Today’s been a day of dotting about, doing this and that and nothing in particular!

We went for a walk in the forest this morning and although the majority of the woodland is commercial forestry and they’re currently clear-cutting some of the mature Sitka spruce, we went past the logging and settled into a patch of mostly beech for a while to absorb the sounds and sights.

This is the tree we sat with for a while:

Definitely the queen of the forest! Mature beech is majestic.

We also spent some time with another mighty queen tree:

The pignuts are coming up in this patch of woodland – they seem to like dry, fairly open, sunny ground. On our way back we paused to admire the horses in the field:

George on duty while everyone else naps, apparently! By the time we reached the house he’d lain down too, though he didn’t go flat until others were more alert again. All the same, it’s lovely to see them feeling so secure and able to all lie down together.

Later in the afternoon we went down to the croft’s patch of wood and gathered wild garlic to go with our venison steaks tonight, with a little sorrel to add a different flavour to the mix. I noticed pignuts growing in the verge by the wood, so if I can find or create the same conditions in the wood, they should happily colonise.

Another plant I want to introduce is wild onion – we’ve been cherishing a little colony in my mother’s back garden for a few years and I hope to get it established in the wood this autumn.

Rocket the dog has taken up sculpture, apparently. She’s done this with the blanket in her crate!

I had to laugh last night when the horses came in for their feeds. They’ve started timing their journey in for when they see me collect the geese in for the night, so I had geese going across the yard one way  and horses ambling into the yard just in front of them in the opposite direction, all at once! I left the geese to take themselves in and hurriedly put out the buckets for the horses, but while I was wandering amongst the herd – keeping Poppy from chasing Abe off his meal and watching poor George scooting from one side of the shed entrance to the other each time Poppy glared at him – there was a sudden disturbance behind me. I turned round to find Dancer reversing, puzzled consternation all over her ears, as Hannibal advanced on her, hissing! I started in that direction to head him off but Dancer had reached Poppy by then and Poppy put her head down and snorted hard in Hannibal’s face, so he turned around and waddled off to his shed all by himself! I went along behind and shut the door safely, but it’s good to know that Hannibal does recognise some challenges are beyond a gander’s ability and that Poppy knows how to deal with geese!

Odette came to trim hooves this morning, which meant I took advantage when the horses wandered in around half past seven; I shut the gate behind them and caught Poppy, taking her through to the barn with Dancer, then pushed Abe into his stable and shut that door. I got the slip rails ready for when George went out by himself – there was no hurry – but when he did wander outside and I put the rails up, I had a shock. He came back and leaned on the top rail – and it came loose at one end! I thought it must be my DIY skills that had failed but no – that huge great horse had actually pushed a brick out of the wall, still with a rawlplug firmly in it, the metal slip rail holder securely screwed into that!

It says a lot for how far George’s attitude to humans has come that I was able to shout at him without him getting offended – I yelled at him to ‘back!’ before he got his legs entangled in the half-fallen rail, and he gave me a slightly puzzled look but obediently stepped back. It took several ‘back!’ and forth moments until I had the rail safely pulled out of the way, then I put his headcollar on and tied him up outside next to the haynet there. That meant I could tidy up properly, and while he was there I took advantage and picked out all his hooves, groomed him all over and removed some dock stalks from his tail. I put up the lower slip rail and went back in to start doing the same for Abe.

George appeared in the doorway, having untied himself! I pushed him out again and tried closing the doors, which did finally work to keep him out. He huffed and stamped a bit, then settled to the net peacefully.

I had all the horses groomed and hooves picked out tidily before Odette arrived. She had a look at George’s hooves over the fence and said he’s doing pretty well self-trimming, though if I can rasp down the inner heels of his hind feet it’ll improve the shape of his hooves and help encourage him to stand with his hocks straight rather than slightly turned in (him putting on more weight will also help with that – he’s still looking narrow for his height when seen head-on). He’s also developed a little bit of flare on his fore hooves and that could be judiciously straightened with rasping, so when I have him lifting all four hooves consistently and for long enough for me to get a rasp on them, I’ll do that.

Poppy was fine – her hooves are now looking superb, with strong, sound horn and no trace of any inflammation whatsoever. Dancer was a little star, putting all four hooves up on the stand with only a little fussing and getting them properly trimmed right round. Again, she has absolutely healthy, strong little hooves. Abe, on the other hand, is showing a trace of separation around the white line (a pale line that marks where the hoof meets the sole) which means he’s getting too much sugar in his diet. He’s also a bit tubby – I checked all the horses the other day by running my fingers along their ribs and, while I can easily feel a few ribs on the others, I have to dig in a bit to find Abe’s! I need to restrict his diet a bit to get the weight off him and cut down his sugars – I don’t want to shut him in and restrict his grazing time, nor can I really feed him less than the bare mouthful he gets anyway (even before Poppy chases him off and steals his bucket each night!) so I shall probably get him a grazing muzzle and put it on for a few hours a day, which will mean he can only eat smaller amounts of grass at a time. He’ll still be able to come and go at will, stay with the herd and get all the exercise he currently gets (he’s not showing even the slightest sign of uneven wear on his hooves now – so it was definitely his box-walking that caused that!) but it’ll make sure he doesn’t get obese or develop laminitis. I’ll also cut out the speedibeet from his bucket – he can have his handful of hifi lite chaff damped with water instead.

Apart from all that it’s been a day of making sure the animals have what they need, compiling a shopping list and then heading off to the airport to meet my friend Elen, who’s staying with me for a couple of weeks, including our annual writers’ retreat and hiking holiday in the West Highlands.

It’s been one of those days for finishing things up.

The last of the weeds fouling the fenceline have been cleared, the last wobbly post propped back upright and the fence is live. It might sound a bit mean, but I’d like someone to get a nip off the fence just so I can see it’s definitely working!

I had to laugh as I was walking down the road this morning to hack down the last weeds – the horses were having a snooze in the sun when one of the local jackdaws misjudged his landing; I thought he was aiming for George’s poll but no, he tried for an ear! The ear bent, George flicked it, the jackie fell off and flapped wildly to recover, and George cracked open an eye just enough to give the foolish interloper a decidedly dirty look!

I’ve managed to get in touch with the Arab Horse Society at last to find out how they’d like Poppy’s microchip sorted out; she isn’t chipped yet and I have to get it done by October 2020 (there’s a time limit on the grandfather clause for older horses) so I thought I’d add it into her flu jab booster that’s due next month and save myself the extra vet call out (which is also why I’ll start Dancer’s jabs off at the same time!). I know the AHS supply their own chips for use in foal registrations, so I thought I’d better see if they insist on supplying the chips for older horses as well. It turns out they don’t; they’ll be quite happy to do so if my vet doesn’t supply a chip, but as long as the vet sticks one of the barcode stickers into Poppy’s passport and I then notify the AHS of the number, they’ll be quite satisfied.

While flapping about the internet looking for information, though, I happened across some interesting stuff about Poppy’s breeders – she’s from a stud that specialised in Arabs bred to race! She’s from the famous Harwood Stud in West Sussex, which in turn was set up with horses from the even more famous Crabbet Stud, and her mother Freyr was apparently one of their top mares, since they kept back one of Poppy’s half-sisters to continue their blood lines. She is certainly very fast on her feet – even faster than Abe when they have a mad gallop around the field.

I also happened across some news on Dancer’s elder full brother Majestic this morning on Facebook – he’s been to his first show and brought home two firsts and a second in his classes!

Poor Blue. Every time anything edible enters her cage, a furry wave rises up and engulfs it, and she has to either burrow through her offspring or wait until the little piranhas are stuffed and have retired to sleep it off before she gets anything to eat! I’m now giving her a carrot separately from the babies at breakfast and lunchtime, and I think I’d better start doing the same with her pellet dish, too. There’s always plenty of hay, though, so she won’t starve.

When Lindsey and Graeme stopped by yesterday they took some pix of George. I’ve stolen them off Lindsey’s FB feed and here they are:

He’s not really that bum-high anymore, he’s just standing on a slope. His front hooves are about the same elevation as my feet in this photo, and I’m 5’2” – I was standing at the fence today when George was having a drink and marked which brick in the wall was level with his withers. Once he’d gone out again, I measured the height of the brick – it’s 68 inches from the ground, meaning George is round about 17 hands.

Today was quite a big day – the first time I’ve put the rubbish bin out for the binmen since I moved into the croft! That’s not bad in terms of not creating waste; anything biodegradable goes on the muckheap and anything flammable into the fire,  then there’s all the recyclables that go in the other bin (that’s half full at the moment) so on the whole I’m fairly content with the situation. Once I get the garden organised and growing food for the critters as well as myself, I should be able to cut a little more out of the refuse, too.

Living in harmony with the horses is a major goal for me, but I also want to live in a harmonious relationship with the other critters and the land on which we all depend – shopping with an eye on reducing waste comes as part of that, and once the veg and fruit gardens get going, it’ll improve a great deal more. I may not be able to completely leave modern shops alone (I don’t get enough rain here for tea bushes, for a start!) but I’m going to try hard!

I’m not used to having to strip down to teeshirt round here! Two jerseys over thermals has been more like it for months. Even the wind is hot and dry, though that helps dry out horse dung and make it lighter to shift…. the small animals in the sheds are staying cool, however, and that’s ok.

I started the day very happily with a short training session with George. I’m working on a clicker training technique designed to improve his patience in standing still and not mithering his human, which Alex Kurland calls ‘Grown ups are talking’. Basically I stand at his shoulder and wait for him to turn his head even slightly away from me,  then click and reward him. He’s figured that bit out and it’s quite amusing to watch as he glances sideways out of the corner of his eye hopefully, then twitches eyes-front again before I might decide he’s being naughty! He’s not, of course, but it does require some self-control from him to wait and practise delayed gratification – it’s not something horses do in the wild that much and he’s still very young, which makes it all the harder! He was extremely good and we had a very pleasant session of five minutes or so before I rewarded him with a handful of treats rather than single ones and made off while he was still chewing, so we finished on a high point.

Once the horses had taken themselves out again and I’d done all the other critters I set out to screw in insulators to the remaining fence posts round the field and then strung the wire right round, so we now have a decent electric perimeter. Unfortunately there’s still some vegetation to hack down before it will work properly, so I’ll get to that tomorrow.

I spent an hour clearing weeds and rubbish in the North Paddock by way of light relief, then poo-picked in the field. Five barrows of muck later, Lindsey and her husband Graeme arrived to rescue me, so I escaped into the cool of the house for a cuppa and a chat with them.

Just as they were leaving, George came in for a drink and paused to cavort magnificently around the yard in front of them, showing off his very impressive height and bulk – and being very good about not biting, too! Lindsey hasn’t seen him for some months and was hugely impressed both by how big he’s getting and by his good manners, so he conned three carrots out of her before making off back into the field at a fine flying trot!

I really must measure him some time.

Blue’s kits have now mastered rabbit pellets and are tackling Very Large Carrots. Nothing daunts a rabbit if it’s edible!

 

 

I nearly forgot! Last night when I went out with the headtorch to do the last night checks round everyone, I startled a swallow that was snoozing in the workshop! There are a couple of old nests in there. The poor bird flittered about a bit before settling again in the big dairy shed on top of the doors. Between the missing pane of glass in the workshop window and the broken roof sheets in the small dairy shed, not to mention me leaving the big dairy shed door open by a couple of feet through the day, I’m sure the birds can come and go freely to reach their nests, but it’s lovely to see the first swallow of the year – proof the year has turned decisively towards summer again!

We also have curlews nesting in the field behind the house – I hear them calling quite often and saw the pair flying together over the house and sheds the other day, which was beautiful. Of course the woods all around are positively stiff with tawny owls, going by the number and volume of hooting that goes on most of the night!

 

Well, mostly off.

I left the horses out all night so skipping out after them this morning was very easy – there were only a couple of piles of dung to pick up in the buildings and yard, so I went along the walkway and picked up another pile there, then decided it’s high time I started clearing the field and carried on tacking back and forth across the field until I’d picked up the full barrow load, which went onto the muck heap.

Lucy is back to normal, by the way, so whatever was going on yesterday remains a mystery.

When I came home this evening all Blue’s babies were out of the nest and cuddled up around her neatly in her favourite sitting corner. When I put in her dish of pellets she managed a couple of mouthfuls before the dish was full of investigating kits, so that’s the end of her uninterrupted meals for a month or so! She’ll be shoving fluffballs out of her way from now on.

I’ve set aside a couple of cardboard boxes to make nestboxes for Tiger and Nightshade, in due course. They get pretty ‘orrible after a bunch of un-litter-trained babies have spent a month in them, so I’ll just add them to the muckheap when they’ve been used and find fresh clean ones each time. The new pair are a dog-food-tin box and a wholesale instant packs of latte box, but they’ll do nicely.

I managed to get this photo of Angus (albino) and Marley (poley) ferrets fast asleep. Ferrets sleep very deeply on occasion, and they also seem to be comfortable in the most ridiculous of positions….

Everything takes so much longer!

Of course, the friends in question have four hooves and questing noses.

The day started brilliantly with every horse politely lifting every hoof to be picked out and examined, even George. The only problem I had with him was getting to the next hoof in time to grab it before he lifted it up for me and shot on to the next! Abe and I did Silly Walks together, which we haven’t done for a while but he remembers, naturally! I also practiced lifting Dancer’s hooves forward and holding them for a second or two – she’s a bit shy of putting her hooves up on a stand and I want to get that sorted out and her relaxed with the process for her next trim.

Once they were all out, it was a quick whiz round with the barrow to clean up after them, feed bunnies, quail, ferrets, walk the dogs, then everything came to a halt. Lucy Goose wasn’t ready to go out, so Hannibal was standing around waiting for her and attacking anything that went near while she was occupied laying her egg. I totally understand his protective urges but I think it’s a bit hard on the poor sparrows, who were only planning on raiding the goose food bowl! Luckily they have fast reflexes and excellent agility on the wing.

I have now discovered what the next level up in Defcon Hiss is – I accidentally got between Hannibal and the shed at one point and he went spear-shaped, beak outstretched and wings slightly out for balance or streamlining or something, and waddled silently and rapidly at me, grabbed my knee and started whacking me to death with his wings. It took a minute to detach him and turn us both around so he was facing Lucy and I was safely behind him, then I gave him a little shove towards her and legged it in the opposite direction!

I don’t know if Lucy was slightly egg-bound or merely feeling a little broody, but she eventually vacated the shed at nearly half past ten (normally she’s away like a rocket at 7!) and I herded them round to the run. She had laid a normal-sized egg (I wondered at one point if she’d got hung up on an extra-large one or something but apparently not!) and appears her normal self again, anyway.

After that, I got away down the field with the barrow and a rake to pick up the heaps of rushes and debris from yesterday’s efforts. That took 6 trips to the muck heap to unload all the vegetation (every time a dock sticks its nose up there I bury it in compostable material again) and then I paused for a cuppa and to let the poor dogs out for a run.

In the middle of this, the horses came in for a drink and I had to add a job very hurriedly – digging out every daffodil and tulip within horse reach! George appeared in the yard with daffodils hanging out of his mouth and although he spat them out, I’m not risking him (or any of the others) swallowing next time.

In the afternoon I headed back down the field with barrow and billhook to start clearing the rushes from the east end of the woodland fence. All was going nicely until I turned around with an armful of rushes to find my barrow capsized. George was hanging over it, wiggling his nose against it thoughtfully. I got it rightside up again, turned it round to get the handles away from potentially mixing up with his legs (you never know what a young horse can do until they land in it!) and put my rushes in it. George pushed it over again, in a sort of mildly curious way. After he’d pushed it over a couple more times he wandered off again to graze and I could get on with the work.

When I’d headed out there, Dancer had been flat out asleep with Poppy standing over her and the boys snoozing on their feet nearby. When I came back for the second barrowful, they were all up. First Poppy arrived and nosed things lightly for a few minutes, then Dancer tried to climb into the barrow. I told her off so she pawed it, so I told her off again. She gave me one of her outrageously winsome intelligent looks and then went off after her mum in search of grass. George arrived, led by his wiggly nose, which burrowed down to the bottom of the heap of rushes to find the mouthful he wanted to steal and eat. Why he felt he had to grab that mouthful and make off to enjoy it at a distance I’m not sure! I’ve no objection to them eating rushes. Abe came along next and inspected the contents of the barrow carefully, then watched while I put some more in.

George came back and stood on the other side of the barrow, pushed it over so Abe was up to his knees in rushes suddenly and then they stood there, heads hanging into the middle of the heap of rushes next to the capsized barrow, and watched every armful closely as it arrived. I don’t know what they learned from this, but it seemed to satisfy them, anyway! Eventually I finished cutting the rushes along the first piece of the fence, got the barrow back on its feet and filled, then escaped before either of the boys interfered any more!

The next part of the woodside fence is (or was) heavily overhung by various branches of the big conifers, so I left the barrow in the shed and headed down to the wood with a pruning saw. It took over an hour but I’ve now sawn off all the overhanging branches that might foul an electric wire, while trying to retain as much shelter for the horses to enjoy in bad weather as possible and doing as little damage to the trees as I could.

I should pick up the new insulators tomorrow and hopefully get them screwed in before dark, then Sunday morning I plan on dragging all the cut wood out of the way and running the wire right round the remaining stretch of fence so the horses are entirely surrounded by a live electric fence.

Fingers crossed!

The billhook handles tufts of rushes quite well – though it does need frequent resharpening in the process. I managed to clear all the tussocks along the inside of the fenceline today, which took nearly 3 hours (admittedly, it wouldn’t have been quite so long without George’s occasional close supervision), but I’ll have to go back along the outside of the fence tomorrow to get the ones I couldn’t deal with from the inside. Mum followed along with long-handled pruners to lop off brambles and ivy, which are hard to winkle out of stock netting with a billhook.

In the afternoon, I left the billhook in the shed and spent an hour raking dead grass out of the goose run. It must once have been a lawn, but it’ll take a lot of work to get it back to that state! I dragged out a lot of dead grass, scraps of dock stalks, dock leaves, weeds and matted grass to fill the barrow full – and I probably have at least another ten to fifteen hours of work to finish the job! Hannibal supervised from a safe distance with many comments in Hiss.

I’ve ordered another 90 screw-in insulators for collection on Saturday. That should enable me to do the rest of the field, so when I’ve cleared the outside of the roadside fence I’ll take the billhook and the saw to clear the woodside fence enough to run a line along that, too.

After that I think I need a good battery charger and a spare battery… if Dancer’s going to chance her nose on testing fences, they’ll have to stay on permanently!

It’s quite a pleasant job when the weather’s sunny and warm, the larks are singing overhead and the horses keep ambling gently by to ask for scritches!

I picked up my 50 screw-in insulators from Screwfix and they’re all now duly screwed in – I should have ordered 100! Still, the entire length of the roadside fence is now sporting insulators, along with about half the back fence. I’ve trimmed off overhanging branches and just need to hack through the tussocks of rushes that might foul the wire on the inside of the fenceline, then it’ll be ready for me to run the wire through the insulators and hook it to the existing live fence so it’s completely live. I’ve sharpened up the billhook and if the weather’s nice tomorrow, it’ll be a good job to do. (If it’s wet or windy, however, it’ll be a beast of a job, but I’ll still do it!)

I got some video of Blue’s kits this morning – they’re lovely little charmers!

 

When I got home last night from my mother’s, the horses decided maybe they’d come in after all, so I shut the yard gate behind the last tail (Abe’s, as usual!) and it was as well I did! Poppy, Dancer and George barely touched their feeds, even Abe didn’t finish his meagre handful of hay replacer nuggets and they all planned on going back out again! Finding the gate shut fetched some interesting reactions – George heaved a deep sigh, Abe looked put out, Dancer just meandered amiably amongst everyone else and Poppy had a proper temper tantrum! Foot stamping, scowling at me, chasing the boys around gratuitously – I intervened after she chased the boys into the shed just so she could go in and chase them out again, and pushed her into the horse barn with Dancer before shutting the door on them both. They spent the night in there, the boys had the shed and the yard and I had a peaceful night’s sleep knowing they weren’t escaping anywhere! I won’t do it again because I don’t have beds down for the boys in the shed now – they prefer sleeping in the field – and that means they have to sleep standing up, without any option to lie down, if they’re shut in.

I’ve also pinned the blame for the missing fence on the rightful culprit – the bruising had had time to come up by nightfall. The local deer are totally exonerated and may leave the plot without a stain on their collective character, while Dancer is sporting about a dozen thin parallel weals right across her chest and goes to the top of the suspect list instead.

Kids!

The horses got the rest of their dinners handed back as breakfast, to make sure they didn’t go out on empty stomachs and gorge, and even so George didn’t bother finishing – he let Abe and Dancer clean up his bucket for him. I’m now putting up 5 haynets a day and that’s less than a bale of hay between them – which says a lot about how much they’re eating in the field!

I’ve untangled the last of the foal-knitted electric fence today and wound it all tidily on a short length of firewood for safe keeping. I should be picking up 50 screw-in insulators from Aberdeen’s Screwfix depot tomorrow and then I’ll get the last of the roadside fence electrified safely and start seeing how much of the well-grazed top section I can enclose with the plastic posts and wire. I do need to keep the horses off it to give it a chance to grow again!

Blue’s babies are now exploding out of the nest whenever I open the cage and staggering all over the place, then making their wobbly ways back to the nest again after a minute or so. One nearly went up my sleeve this morning before pausing to peer at me and decide the opposite direction would be better! I’m sure I counted ten this afternoon as I was watching them scatter… Blue will be getting a couple of months off to fatten up again and rest after they’re weaned, poor lass! She’s had back to back litters, thanks to Copper and her own Houdini tendencies, so she needs the break to recover properly.