Everything’s ready for the new chooks to arrive tomorrow, I’ve checked the directions against the map to reach the pick-up point and I’ve also borrowed a poultry crate from a friend, since we seem to have mislaid ours! I put down a layer of shavings rescued when the monster tree trunk was cut and split, and then some slightly-used straw from the horses on top. It should be more interesting for them than brand-new straw! The big hanging device is a drinker, the two smaller ones have layers’ pellets in and I’ll chuck corn and grit into the straw for them to scratch up.

The silkie chicks are in a slightly bigger brooder – an old bunny cage too decrepit to hold bunnies any more. They’ve spent most of the day racing madly around, scratching furiously at the floor (I mixed mealworms, corn, layers’ pellets and grit into the shavings for them) and talking to each other at breakneck speed! I think they’re the chattiest chicks we’ve ever had, constantly wittering to each other and me when I’m there. It’s hilarious watching them beating a dried mealworm to death before eating the bits.

I had a lovely session with George today – whoa, walk on, turns in both directions, stand and back, all at liberty, and to finish off he allowed me to climb on the fence to give his back a good scratch and pat, leaning on him somewhat, with only a dirty look to show he disapproved! Poppy is now eager to get her training sessions in and chased the boys out to monopolise me at lunchtime!

The trip to Glasgow was postponed to Tuesday, which means the barn got a thorough cleaning out instead.

In many ways this is my favourite part of the day. There’s almost no traffic up the lane here after about 6pm, so with a little haar muffling any distant traffic there’s no sound but wildlife, hay being crunched in the barns and the wind in the leaves and grasses. After a long day, it’s marvellous to just lean on a gate and listen to a world devoid of human noises, devoid of human habitations (provided I have my back to my own house, of course!) and, in many ways, to just be the only human in the landscape.

This morning I sneaked out and shut the field gate before the horses realised I was about, which meant I could just push on and clean out every speck of muck from the stable shed, do all the haynets, refill the water buckets and bottles and see to the small animals without having any horses in the way. I did feel very guilty though when George spotted me and headed straight to the gate with an anticipatory sort of joyfulness – only to find the gate shut. They all hung about just by the muckheap and watched me emptying barrows for quite a while before resigning themselves and moving off to graze again, and for a while after that George kept coming back hopefully to see if this barrowful was the last and was it time to play yet…

I kept apologising to him in passing.

Finally everything else was done and I let them in, then went to check my mother had remembered her car was due for a service today. She had, so that was ok, and we finished roofing the henhouse together before going back to the village to pick up her car, then on in mine with the trailer to the tip, where we unloaded the sawn up bits of conifer, then round to collect a load of firewood, back to the croft to dump the trailer and pick up the dogs and then back to the vet’s for Wicket’s annual jabs! Along the way I was given a chick drinker for my little silkies, which is excellent.

I’m not sure now what’s happening tomorrow – the plan was that Michelle would conclude everything that needed doing in Glasgow today and I’d pick her up with the last of her belongings, but she emailed tonight to say she’d forgotten to pick up a prescription and it might be Monday, she’ll let me know just after 9 tomorrow morning. Ah well – if she gets it alright then the big crate is already set up at my mother’s for the dogs and I can just drop them and dash off. If she doesn’t get it, I can spend the day getting the horse barn spick and span again instead.

I have the time to pick up my 4 ex-commercial laying hens on Sunday now – 2pm. It’s a nice run over to the far side of Turriff to pick them up, and I need to sort out a suitable carrier for them. It might be a large cardboard box with plenty of airholes because I don’t think any of the official animal carriers here are tall enough for chickens, and I have no idea where our 30-year-old poultry crate has got to these days!

I’ve just had a nice session with the horses, starting with George enjoying (positively enjoying, not just tolerating!) a groom, then the others arrived and I groomed everyone, picked up a hoof here and there (not George’s) and had to tell Poppy off twice for threatening Abe because she wanted another slice of my attention! It’s nice that she’s coming out of her shell – but poor Abe! He’s the sweetest-natured gelding I’ve ever met. Dancer was perfectly cheerful about me putting an arm over her back and patting her ribs on the far side – she’s far too young to put weight on her back, of course, but I like to keep her familiar with the sensation of something over or round her. Poppy’s not keen on being leaned on, reached over, hugged round the middle (Dancer’s accustomed to being bear-hugged round the body!) or otherwise messed with like that, but she’s really caught on to the ‘walk with me’ invitation and all three of the Arabs are very sensitive to the body-language/energy work of moving with a human (as opposed to being moved by a human via a rope, rein or whatever). George is equally sensitive, he just doesn’t choose to oblige sometimes! Tonight he felt very obliging and we had a lovely session all round.

Time to get a cuppa and head for my bed, the only human in the landscape again…

It’s been a long day but the henhouse is now in pieces, leaning up against the end of the stable shed. One of the trees-in-sinks outside the feed room door is now sliced and diced and stacked in the trailer, ready to be taken to the tip. The sink has been emptied and I don’t know what to do with it! It’s too heavy to move… maybe I should leave it in situ and make it a dustbath for the chooks? The heap of rocks dug out when the horse fence went in has been moved from next to the shed and turfed over the fence at the front onto the bank, where they’ve disappeared into the weeds nicely.

Tomorrow morning I’ll do a last bit of tidying up in the spot where the henhouse will go, then I need to take my daughter to the train station – she has an appointment in Glasgow on Friday, so I’m driving down again on Saturday to collect her and finish clearing the last of her possessions out of her flat there.

In the afternoon Mum and I will reassemble the henhouse and measure up to get it a new roof, which is just plywood and roofing felt, and by tomorrow night I hope to have it entirely assembled and ready to put down bedding, hang up food and water containers and stuff the nest box with straw.

It may not happen, of course, but that’s the aim at the moment!

Along the way, I carelessly left one of the bunny cages open so I had to recapture four bunnies who were exploring the yard – Nightshade was easy since she walked up to me and I just scooped her up. Copper took two attempts to grab, once I’d tracked him down (he was sitting on top of Tiger’s cage, socialising). One of the little black bunnies had to be unearthed from a heap of cardboard waiting to go to the tip, and one of the two brown ones was helping himself to grass outside the feed room door, so I herded him back to the cage, cornered him against the wall and incarcerated him again.

Thankfully the horses were at the other end of the field!

It’s been quite an eventful couple of days for Nightshade’s bunch – her little runt died yesterday, I found her dead in the cage. I’ve noticed before that runts often do this – they seem to hold their own until they’re weaned, then keel over. I speculate there might be some kind of digestive problem and they just can’t cope with an adult diet. The ferrets took care of corpse disposal, as usual.

Copper and Dexter are now in separate cages, each placed next to the doe they’ve been cohabiting with most recently so they’re not lonely and the others don’t wonder where they’ve gone. I’ve also doubled up the number of water bottles for the bunnies, since there are quite a lot of them now!

I’ve had a chat with my local garage about the fuel computer problem in the car and they’ll have a look at it next Wednesday, see if they can find a reason for it. In the meantime I need to keep the tank above a quarter, but close enough I can reproduce the fault by next Wednesday!!

Busy busy – too throng to blog!

Dancer has been out and further from the gate by herself – all of six yards or so, then the starling flock came over and she had a snort and boggle at their shadows racing across the ground towards her! We stopped there, waited a moment and then went back to the gate and anxious Poppy. It was good, considering Dancer’s age and lack of experience!

George came out against yesterday morning and I did some cone-work with him – I just laid out a small circle of cones for him to walk around with him, which gave us some visual markers for when I asked for whoa, but he took it calmly and was listening even if he didn’t understand why I was asking for such daft things, so full marks for him, too.

Poppy and Abe haven’t been out because I’ve been too busy and they’re not as pushy as the two babies! They do get moments of target work with my hand and some nuggets when they can get a nose in edgeways so they’re not totally neglected!

I’ve got two large cages ready to move the buck rabbits into, which will happen later today. I also have 4 rescue ex-battery hens coming on Sunday so I need to get my skates on to shift the henhouse up from my mother’s back garden!

Today’s urgent jobs – get the barn and stable shed thoroughly mucked out and clean, then pitch into the henhouse job until that’s done!

The car’s tank got down to a quarter again last night and promptly repeated the fuel computer data error lark, so I have a repeatable fault that I can take to the garage to get investigated. Darn it! My options are either get it fixed and sell the car, or fill the car up and sell it, then when the buyer comes back indignantly, fix an innocent expression on my face and claim I never let the tank drop below half so I had no idea….

I just hope this turns out less expensive and quicker to fix than the last computer problem…. I’m feeling nostalgic for the old Series I Landy, nothing to repair that a bang from a hammer or five minutes with a welder wouldn’t fix…

After George’s excellent session this morning he was in an evil mood this afternoon, mostly because I stacked up a load of bales alongside the yard fence and then climbed on them. He does not like finding me above his eye level! The whole point of stacking the bales as I did was to start getting him used to finding me at various levels while keeping a safe distance between us so I persevered despite the pinned ears and snapping teeth, and eventually he slouched off with his ears still at a discontented angle. Poppy, Dancer and Abe had no such hangups about my height and eagerly came to do target work while I sat three bales up!

Abe has had a good session alongside the mounting block and I really think we’re probably within a couple of weeks of him accepting me on his back! He stood like the proverbial rock while I went up and down the steps, scratched his withers and leaned a hand lightly on his back.

Finally, I decided it was time for Dancer to take a leap in her development. I put her headcollar on and gently coaxed her out of the yard gate – without her mum! Poppy stood just the other side of the gate whickering anxiously but I only took Dancer a couple of steps away and then turned her round to face Poppy and ‘home’ again. When she was settled there, I asked her to take just one step back, one step forward and so on for a minute or so and then restored her to a very worried mare who sniffed her carefully all over!

Eventually, I want to be able to take one out hacking while the other stays home peacefully and vice versa, but one tiny step at a time – this was quite a big jump psychologically, perhaps more for Poppy, who’s lost all her previous foals at weaning time, rather than for Dancer, who’s growing up and ready to start moving out of mum’s shadow, so I kept the physical separation very small and brief.

Now I just need them all to go out in the field again so I can finish mucking out and shift all that hay into the shed safely!

I’ve just had a fabulous session with George – though it started inauspiciously.

All four horses were in the barn when I went out, so while I fed the bunnies, quail and ferrets they all yawned and stretched their way to activity. George came to the big dairy shed door to watch as I was giving hay to the bunnies and we started a brief session there, only for Poppy to chase him away so she could have a go! Dancer turned up and started being obnoxious (she’s testing her boundaries, seeing if she can threaten me with laid-back ears, so she got some backing-up practice until her ears perked up again!) so after a few minutes I finished off the bunnies and Poppy chased everyone out to the field.

George came back. We had a brief session in the shed doorway across the wire barrier there, then I hung a haynet in the barn and refilled the hay box before he caught up and we had a brief session there. I escaped gracefully and nipped round to the feed room, refilled the treat pouch and made up the sugar beet, then kidnapped one of the haynets from the stable shed and got that refilled before he caught up again.

As I was hanging the net back up, George decided to get jealous of the haynet monopolising my attention! He shoved his way through between the net and the wall, forcing me to hold it up in the air at arms’ length to avoid him breaking the string it’s tied to, the daft brush! I managed to get him to stand and back, and although he kept pushing forward while I was trying to tie it up, repeated ‘stand!’ and ‘back!’ kept everything under control long enough to make my escape again without being squashed between the net, the wall and the horse! I was feeling a little cornered so I ducked out and we did some target work over the fence in the yard to calm down.

I got out the saddle bags, the lambskin saddle and the walk-my-horse pack to show him, none of which got more than a thoughtful ruffle with the nose from George (he liked the feel of the lambskin, I think, and ruffled it for several seconds rather than the brief touch the others got), then I decided to risk it. The yard gate was shut so the worst George could do was crash through the greenhouse (!!), squash the car and perhaps wedge himself into the feed room… I got his headcollar out, to his delight, and he inserted his head into it with clear pleasure.

He came through the gate from their yard into the other half snorting and bouncing a little, but stood politely for me to shut the gate securely behind him and then we set off.

Grass. More grass. Different grass. Snort at the haystack. More grass. Snort at the gates. Clover! Bliss! Check human still there, good, clover again! I didn’t try to do anything, just held the rope and let him circulate and take in the sights, smells and lots of grass. After a few circuits, I did ask him to whoa and stand and he did, so then I did a little grown-ups and some walk-on and whoa practice with him, which he did beautifully.

The others were all standing in the field staring across and clearly wondering how they got to have a go by now, with much snorting and ear-pricking and the occasional nip between Dancer and Abe!

After a few more circuits and a change of rein (George was very good about that and stood like a rock while I switched sides) he allowed me to steer him back to the gate and through, turned around neatly and waited while I shut the gate, then I took the headcollar off and gave him several handfuls of nuggets together with loads of praise. When I came away to get my breakfast, he went out to the field at a trot, headed straight over to the others and started a nose-nipping game with Abe, so he clearly enjoyed his session immensely and is feeling good about life!

George is still watching the yard and shooting in the minute he sees any movement! This evening he’s just trotted all the way up the field just to say hello and get some training in with me – it’s immensely flattering to my ego, no doubt it’s equally satisfying to his cavernous belly and it’s really putting a serious crimp in the yard work!! I was warned some horses are so excited at finding there’s someone to actually communicate with them that they won’t leave you alone – naturally, it would be George out of my lot!

I have managed to get one barrowful of muck out of the barn today, though I’ve separated out dirty and clean bedding and they have fresh clean straw to lie in and plenty of hay and water, of course. I may just open up the barn doors at the far end and pitch all the dirty straw over the gate so I can collect it outside George’s reach! There’s nothing like trying to wield a pitchfork with George looming all around wanting to help…

I got a nice session in with Abe while the others were engulfing hay at lunchtime, and I’ve had a couple of brief but productive sessions with Poppy before Dancer muscled in rudely, too. She’s fine after yesterday’s tumble – I watched them going out earlier and she was tracking up beautifully, not even stiff or going short anywhere.

I read an interesting article from a Facebook link earlier today – apparently a bunch of Norwegian scientists trained a group of horses to indicate ‘blanket on’, ‘blanket off’ and ‘no change’ using a sign board, and with just quarter of an hour’s training each day for eleven days, the horses all understood the concept and started indicating their preferences for being rugged or unrugged to their trainers, even chasing after their humans to get them to  listen (I appreciate that bit – George is similarly thrilled with the idea of communicating with other species). The slant of the article was rather too much along the ‘look, horses taught to communicate!’ lines and not enough along the ‘look, humans find way to listen!’ lines for me, but it does show that mainstream science is slowly catching on.

Here’s a link to the article, for interest: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168159116302192

Move over SETI – we might finally have noticed we’re surrounded by intelligent lifeforms here…. [rolleyes]

 

Yesterday I drove down to Glasgow to collect my daughter and the contents of her flat there, since she’s now graduated from university and is officially job-hunting, so by the time I got back north, decanted the contents of a well-stuffed car into my mother’s house and did the evening round of beasties, I was too cream-crackered to write a blog post.

Just to add to the fun, the car ran superbly until we reached Dundee on the way home, then as we crawled through the traffic I glanced at the dash in time to see the fuel gauge drop instantly from a quarter to zero, the miles left in the tank fell as fast from 135 to 38, and the fuel light came on along with a warning message – ‘fuel data computer error’

No kidding there was an error!

I was pretty sure I did still have a quarter of a tank, since I know how much I put in when and how many miles I’ve driven since, but to be on the safe side we stopped at the next petrol station and filled it to the brim, which confirmed my memory was correct (it took £60 before cutting off – and I know a full tank is £80!) When I restarted the car, the fuel gauge and miles left were correct again, the fuel light disappeared along with the warning message and we carried on without further incident and with the car driving impeccably again.

Apparently this is a known fault on Kugas, though why it should suddenly turn up on mine ten years from new and just 30 hours after coming back from all the hassle in the garage has me wondering!

Anyway, I’m not doing anything about it until next week. I’ll do some research over the weekend and talk to my local garage on Monday, see if they can offer any insight. I’ve mostly spent the day trying to muck out and being foiled by George – every time he sees me in the yard he dashes in from the field to demand a training session!

At one point I managed to muck out the quail between sessions while he waited in the doorway of the big dairy shed and when I went back to do a little more with him he refused to take the treats until I’d washed my hands!

I also had a lovely session with Poppy first thing this morning, when she suddenly caught on to ‘walk forward’ and ‘step back’ from my body language. With Alex Kurland’s training methods there’s a great deal of emphasis on handling the lead rope correctly to avoid pressuring the horse but at the same time indicating very clearly exactly what’s being asked. Once you understand the principles of her method of rope handling, the rope isn’t required! It’s my belief that her emphasis on teaching people to handle a rope in her style and practicing on each other is to train the humans to adopt appropriate body language and to master (unconsciously) the energy shifts that I’m consciously using. (Alex also uses energy shifts and projection consciously, which is why she always incorporates energy and balance body-work for humans into her teaching sessions!) Provided you keep that imaginary rope in your hands and handle it just the way Alex teaches, you’re going to indicate exactly what you’re asking just through your posture, movement, body language and the shifts in weight and energy that you experience and pass on to the horse. I have to be a little careful with George or he takes the ‘ump at me projecting my energy into his space, but the other three are wonderfully obliging and even little Dancer, who’s still shy of her first birthday, understands precisely what I’m asking.

It was Dancer who slipped in the yard tonight and came down, hence the title of this post. I was fishing a bee out of the water tub (I fish many out every day before they drown, poor things!) and looked up at the slither-thump to see her down on the concrete – I’d say from her posture that she slipped and her feet went out from under her, but she was up quickly and hasn’t done any major injury. I tied Poppy up to keep the whole herd from decamping into the distance before I could get a good look at Dancer, and then put Dancer’s head collar and rope on so I could spray the grazes on her near fore elbow, knee and fetlock with iodine (with apologies to her, since the stuff stings – but she was very good). The boys came in to observe closely, whether because they were concerned or because George thought there might be treats involved I’m not sure (maybe both?) but they all mooched quietly out when I took the head collars off again. I breathed a sigh of relief and got ready to unload the sacks of feed from the back of my car…. and then George turned round and came back in with a big grin on his face, wanting another training session!!

The sacks are still in the back of the car. The second half of the hay delivery is still under a tarp near the gate, not in the shed. I managed to muck out the horse barn but I only got to throw all the dirty straw and muck into a heap along the opposite wall from the clean bed rather than barrow it away, I haven’t managed to get the stable shed mucked out and I need to sweep the yard clean and wash the mud off it tomorrow – George willing!

We had a hay delivery this morning and the team were straight to work on quality control!

It was several hours before I could move the stack from here to inside the barn – they were all busy randomly sampling various bales, comparing results and taking more samples.

Honest.

The new silkie eggs are now in the incubator safely.

George has invented a new trick. He went through a phase of resource-guarding his food, refusing to let anyone near his bucket. He’s got over that now – but instead, he’s guarding me!

It’s flattering that he thinks I’m worth keeping but it’s rather dangerous since he won’t let me leave easily and he’s so busy defending me against the others stealing me that he might easily trample me without noticing. I have to box clever, making sure I can slide away safely and quickly if any other horse arrives, and when he catches me alone I take care to work him slowly around until I’m in a position to duck out if I need to.

He’ll get over it, when he realises I’m always around and won’t be stolen away. It’s just another step along his journey for us to survive!

Another half-dozen silkie eggs arrived today – though what colours they are, I don’t altogether know. Two are labelled ‘B’ and ‘Black’, two are marked ‘red’ and there’s one labelled ‘W’ – those seem clear enough. The other is ‘L 1’ and I have no idea what that means! The advert did say it was potluck on colours… they’re sitting quietly settling after their travel and will go into the incubator tomorrow afternoon, anyway. Fingers crossed they’ll hatch better than the last lot. I might borrow a heater from my mother to make sure the room stays warm enough not to trip out the incubator’s room temperature alarm.

The two chicks that did hatch are still looking very perky and cheerful, and having finished painting the office I’ve moved the big rabbit cage that housed the adult quail in there, scrubbed and polished clean, supplied it with a bed of wood shavings and it’s ready for when the chicks come off heat. They can stay in there while they’re getting bigger and ready to go outside into a proper hen house. In the meantime I’ve shifted the table from the lounge in there and the brooder and incubator are both on it.

I stopped by the vet’s today and organised Wicket’s jabs and Abe’s jabs, since both are due for boosters this month. I also picked up a stronger fly-repellent to use on George, since the over-the-counter ones just aren’t keeping the midges off well enough. He’s now going to get a pour-on called Switch, which is prescription-only. I’ll start by applying it as recommended, 20ml on his mane and 20ml on his rump, once a week – hopefully it’ll do the trick and keep the midges from biting him.