The docks are getting ahead of me so I’ve ordered a strimmer – I’m very familiar with petrol-driven strimmers but this time I’ve risked an electric one. That doesn’t mean a tiny one on a length of cable from the house – this is a reasonably meaty -sounding lithium-ion battery that gives up to about 50 minutes of high-intensity brushcutting and allegedly recharges in 3 hours. To be fair, 50 minutes is about as much strimming or brushcutting as I want to do in a stretch anyway and taking a few hours off before doing another stint sounds fine! It’ll allow me to keep the edges of the fields trimmed down so nothing fouls the fences, and it should also mince docks and nettles briskly for efficient, quick composting.

It’s raining today so the horses are in the barns, devouring hay like it’s going out of fashion. I put out a bale between them last thing yesterday and I’ve just split another bale amongst them this morning! If it dries up and they go out for a while this afternoon, I’ll get the chance to refill all the haynets again for the night –  George has been a daft baggage overnight and pushed the haybox under a drip in the roof. He’s now sulking because the hay is all wet, so I’ll have to clean that out and start over. If he could take himself outside for an hour or so it’ll make things easier – manouvering bales and barrows with his close supervision is a bit tedious!

I’ve located a possible source of silkie eggs, so I’ve emailed checking the prices on the website are accurate – if they are, I’ll order 3 eggs of each of 4 different varieties – they do white, black and gold large fowl silkies and also the red bantam, which is a pretty thing and just as good a broody as the big ones – they just sit on smaller clutches. There’s a good hen house currently sitting empty at my mother’s place that’ll make an ideal silkie home – it’s roofed so they can stay dry, and it has a good run for them to scratch about in, plus places to hang feed and water containers. All I need to do is dismantle it, move it up to the croft, then put it together in a good place near the house (possibly backing onto one of the buildings for additional shelter) and do a little re-roofing.  I had my ferrets in it for a while and Holly climbed up the wire and tunneled through the roofing felt!

It’s been a very useful day all round!

Firstly, the new bareback pad/saddle arrived and it’s beautiful – very soft and light, but sturdy and well-designed. It should be delightfully comfortable for all the horses and for me!

Secondly, the post hole augur has now arrived, so I can make a start on putting in the paddock fences. I shall have to think carefully about exactly how to arrange the wire since I now have the quote for the tree felling and that will be going ahead later in the summer. I don’t want to put a post in just so a large tree can fall on it!

The tree surgeons were a lovely couple, both quite young and both familiar with horses. They’ve quoted me for felling both the big sycamore and its neighbour, which I was dubious about identifying. I thought it might possibly be a lime but it’s not, it’s an elm – a rare sight these days, so no wonder I didn’t recognise it! Alas, it is showing signs of disease and will probably die in the next few years anyway, so I should probably fell it now before it falls somewhere inconvenient and takes the telephone lines with it. We also have ash dieback in the area so my young ash trees are probably not going to escape much longer. Maybe I’ll replant with willows… they seem not to have any major diseases yet!

There’s a hole in the trunk of the elm that looks very like a woodpecker hole so, even though we didn’t see any strong evidence that it’s currently occupied, we agreed that the work should take place in the late summer, early in September, to ensure any nests have been vacated safely before the trees come down. That should still be before any seeds start falling off the sycamore.

They’ll fell both trees level with the fence so I won’t need to re-fence (that’s a big dollop of cash saved!) and then put a glyphosate plug into the trunks to ensure the roots die quickly and don’t just send suckers back up again. I’m not a fan of glyphosate in any form but I can see the point in this case and they will make sure the poison is safely contained behind a horse-proof plug cover for safety, though I’ll be keeping the horses back off that fence in future anyway with the walkway on that side of the field.

The timber will be cut up into ten-inch rounds and left in the field, so I can bring it back, split it and stack it for firewood in a couple of years. I need to check but I think I remember reading somewhere that elm is not a tree that likes to burn – I think they used to use it to make mantlepieces, in fact. The brash will be stacked into the triangular place to rot slowly, which should provide some good wildlife habitat for a while.

I’ve had a root about in both bunny nests and pulled out all the kits to see who had what. Tiger has seven fine fat lively little critters, three albino and four harlie. Ghost has five, two fat brown ones and two fat black ones, together with a much smaller black one. It looks lively enough, just much smaller than the rest of the litter, so we’ll see how it gets on.

We have five live quail chicks; I checked the others this morning and two were dead in the shell – sometimes chicks just aren’t strong enough to get out – and the others were infertile. The five in the brooder look very lively, so now we have to wait and find out what the male/female ratio is.

The wild birds are spreading the word about my feeders – the local sparrows were the first to arrive, but two days ago I saw the first blue tit, yesterday had a great tit and this morning a goldfinch was checking the restaurant out. The local magpies have discovered it, too – they’re very beautiful but when I have broody hens raising chicks I will be keeping a close eye on young birds and their housing to make sure the ‘pies don’t steal any.

I caught George and Abe grooming each other today – not out in the open but lurking in the doorway between the two barns!

Scott the plumber spent half an hour this morning replacing my central heating pump and now we have hot radiators! I lit the fire after he’d left and waited until the water began to burble gently in the pipe, then turned the pump on and chortled my way round the house, feeling radiators as they all warmed up in the space of just a couple of minutes! It’s made a massive difference to the house already – I’ve walked into every room to check and none of them now have that cold, damp chill that I’ve been living with so far, they’re merely a little cool. I’ll keep the fire lit and the house heated every day now until it all feels warm, dry and comfortable, but it’s well on the way there in just a few hours!

In the course of the usual inconsequent chat while he worked, Scott was asking about the fencing in the yard so I told him it was Colin who built it – and with a huge grin, Scott informed me that Colin is Scott’s wife’s uncle. Scott’s brother is also a builder and roofer not far away, so when the time comes to strip off all the harling, repoint the house and renew the harling, I shall know where to go for a builder who has something to lose if he doesn’t do me a good job.

It always pays to keep in with good tradesmen!

Tomorrow Epic Tree Surgeons will be round to give me a quote for felling the big sycamore halfway down the field – the sooner it’s gone the better because I’ve seen all four horses browsing on the foliage! Yesterday Dancer almost started a stampede when she tugged mightily on a tuft of leaves and the end of the branch swung down and swatted a dozing Abe smartly on the bum! He took off like the proverbial nocturnal flying mammal from the nether realms, which had George and Poppy scampering hurriedly until they realised what had happened, and Dancer continued chewing leaves happily while watching her elders with an expression of innocent interest! Luckily sycamore is most toxic either as seeds or seedlings, not leaves, but I’d still like it gone asap and certainly before it starts seeding. I think it’s reaching the end of its mature phase of life and moving into old age, judging by the number of dead branches, so I’ll have it felled and replant with something else that’ll eventually provide a magnificent big non-toxic shade tree in its place – after I’ve double-checked for toxicity issues!

Another quail chick hatched this afternoon, so that’s 5 live chicks from 12 eggs. Not a great fertility rate, but better than nothing and there’s still a bit of movement from the other eggs. I’ll give them another day or two…

This is the brooder box seen from above – I made a chick-size feeder from an old coke bottle and the water dish is the lid from a pot of Brussels pate (my mother’s staple lunch spread, along with marmite), while the big flat black thing is the electric hen. The chicks can stay cozy under the hotplate and as they grow I adjust the length of the legs so the effective ambient heat slowly decreases. By the time they have proper feathers, they won’t need any extra heat. They spend most of their time under the ‘hen’ but pop out and raid the food and water dishes, which is exactly the way things should be.

Here’s a side view under the ‘hen’, showing some little quail looking out! It’s not a great photo as the plastic box isn’t the most transparent, but there are three chicks and one of the ‘hen’ legs in there. To give some sense of scale, the length of the leg is about an inch at the moment and all four chicks fitted comfortably in one hand last night!

I’m backdating this because yesterday got quite busy – I intended to publish it yesterday, on George’s third birthday!

He got out of bed on the right side of the field, despite some fairly cold, wet weather, and brought the herd in when he saw me in the morning. I handed out carrots all round, since it was his birthday, and groomed all the dry bits of the horses!

I’ve also measured Abe, Poppy and George again and confirmed their girth sizes, so I’m now waiting on a 50cm girth, a 75cm girth and a Christ Lamfelle Iberica bareback pad, all in supersoft lambskin and a combination I’ve wanted for my boys for ever since I saw one! They’re expensive but by all reports incredibly comfortable for both horse and rider, and I love the Classical styling of the Iberica, so I decided I’d splash out. It’ll be a lovely soft saddle for when I get both George and Abe going through this summer, light and snug. It might not be the most secure of saddles but then I don’t want to be imitating a rodeo rider when I start a horse – I want my horses to be quite relaxed and merely slightly startled to find me on them instead of next to them. Ideally, the first time I sit on a horse I want to see the head come up and the ears flicking backwards and forwards, but nothing more – and then I’ll be off again. Only when the horse stands quite relaxed under the sitting rider do I ask for a single step forward – and then whoa and off again.

It might sound complicated but in practice I’ve never found it takes more than a few seconds, working up to perhaps a minute, repeated three or four times in a couple of sessions a day, and by the end of the second day the horse will be taking that first hesitant step forward – and by the end of a week, answering leg and hand as well as voice confidently in walk and starting to move towards the first trot transition.

When we get the next spell of dry weather, I’ll be bringing Abe out of the field and reminding him of his long-reining under saddle and in harness, just round the yard, and then I’ll build a mounting block. When he’s had a few days to remember his voice and rein aids, I’ll ask Lyn to come by and give me a hand getting him backed and walking on (it helps to have a steady experienced person to talk soothingly to the horse), and then it’s just a few minutes each time, working on his mounting-block approach and stand coupled with perhaps two or three circuits of the yard each time.

More immediately, the first 4 quail chicks have hatched and are now in the brooder under the electric hen, with food made from layer’s pellets and a few mealworms pulverised to dust in a coffee grinder, which I’ve found answers well as chick crumbs, and sounding comfortable. They were squeaking their heads off last night until the brooder warmed up enough, but when they went quiet and stopped huddling together they were clearly feeling snug and happy. All they need now is food and clean water – and the electric hen raising on its legs every few days as they grow, so they can run under it and stand with their heads tucked down, but not have to crawl on their little fluffy bellies. They’ll be feathered up and outside in a month – the females will remain in the ‘flock’ as laying hens, while the males will be culled and scoffed. The great thing with quail is that the males have a red head, so it’s easy to tell the difference. With ducklings we have to tug their tails to see if they quack or squeak!

I’ll give the rest of the quail eggs another few days to see if any more hatch – two were moving last night and when I put them to my ear I could hear ‘pipping’ and scratching noises, so they had live chicks trying to hatch – and then I’ll clear the incubator and get another batch of eggs in. I think I’ll buy in some Silkie eggs – they make the best broody hens and will mean I don’t have to rely on the little 12-egg incubator entirely in future.

At this rate I shall have to notify DEFRA soon – once I’m up to 49 individual birds, regardless of species, they need to be notified so they can keep their disease-control protocols up to date.

I’ve also picked up the fenceposts for the horse paddocks and as soon as the post hole augur arrives I can get on with putting up my wooden corner and gate posts for the 5 paddocks and 2 walkways in the field. Once those are in place and I’ve made sure the horses don’t intend to bulldoze the fences flat again, I can start thinking about a couple of Golden Guernsey goats – a breed I’ve always liked and which makes a good smallholder’s dual-purpose goat, providing both milk and useful meat carcasses as well as worm-control for the horses.

But then that can happen when Life gets in the way! A friend with a domestic emergency landed in my spare room for the weekend – emergencies take precedence over ordinary events so blogging went on hold.

That’s now sorted, however, so normal service is resumed.

All the critters are fine. George got out of bed on the wrong side of the field the other day and grouched practically until dinner time, but the beauty of the set up here is that there’s plenty of space for him to grouch without it getting in the way of everyone else and I can just let him sulk to himself until he’s ready to be friendly again. The following day Poppy was feeling moody and managed to corner George in the barn to give him quite a kicking, but luckily she responded when I cracked a lunge whip to get her attention, and she’d been too close to George (and he too tall!) for the kicks to really connect, so he was shaken but unhurt and soon resumed hoovering hay out of the nets again.

Dancer and Abe have remained their normal equable, easy-going selves!

I’ve bought them a big hay box – allegedly it’s a slow feeder but I took the grill off the top after they’d all had a look and abandoned it in favour of the haynets, which are mostly large-mesh to let George’s big snout reach the food and therefore much easier for them all. Once I took the grill off, though, the boys adopted the box with enthusiasm and it does mean I can just dump a whole bale of hay in, cut the string and leave them to it, so it’s very quick for me to refill.

Blue and her kits have had their first excursion onto actual real growing grass to eat in the sunshine, which they adored.

The kits can just walk straight through the bars of this puppy pen, however, and while my friend did guard duty on retrieving little fluffy handfuls and putting them back into the run while I mucked out, it’s not something I can make a habit of so I need to build some proper arks for them. Once I’d mucked out their ordinary run thoroughly we put them back inside and I brought Dexter and Dottie out for a couple of hours in the sunshine instead. That meant their cage has also been completely scrubbed out. I can’t do anything about Nightshade’s or Tiger’s cages while they have very small kits still in the nest, but hopefully by the time they’re up and scampering everyone else will be living outside on the grass full time and there’ll be an ark for them to go into, too.

The hot sunshine that the animals enjoyed so much last week has slipped back to more normal Aberdeenshire weather – overcast and breezy, with thick mist moving in most nights and taking a few hours to burn off each morning. I did have the most magical half-hour outside on Saturday night, when I went out late and found that the haar (the mist) had come in and was blanketing everything. It wasn’t dark so I didn’t need a torch, because we’re fairly far north here and it’s only twilight right through the night now, but the full moon was just glowing dimly through the mist to the east, looking about the size and colour of a 5p piece at arms’ length, and I could see outlines of trees all the way to the far end of the field – but everything was incredibly quiet and still. I stood and just listened, able after a while to distinguish the dripping of leaves in the garden, the sound of the horses biting off grass somewhere in the field (I couldn’t see them, but it was definitely the sound of grazing!) and even the rustle of a goose having a preen after a late-night dip in the pool, the other side of the house! It was as if the croft and its inhabitants existed in its own world, without a car or another human anywhere, even the lights of my distant neighbours hidden by the haar.

I gave them a paddling pool.

 

Hannibal was in it long before it had finished filling and spent most of the next hour scrubbing himself, bobbing gently in the deeper side (I need to find it a flat site – but that’s hard on a mostly sloping patch of land!). Even after he finally got out, he got back in several times for more lengthy baths!

Having paced out the field boundaries the other day and spent hours poring over the plans, calculator and scratch pad in hand, I’ve decided on my paddock layout.

There will be a walkway about 12 feet wide the full length of the east fence, with wider places halfway and at the far end where the horses like to hang out and sleep. I’m going to run a fence between the odd triangle of ground on the west boundary and the nearest corner of the woodland patch, so the damp end of the field will form one paddock. I have no idea how big that patch will be – I looked up how to calculate the area of an irregular polygon and decided I really don’t want to know!

The west side of the field will have a much narrower pathway as far as the point of the triangle, for walking goats and wheelbarrows along without ‘help’ from curious young horses, which only needs to be 4-6 feet wide. The rest of the field will be split into four roughly half-acre paddocks.

This gives me 5 paddocks for the horses and, with a length of temporary electric fencing, 10 for goats and poultry to rotate after the horses. That way should maximise grass resting time, parasite control and food value for everyone, as well as giving me plenty of time to work on the unoccupied paddocks to fill in holes, reseed bare patches, keep on top of weeds and so forth.

Some sketch maps and counting later, I need 26 wooden fence posts for corners and gateways, so I’ve visited my local sawmill to see if they could beat online prices.

They can – and by a long way! A 3-inch thick wooden post 6 feet long costs me about £7 online plus delivery – but the sawmill can do them for me at £2.89 and I can collect for myself; they’re only five miles away!

The camera traps failed to catch any predators, though I now have a lot of pictures of horses’ legs and some of the horses eating hay or drinking water! I’ll put some more batteries in the cameras and keep them running, though, through the nights.

Herd cohesion is still building nicely – I saw Abe and Dancer grooming each other in the yard the other day. It’s lovely to see Dancer expanding her grooming to include other horses than her mum, and it’s very good to see Abe learning to groom without taking a sneaky nip, the monkey!

George had his feet up twice all round yesterday and again tonight without complaint.

The rabbits are now working their way through a bucket of grass per cage, so it’s time I picked up some timber to build arks, or tractors, to get the youngsters and bucks out on the grass and feeding themselves. When I get to building my deep beds I’ll make them the same size as the arks so I can use the bunnies to clear off vegetation and fertilise the beds – a job chickens are also very good at.

My vet does a slightly-cheaper call out fee if you accept that they’ll give you ten minutes’ notice of arrival on a Thursday, so I went hurtling out this morning to get the horses in when I was informed Randall the vet was on the way (he’s a nice Irish bloke who’s good with ferrets – always worth hanging onto any vet who’s good with ferrets!). All four horses were flat out in the sunshine! Luckily I’d taken a small bucket of nuggets out with me, because when I rattled it Poppy got up to come in. That meant Dancer got up to follow Mum, and I put the bucket down five yards inside the walkway and went back to shut the gate almost in George’s indignant face!

The girls followed the bucket into the yard readily, and I shut the yard gate behind them, then applied head collars. They both remembered how to put a head collar on (they normally only see one every 6 weeks!) and then Randall arrived.

George and Abe were trotting up and down the fenceline staring across and whinnying. Their state of mind wasn’t helped by Dancer whinnying back! They don’t get separated very often and they really don’t care for it.

Poppy reacted to the sight of a strange man with a needle in what I’ve come to think of as her ‘freeze and hope it goes away’ response – she stands quite still and her eyes go a little withdrawn and shuttered. The flu jab was quick and easy, then he checked to be sure she really wasn’t microchipped before putting one into her neck, high on the left side near her chest. It obviously twinged a bit but so briefly the needle was out as she flinched, and I made a big fuss of her before Dancer got stabbed with a whacking great syringe full of fluid. She clearly didn’t like this at all and pulled back, throwing her head up a bit, but the hooves stayed on the ground and, again, it was over very quickly so then I made a big fuss of her, too.

I let the girls back out straight away, then chased after them and opened the field gate for them to leave completely – which Poppy did, hightailing it half across the field before she stopped! Abe and Dancer went with her but George paused to frisk me with his nose in search of the bucket-and-contents while I tied the gate open again for them! Failing to find a bucket in my pocket anywhere, he went off after the others and they settled to graze.

Dancer needs another jab in a month, Poppy’s now fine until next year. Abe will need his in July, so it’ll be vet fees three months in a row!

Just as well I’ve now sold the trailer. The horses are enjoying the untrammelled view.

Now, the fox. Or putative fox, anyway – it could, just conceivably, be a stoat or the like. As I went out to fetch the horses in, I noticed a goose egg on the left hand side of the walkway. I picked it up and put it in a safer place before any hoof landed on it, then put it to the back of my mind for later while I dealt with the immediate task. Once the horses were all out, paperwork completed and vet waved off, I went back to the egg and checked – it was one of the pair I left in Lucy’s nest yesterday. I picked up the other and brought them both inside.

There’s not many critters can get their mouths open wide enough to pick up a goose egg, and a fox would be about the only one here. It’s just possible that a stoat or a weasel might try to steal an egg by rolling it away and then abandon it when they couldn’t get it past the wriggly tin sheets that make up the fence just where I found it – there’s a small gap under the sheets that might let a small weaselly thing slip through.

Clue the second – I spotted a handful of ferret kibble in the yard. The ferrets are all safe in their cages in the shed and nothing else could have – or would have – picked up meat-flavoured biscuits to carry anywhere. A ferret couldn’t have carried a couple of handfuls to drop that many on the yard! Again, something with a larger mouth, that would fancy what’s effectively cat biscuits… a fox could easily trot into the sheds through the horses’ doorway and then through the whole complex from there on!

I counted the rabbits – all present and correct, including Tiger’s babies and (I noticed suddenly!) a tuft of black fur sticking up out of Nightshade’s bedding…. I investigated and found she’s got a nest of warm wrigglers tucked away very tidily under her straw!

I’ve moved Tiger’s nest and its contents into a cardboard box, in case whatever it is comes back and tries scratching bits of baby rabbit out through the mesh.

I’ve also removed one of the horse shed doors and rehung it behind the ferrets, so last thing tonight I’ll be shutting a solid wooden door between the bunnies and the ferrets. That should stop any predators, big or small, getting in there from the horse end. At the other end, I’ve blocked up the hole in the workshop door with a sheet of old plasterboard wedged in tight and backed with three big sacks of woodshavings. The birds can still get in and out alright through the workshop’s broken windows, no need to worry about starving swallow babies in the morning!

I moved the ferret kibble into a lidded plastic bin, so that’s not available to snack on anymore.

That left the quail, so I moved their cage into the goose shed, where it’s sitting safely on a big concrete shelf behind a bolted door.

I’ve also put up a trailcam covering the top end of the yard and the horse shed door, so hopefully I’ll find out what it is that trotted in and out last night – chances are good that a fox who finds a meal will pop back to see if there’s another! Fingers crossed the dogs react if the geese go berserk in the night, because the feathered dinosaurs have made it plain they don’t want to come into the shed!

I have a Ford Kuga. It’s a very comfortable drive, excellent on long journeys, tows well and the dogs love it, but it does have a very bad habit (apart from its heavy diesel habit!) and today it indulged in it again. It broke down.

I will admit, it has a certain creativity about its breakdowns. I’ve had it a year and it’s not repeated itself yet – today was yet another novel (as in ‘I didn’t know it could even do that!!!’) situation. I turned into the local co-op carpark and the engine immobiliser light flashed. It doesn’t normally do that when the engine’s on, so I parked up briskly and turned it off, mentally noting I’d better stop by the garage on the way home and mention it to the mechanics there.

I did the shopping (milk and eggs… I need chickens and a couple of goats!) and went back to the car. I pushed the engine start button and nothing happened. Now, I have had an ignition failure in the car before, and it’s thrown a low key battery at me once, too, so I tried putting the key fob against the ignition slot and pushed the button again. Nothing. I flicked the cover off the key slot, extracted the key from the fob and inserted it, then pushed the button again. It turned the ignition on but not the engine, and then refused to turn the ignition off again.

I checked the manual. Nothing helpful and they don’t put in trouble-shooting sections any more, I’ve noticed. I called the AA and they said they’d get to me in an hour or so (I happen to know they use a local agent in the town, a garage about two hundred yards up the road from where I was sitting, but hey ho!) so I went back to reading the manual and occasionally pushing the button (as you do….).

The most I could get was a single turn-over once in a while, but never enough for the engine to catch and run. I tried opening the door and the car had a hissy fit, claiming I was attempting to open the door while the car was running (it lied) but at least I could wind the windows down, even if I couldn’t get the ignition off or the engine on!

After a while the local garage turned up and after a few tries, the bloke got the engine to run. It’s not the first time a mechanic has told me not to turn the engine off until I’m parked in the car park at either a major dealer or my own local garage! I left it running while I swiftly dropped off my shopping at the croft, then headed to the garage just round the corner from my mother’s house.

My mother ran me back to the Croft, of course, and in due course the garage called to tell me the car’s on/off switch is probably the problem and they’ve ordered another, which will take half an hour to fit. Unfortunately it has to arrive from Germany first, so the car is out of service until next week sometime.

At the Croft itself, it’s been an interesting day. Tiger was sitting smugly in her cage this morning with a nest neatly lined with fur and full of little pink squirms, so Dexter has been congratulated and bunged in with Dottie (who is not impressed).

I haven’t seen Lucy near her nest for days and there’s still just 6 eggs in it, so I kidnapped the oldest-looking 4 this evening. She can sit on 2 or lay some more, but I don’t want to let them go to waste if she’s not going to go broody after all.

All the horses got a full groom today – bodies, manes and tails, and all but George got their hooves picked out and brushed, too. George scowled at me when I showed him the hoof pick, so I didn’t push my luck; he’d already got bored of me brushing his tail and stamped at me twice!

I’ve had the windows wide open in the hot weather – I won’t do that again. Two birds flew into the house and the dogs caught them. I managed to rescue the sparrow from Wicket’s mouth and after spending half an hour sitting in a tuft of grass outside it recovered and flew away, joining a flock of sparrows in a hedge down the road, but the swallow was dead when I found it. I put the corpse where its mate can spot it, in case they need to know and grieve, but I really hope swallows can manage to raise their chicks as single parents. In future windows will be open only enough to admit air, not birds!

Last year Abe and I held a fairly extended conversation about fly spray. My position was that he’d be more comfortable wearing it, his was (and remains) that he’d sooner collapse under a heap of insects than have anything so revolting sprayed on his person.

Cue this year and the hot weather over the past couple of days has had tails flapping wildly in the field as the herd attempts to fend off the flies. Abe’s position hadn’t changed, Dancer’s was unlikely to be favourable since she’s never had anything sprayed on her, I had no idea about Poppy’s and didn’t want to even ask George about his.

Cue Neem Oil. Not in a spray but on a cloth. I’ve not tried it before but someone last year told me it’s great stuff, so I laid in a bottle. It doesn’t smell too rank, the horses all sniffed the jay cloth with a little on without any sign of alarm, and when I asked George if I could wipe it on his nose, he was perfectly calm and amenable to having the wipe refreshed and rubbed not just up his face but around his eyes and ears, down his neck and even under his tum and down the insides of his legs all round! (My goodness, how far he’s come from the horse who wouldn’t be touched behind the withers!!)

The stuff really does work, too! There was instant tail stillness as the flies deserted en masse.

Dancer was next and was mildly curious about having the cloth on her nose. Poppy checked out what was happening and showed a marked disinclination to have a jaycloth over her face, so I poured the oil directly onto my hand and stroked them both instead; nose, eyes, ears, ribs, tummies (avoiding Poppy’s udder, of course!) and down the insides of legs. Dancer was profoundly uncertain about having my hand so far under her tum and between her back legs and stood on three legs looking startled to prove it, the other leg cocked in the air like a dog with a good tree! Abe watched all this and then saw me approaching and turned to slink away hurriedly! I caught up with him and patted him until he stood still, then put some fresh oil on my hands and did him, too.

They’ve spent all day in and out and there’s hardly a tail-swish to be seen.