beggars had just lain down to sleep in the middle of the yard! I had to pick them up before I could park the car by the house! I carried them back into the barn and put them in their usual corner there.

Snowball usually sleeps there with them – the other chickens sleep as individuals, each hen tucked into a separate little feathery heap from the others, but the silkies like to puppy-pile together. I was expecting him to be there, but there was no sign of him!

I had a quick look around but no sign – and the horses were wanting attention, so I went to feed Rhapsody (she’s up to 3 meals a day now) and had to decoy George away from her to a bucket of his own, into which I kept tossing a few hay nuggets to keep his attention so she could scoff her feed in peace. That was fine and George certainly didn’t mind!

Still no sign of Snowball. I walked around with a torch to see if I could spot him anywhere, but no. He wasn’t in with the hybrids, nor in with the ducks. I hung up fresh hay nets where required, since I was there with the hay, then searched around the sheds again. No sign of Snowball. Charlie and his hen were curled up asleep in a heap in their corner again. I took the big torch out and looked down the field, but no little white cockerels.

He wasn’t lurking in the pampas grass, or under the holly, or anywhere in the greenhouse, woodshed or barn.

I was beginning to wonder if the feral cat hadn’t picked him up for a Christmas dinner – she was around the other day in daylight and looking at him, though he was looking right back at her! Asleep, though, if he’d plunked himself down with the black silkies in the yard, he’d be easy to spot and easy to scoff. A fox would take all three, but a cat would probably just take one…

The dogs didn’t think the cat had been around. They’re normally very quick to say if they find cat smell anywhere!

I resigned myself to not hearing the cheerful cock-a-doodle-doo in the morning and went to bed.

This morning when I got up, Snowball was strutting around the yard pulling ducks’ tails! I still don’t know where he slept last night, though.

A fairly crappy still pulled from a phone video taken in failing light yesterday afternoon while Abe was trying to eat the phone, but hopefully the black line going across near the top of his ear is evident. That’s a loose hanging strip of ear that the silly beggar’s sliced on something.

He’s not worried about it, it doesn’t affect his ear mobility so his hearing won’t be affected, it’s stopped bleeding and with the frost at least there’s no flies, so the vet examined the video this morning and confirmed what I thought – best left alone. He’s lovely but he’s not a top showing prospect so I don’t plan on getting cosmetic surgery done to repair the damage – the noodle of loose flesh will probably just shrivel up and fall off, if it doesn’t have enough blood supply left, but if it doesn’t the vet may trim it off under a local anaesthetic later, just so it doesn’t catch on things and cause pain in the future.

You can always rely on a horse to fall ill on a Sunday afternoon or in the middle of the night….

On a definitely more upwards note, two of the ducks were in the rafters this morning. If more of them take to sleeping in the rafters I’ll feel happier about possible fox visits! They’re also spending more time sitting on top of gates and fences – I haven’t seen them up trees yet, but at some point, perhaps! I wouldn’t be surprised to find one on top of a horse, either, one of these days…

Yesterday was a long day, involving being messed about with somewhat, rehoming three bunnies and learning that keeping Mum up late on a road trip is a monumentally Bad Idea.

Firstly, I’d made arrangements to get Tiger, Copper and the little brown doe to their new home in Ayrshire by meeting up with their new person in Stirling services, roughly halfway between the two ends. Originally we agreed on lunchtime, so I dashed about on Friday evening putting feeds ready for me being away at the normal feeding time and needing to get everyone fed very fast when I got back.

Then the time changed. Could we manage 4 pm?

Arrgh! Yes, but now I needed to put up extra hay nets to carry the horses over a 3-hour delay in their mealtime! Many thanks, Elen, for the hay nets you sent for Christmas – they are fabulously useful and all of us are grateful!

By 9am on Saturday I had everything sorted for a 4pm handover in Stirling, picked up another 6 bales of hay to stuff the extra nets and then another text.

Could we make it 7pm? Mother in law apparently came for lunch.

Ye gods!

Actually, 7pm was a better time in terms of feeding the critters, so I said yes, but it did mean keeping Mum up much later than usual as she was coming with me. Michelle can’t get Mum ready for bed in the evening because Mum won’t do as Michelle asks – for whatever reason that may be. Rather than leave Mum at home and have Michelle tearing her hair trying to get Mum to bed on the usual routine, therefore, it seemed easier if I just took her along for the road trip and (I thought) by the time we got home she’d be tired and ready to go straight to sleep.

Anyway, I rearranged the schedule and the extra nets were still invaluable (because I was tired when I got home, so just hanging extra nets without needing to stuff them first was fantastic!) and we set off with three bunnies in cages in the boot at 3.45pm.

It was a good run down there, not much traffic and dry weather, so we had time to enjoy a cup of tea and a slice of cake at the services (after offering the bunnies water, which they rejected. I had given them carrots and apples to nibble in transit, as well as hay, so if they were thirsty they had juicy stuff, but they hadn’t touched them either). Mum didn’t talk much on the way but apart from asking several times how far we were going and being astonished we were going to Stirling, she was fairly with it. The handover went smoothly and we waved the bunnies off to their new home and came home again. It was another nice smooth drive, although wet and misty once north of Stonehaven, and we were home by 10.15pm. The bunnies’ new family sent a photo of Tiger sitting on their little’s girl’s lap on a sofa, so that’s ok!

I made a cup of tea and suggested I give Mum a hand getting ready for bed. She wasn’t tired, didn’t want to go to bed. !0.30 came and went, the dogs still hadn’t had dinner and I knew the horses would be getting through their hay, so at quarter to eleven I handed over to Michelle and came home.

As usual, Rhapsody was standing at the top gate and whinnied to me when I opened the gates, so she got her nose stroked in passing. Her net was ok, though damp. I drove through the gates and paused to close the gates, at which point Poppy and Dancer (as usual) whinnied from the door of the horse barn. I closed the gates, stroked their noses and checked the hay box – half full, so that was fine. I drove round and parked by the house, and George nickered from the yard, so I gave him a stroke. Empty hay nets in the stable shed. Abe came out and nickered at me so he got stroked too. Just being there with them lifts my mood and the weariness drops away – they really are keeping me sane!

Dogs in and fed, then back out for a pee break, then back in to curl up on the sofa. I went back out and hung up fresh hay nets, stroked Abe, fed George several large handfuls of nuggets and then came in for bed and was asleep before midnight.

Checking my phone this morning; Michelle still hadn’t managed to get Mum to go to bed at 4.30am. She was apparently just sitting on her bed staring into space and talking to herself.

Note for the future – taking Mum on a long drive might be a problem. I just hope we don’t spend today dealing with her sleeping all day…

Blondie is hobnobbing with Hannibal and Lucy, rather than the rest of the ducks.

My shamanic teacher, Elen Sentier, introduced me to the concept of the mental cauldron when I was a very green apprentice. It simply means putting something out of your conscious thinking and letting it simmer away to itself in the back of your mind for a while. When you come back to your stew, it’s usually bubbled itself along a good way and become more useful.

It’s thawed overnight, a blustery wild southerly wind making the night quite exciting but bringing warmth in its train; most of the herd spent the night tucked up cheerfully in the orchard, though Poppy tried hard to get them to follow her into the barns (that’s what you get for being a domineering madam, Poppy! – chill a little and stop bullying the others, they’ll be happier to follow you) so every now and again a volley of plaintive neighs rang out, answered by the others but with no sign of them obeying instructions to come in out of the weather!

While I was doing the water this morning (delighted to say the hose has thawed out again!) George came out to ‘help’. This is normally one of our best times for practicing walking up and down the fence together, with a turn on the forehand at one end and a turn on the quarters at the other (don’t ask me why, that’s George’s preference!) This morning I decided, while we were standing watching a bucket filling up, to ask if he’d lift a hoof for me. I ran my fingers gently down his shoulder and asked ‘hoof?’ and he gave me a rather old-fashioned look and stepped away. Alright, then, we weren’t doing off-fore! he’s come on a good way, though, in that he doesn’t tell me where to go with his teeth when I ask him to do something he doesn’t want to do – he just said ‘no’ politely. I always respect his refusals, of course – he has very decided opinions and won’t accept ‘I told you!’ as an option. (And why should he? They’re his hooves, after all!)  I took a couple of steps sideways and held my hand out towards his off hind quarter with another request of ‘hoof, George?’ and…. he lifted his hoof up and held it neatly for a few seconds, then put it down again and looked at me expectantly.

I gave him a whole handful of treats. I hadn’t even touched him and he’d still obliged me!  We haven’t done hooves for a week or so, since the icy weather arrived – I don’t like asking horses to stand on three legs on a slithery surface! – and then he produces a big step forward, not waiting to be touched!

I asked for his front hoof again after that and he sighed heavily before lifting it, and at the top bucket, with him facing the other way, he looked martyred for being asked – but lifted his near side hooves without being touched, as well.

This is fantastic progress and shows he’s got the the ‘hoof’ request nailed firmly into his memory, as well as understanding what I mean when I indicate which hoof I’m asking for. I do often find that backing off a cue, once it’s established, allows them to process it at their own speed and then they own it and move forward more confidently when I get back to it, but I’m always thrilled when it happens – evidence that they, too, have a mental cauldron into which they drop ‘stuff’ and let it seethe quietly until it’s done.

I missed another good photo op with the ducks last night – one of the lavender drakes grabbed Blondie by the feathers in the middle of his back and Blondie, of course, hissed furiously and walked off – towing his brother across the ice behind him! They went round and round in a circle for a minute, ending up marching in lock-step past a very concerned Hannibal, who intervened on behalf of his adopted gosling (Blondie!) by honking loudly and flapping his wings until the lavender lad let go, then the two geese walked off with Blondie while lavender went the other way.

I expect the drakes will organise some kind of hierarchy between themselves over the coming months. Somehow I get the impression Blondie won’t be at the top of it…

 

 

Mostly because of the weather.

All that rain and mud froze hard three days ago, so I got up to a yard that was basically a skating rink. With a gradient. The poultry are fine, they have strong sharp claws for gripping even hard ice. Rhapsody is still out in the field but the rest of the herd basically hunkered down in the barns and has just been dedicatedly chewing its way through the hay stack. I’m down to just a couple of day’s supply again!

I should apologise to the lady in Ayrshire who wanted some bunnies; I wrote her off as a time-waster but she’s got back in touch after talking her hubby around and I’ll be meeting her in Stirling on Saturday to hand over the castor doe kit, Copper and Tiger. I’ll keep Nightshade as a pet, I think, and maybe one of Tiger’s doe kits as a companion for her. The rest will be slain untimely and will feed the ferrets, dogs and I.

I actually had quite a bit of fun with the gates at the top of the yard, since the gradient there is steep enough I started sliding slowly downhill the moment I stepped onto the tarmac there! Clinging to a gate for balance and trying to push it uphill while sliding downhill… it may be a small and childish moment of fun, but I enjoyed it! I have now, however, spread ash from the fire over the drive so the car doesn’t emulate my skating technique.

Michelle’s new employers must be keen – they’re now phoning her to ask if she wants to start work earlier (March instead of September 2020) and to keep her updated on finding her a job within the department whose boss expressed an interest in adding her to his team!

I’ve decided to call the black silkie cockerel Charlie. He had sort of turned into ‘black boy’, which was one of the nicknames of Charles I, so there you go… he’s growing into a very handsome lad, unlike his royal namesake! I’m still waiting for the little black hen’s name to arrive, and most of the ducks are still nameless, too… Mother Duck seems to have stuck, and Blondie, the young white drake (who is definitely beautiful but brainless!) but the rest… I watch them and wait. Rather like cats, names become apparent in their own time.

Speaking of cats, I’ve seen the tabby-and-white feral cat around the yard a few more times recently. Unfortunately I normally see the cat when I’m out with the dogs in the night, so it’s not exactly a welcome the poor creature gets! It’s hard to sound convincing with a friendly ‘take all the rats you like!’ when you’re holding a pair of slavering, bouncing hounds, straining at the leash and yelping with eagerness for the chase….

Sighthounds are just like that. I only ever walk them off the leash on a beach where the seabirds can cheat by flying away and I can see for miles to make sure there’s nothing else they can chase!