I decided to ask my hay supplier yesterday if he had any straw, since the horses like having a straw bed down, and he did. It’s cheap, too – just £3.50 a bale delivered. I asked if he could deliver another 21 bales of hay as well, since the wet days saw half the new hay scoffed.

A text arrived this morning to say it was all on the way!

Naturally the moment I started trying to shift all those bales off the yard and into the barn, the horses all turned up to rubberneck, which makes getting in and out with the sack trolley interesting!

I ended up making ramparts of bales by the fence, then tossing them over, picking them up on the other side and carrying them into the shed to stack – which was probably good for Dancer, who started out with her eyes on stalks and ended up stealing mouthfuls off the bales as I lugged them into the shed! George nearly ended up walking on the bales inside the fence, the daft brush – he’s the least spooky of horses and just didn’t move as I heaved bales over at him!

After that, however, we had a couple of nice sessions. Abe came out first and we practised a lot of in-hand stop-start-turn including me walking up and down the mounting block, progressing to asking him to halt next to it, then walking on again. He started out eyeing me warily and swivelling away from the blocks, but ended up looking bored and standing still, so that’s excellent progress. The other horses didn’t have hysterics this time, but then again he wasn’t out of sight and they were all quite close together.

After everyone else had gone out again and George was done licking the buckets out thoroughly (he always hangs about to clean up after the others!) we had a little session. I started with the ping pong bat, progressed to using the bat to position him side-on in front of me at arm’s length (he’s terrible at personal space – likes to stand far too close!) and we practised him standing at that distance from me and not turning his head to look for treats. He’s learned ‘head away’ as a reminder to turn his head away from the food, being the clever lad he is! After that I fished out the pool noodle and he allowed me to tap him all over with a bright pink slightly-curved 5-foot length of foam!

All great stuff from the boys.

You never know with George if he’s going to be Good – in which case he’s super – or Bad – in which case watch your back, sleeves, head, hands and ribs! He nipped my ribs yesterday while I was rubbing fly repellent into his legs, maybe because he thought I was asking him to lift a hoof. Today he’s been super, targeting the ping pong bat neatly, stepping back and whoa-ing on request tidily, sticking his head into hula hoops and even, when I put them on the ground in the yard, stepping into them on request! I was able to ask him verbally to step into one, whoa, stand for a minute and then turn left and walk to the other, step into it and whoa again!

Brilliant stuff from the Big Ginger Job!

To balance this out, Autoglass called at lunchtime to request we consider a contingency plan in case their technician can’t get the car’s windscreen out and back in without it breaking on Thursday. They want to put a spare windscreen for the car on the van, just in case, and promised they’d only charge me for one, not both, of the operations – either the remove and refit, or the replacement.

I’ve no objections to contingency planning – I’m a huge believer that Proper Prior Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance – but the price tag on the new windscreen left me hoping very fervently that they aren’t ham-fisted on the day.

£594.

That’s almost 6 months of hay….

To take my mind off that potential bill, I’ve built the first stage of the mounting block for Abe. It’s just 6 breeze blocks, four on the bottom layer and two on the top, so he can get used to me stepping up and down next to him. Once he’s happy with that, I’ll put another layer on and just keep going until it’s a big enough structure to get onto George from!

I’ve run out of strimmer string. That brings my onslaught on the weeds to a screeching halt – until some more arrives. I’ve ordered another 70m off Amazon, plus a spare spool, so in future I should be able to quickly change spool and carry on, then load up the spare spool in a spare moment.

Apart from that, it’s been a calm sunny day, without too much excitement. The horses got a bit twitchy when I brought Abe out, saddled him up and led him around the yard, but Abe himself behaved calmly even while George and Dancer were haring back and forth between the yard and field looking worried. He even allowed me to line him up by a large rock and lean on his back a bit without him moving away, which he’s found a little distasteful in the past.

No need to rush and until the others settle more my feet won’t be leaving the ground, but it’s a small step forward. I’ll build myself a more substantial mounting block tomorrow using some spare breeze blocks that’re sitting about doing nothing for the moment, see how Abe deals with me walking up steps next to him and maybe leaning on him gently from a little higher up.

It’s a hazy, cold, damp morning with the haar still rolling in (probably won’t burn off until lunchtime) and I got up to find Poppy standing in the barn doorway looking very alert, clearly on the qui vive for packs of wolves or the like.

The Arab breed standard says mares should be distinctly feminine, and also that the Arab horse should have large, round, expressive dark eyes. Poppy has that all in spades!

The others, however, were not bright and bushy tailed.

That bed was spotless, deep and well-packed into a neat rectangular shape last night when I left it!

They got up with much stretching and yawning when I started filling haynets, but I thought I’d leave mucking out until after breakfast. I did the bunnies and ferrets, the quail, turned the eggs in the incubator and had a cup of tea, then saw Poppy standing right by the field gate, by herself.

Curious, I went looking for the others.

So much for getting up and getting on with the day! Also, so much for me mucking out this morning! The youngsters have gone back to bed.

Poppy stood waiting for a couple of minutes and then came back in, looking resigned. She’s now in the stable, eating hay.

I’ll muck out tonight.

Not from Above, Below or Otherworld, no. I’ve just had enough of watching deliveries drive past, then phone me for directions a couple of minutes later!

I rescued a piece of plywood from the refuse heap in the big dairy shed, where it was waiting to be sliced up for firewood. A little work with the tape measure between posts and I cut the ply to size with the jigsaw, rounded off the ends and then sanded it smooth around the edges.

I had some blackboard paint that’s been kicking about for ages. It was still good, however, and dries in just 30 minutes, so two coats on each side dealt with weatherproofing and giving a nice matt black background to provide a good contrast for the cheap sticky decals (B&Q’s cheapest – 78p each), which are white with black letters. Once the decals were stuck to the board, I simply rescued four screws from the salvage jar and screwed it up outside the fence, just to the side of the gates.

Job done, I now have a nice clear sign and delivery drivers have no excuse for failing to find me!

I bought a couple of small Likit toys for the horses. The carrot-flavoured one is hanging up where Poppy likes to hang out, though she’s rather cautious about it. The (alleged) candy-apple flavoured one is hanging in the barn for the youngsters.

Abe has met Likits before and was straight in there, though the swing seemed to be quite a challenge for him, and Dancer copied him, but then George wanted a go. He hadn’t hesitated to lick the flavoured insert when I was holding it, but again, the swing made it ‘different’.

He’s not a spooky one – I can’t think of many horses who wouldn’t at least jump when something swung into the heads like this!

About half an hour after this they suddenly all remembered the way out, decided the weather had improved enough and headed off to graze, despite the continuing drizzle.

The final tally for yesterday’s hay bales was 3.5. They’ve scarfed another so far this morning and I don’t think they’ve been out overnight at all – they’re all bone dry and bored rigid!

I’ve moved the hay box, which was at the far end of the barn, and put it under the slip rails at the near end instead. I’ve changed the hay from the box, which they said was stale and unpalatable (the rabbits, on the other hand, say it’s fantastic!) and they’re now eating their way into the new bale cheerfully. I’ve taken down one of the haynets that was hung there and slung a cord over one of the roof beams halfway along the barn to tie it to instead, just off the edge of the straw bed. Hopefully chasing it around as it swings will keep bored young horses occupied for a few minutes.

I need to get more straw today – I’ve taken out 8 barrows of muck and wet straw from their space this morning, and that’s on top of skipping out every couple of hours yesterday! Since I’ll have to go to the feed store for the straw, I’m thinking of picking up some mineral licks and hanging them from the beams, too – anything they have to chase about with their noses to get a lick of will do, perhaps a couple of those Likit toys or the like. I may also pick up a horse ball for them to throw and kick around the floor in the barn.

Mucking out with all the horses in was an interesting experience. Poppy is super and knows exactly how to make life easy, standing to one end and then moving to the cleaned bit while you sweep the other end up. Dancer milled about a bit, stood on the brush in passing and then planted herself in the middle of the place I wanted to sweep and had a long drink from Poppy. I waited until she’d finished and then she went off to socialise in the barn with the boys.

Abe is a clown at mucking out time. He likes to stand right behind me and blow unexpectedly down my ear, or he places himself exactly in the way when I’m throwing the clean straw up to fish out the mucky stuff. After he’d played both these games several times he put himself between me and the barrow for a change and nearly got a pitchfork full of wet straw chucked over him!

The elephant George, of course, simply looms all over the place and acts as a roadblock. He knocked the (full, naturally…) barrow over once with a front hoof, digging at the wheel experimentally, and waited until I’d just laid the clean straw back down neatly before ploughing through it, pausing to relieve himself copiously in the middle. I used the break to escape with the barrow before he wedged himself in the doorway again…. no malice on his part, though – just slightly ponderous mischief.

I didn’t have the heart to write yesterday – Marley took a serious turn for the worse and died overnight. He was just a year old, far too young, and the sweetest little ferret, always friendly, cuddly and not a nip in him. Dook in Peace, little one.

On a happier note, I think Dottie built a nest, lined it with fluff and possibly inserted some baby rabbits yesterday, but she’s cunningly put it right in the very middle of the cage where I can’t reach to investigate! I’ll have to wait and see.

It’s been raining practically all day and although the horses nipped out for a graze in the half hour of not-raining around lunchtime, they’ve really been in all day. George was lying down in the remaining tiny patch of old bedding in the barn when I went out first thing, and was grouchy as a winter-woke bear when he got up, too. I’m trying to remove all the old wood-pellet bedding now as it’s full of hay scraps and turning dusty, but I’ve laid a straw bed further along for them and they’ve taken turns having a lie down through the day, which has improved everyone’s moods!

I’ve just had an excellent training session with all the horses – George and Abe stuck their heads right into, around and under a large Scottish flag (the Lion, not the Saltire – it happened to be closer, that’s all) to the extent of George wearing it draped over his ears at one point, and they’ve also done a little target work on the ping-pong bat. I took the bat along to Poppy and Dancer, who had a lot of fun with it as well, and then Dancer started trying to get extra treats by showing off all her tricks! First she lifted a hoof and tried posing on three legs for me, then she put her nose to the ground, and finally, when those failed (my pockets were empty by then) she tried out Abe’s Spanish Walk trick as well! I’ve never set out to teach her that one so she’s learned it watching Abe.

I refilled my pockets and went back to George, who was looking winsome and pathetic in Abe’s old stable – not a bad trick for a horse his size! He was superb about the ‘Grown Ups’ exercise – turning his head away when he thought he deserved a treat, rather than mithering my pockets to winkle one out for himself (another of Dancer’s tricks – and her nose is small enough to fit, too, which George’s huge head certainly is not!) so after a couple of minutes of that I gave him a big handful of nuggets and escaped gracefully so we ended on a high note.

The post title, however, refers to the fact that I’ve just opened the third bale of hay of the day…. it’s a good pointer to how much I’ll need through the winter!

I walked into the barn this afternoon to find a baby bird sitting in the middle of the floor, and with the horses all in and eating hay, I didn’t think it was a very food place for a fledgeling starling to sit! I certainly couldn’t reach up to the nesting place, which is between two beams at the apex of the roof, some twenty plus feet up with George bound to try and ‘help’ any such activity!

I picked the chick up and brought him into the house, parked him in a cardboard box with a handful of hay for nesting materiel temporarily, apologised to the parents and promised to make sure their chick was looked after, and then called the local wildlife rescue for some advice.

They offered to take him, of course, but with my car still AWOL, it would have to wait until after Marley’s vet appointment at 4.20 this afternoon. In the meantime, I had a starving (he said, loudly) chick to look after. Mealworms and canned dog food, Keith at the New Arc advised, and don’t worry – apparently you can’t overfeed a starling! They just stop gaping for more when they’ve had enough.

Mealworms and a tin of emergency dog food (the whippets normally get raw mince but I always keep a few tins for emergencies) were quickly produced and I set about learning how to feed a starling chick.

First off, they won’t swallow until you stick the food or your finger right down the bright yellow throat. Once I figured that one out, we were fine and he had several spoonfuls of dog food and a good couple of dozen mealworms before going quiet and settling down calmly.

Marley is still corkscrewing around the cage today and the vets conferred amongst themselves, then gave him an injection of a different, stronger antibiotic plus a little steroid to settle his inner ears down a bit, and I have some oral antibiotic (again, a stronger one) to give him twice a day for ten days. Given that he had improved a bit before his relapse yesterday, the consensus was that it’s still almost certainly an ear infection, but one that’s perhaps inner ear rather than middle ear and possibly there’s a little antibiotic resistance going on. If he gets better, all’s great – if not, he’s to go back in ten days and immediately if he gets worse. His weight’s good, he’s not dehydrated and he’s still fairly bright and cheerful, however, even if this morning’s chick was coiled around rather than carried away.

Once Marley was safely home again, we headed out with the chick and delivered him safely to the New Arc. They had a specialist starling mix on hand and he took half a dozen good big gulps of it off the end of a coffee stirrer before being settled into a nest in a cage. I asked them to keep me in mind when he’s fledged and ready to release – it’d be nice if he could come back to his family – and they promised they would, made a note of the location and my number, and asked if I’d mind a batch of young starlings getting released at once. I wouldn’t, of course, and suggested that if Cairnorchies is suitable for anything else they want to release, I’m entirely delighted to help out.

Alas, I am almost certain George is indeed allergic to midges. He’s still rubbing himself more than a horse should, so he’s going to need a strict regime to deter midges and keep him from rubbing himself raw – for the rest of his life. On the other hand, he’s getting very mellow about me walking up to him five or six times a day to spray more Smidge on, under and around him!

Apart from poor little Marley, of course.

The horses all came in when they saw me opening up the sheds and have had conversation and grooming as well as stealing some of the grass I cut for the bunnies. George hung about after the others went out and had his mane and tail groomed, then was smidged (and apparently enjoyed it!)

Smidge is my fly-repellent of choice for hiking since it was developed specifically against the wretched midge – it’s now very widely used and quite brilliantly effective for horses with sweet itch, which of course is an allergy to midge bites. George got loads of squirts on both sides of his neck, both on top of and under his mane, some on his tail from top to bottom and a few under his flanks, which made him twitch a bit!

After all this he decided to go out into the yard for a drink and I went out after him and climbed up the fence.

The first time George saw me climb on anything it was a stool and he nearly came over his stable wall trying to kill me. Since then he’s seen me step on stools a few more times and slowly calmed down, and I was scratching an itch for him the other day when I climbed up the fence and just got a slightly suspicious look over his shoulder, but this is the first time I’ve sat on top of the fence and he’s walked up to talk to me.

I’m looking forward to seeing more of this view as he comes into work!

We had a nice five minutes together with me on the fence rubbing his ears and around his poll, stroking along his spine, leaning on his back a little – just hands, with most of my weight still on the fence, of course! – and he was perfectly content and happy about all of it, as can be seen! After he’d had enough he just mooched out to join the others, who were all lying in the sunshine in the field, and I saw him lying down with them a couple of minutes later, all happy together!

Here’s a bit of video I shot with the phone in one hand – apologies for the strange angle, it must be how Marley’s seeing the world at the moment… (Speaking of Marley, he’s back to being bright and active tonight, though still somewhat twisty, but at least he’s not falling over all the time!)