I got home last night with the dogs and everything was fine. Dogs fed, walked around outside, back in and burrowed into my quilt as usual, fire made up, check of the other critters, all was well. I went back out about 9.30 with the dogs, thinking I’d have an early night as I was tired, and heard an unusual snorting from the horses in the field. I know what each of them sounds like well enough to identify an unusual sound, and this was very unusual – in fact, in retrospect, I’m not sure it was one of my horses. It might have been a deer.

Anyway, by then it was too dark to see anything but a pale blob that might be Dancer, so I put the dogs to bed and took the binoculars out – it’s surprising how much more you can see at night through decent binoculars, even if they’re not designed specifically for the purpose, and I was able to see all the horses well down the field, but prancing about and looking quite skittish. What I couldn’t see was the fence.

I slung the binoculars on my shoulder and went out to see what was going on. I have a bit of a light on the hat I was wearing – it’s a beanie with a USB-charged LED thingy on the front – and it was enough to see that the electric fence down the back of the field and across to divide the grazed from the ungrazed sections wasn’t there, though all four horses came to say hi and seemed perfectly cheerful and healthy.

I went back for the bigger head torch and dropped the binoculars off, which allowed me to find and retrieve a very large bundle of kitten knitting, most of the missing fence posts and some debris where a couple had snapped off. I dumped all that on the ground outside the field for starters and went back to walk the field boundaries. The back fence in particular isn’t one I trust – it’s very rickety with the top wire down most of the way and it’s the top of my ‘next thing to fence’ list.

Never mind, I thought, the horses will want to come in for a drink sooner or later, I’ll just wait and shut the yard gate on them when they do.

They didn’t. I was up until 3 in the morning, checking every half an hour with a torch to pick up the gleam from their eyes (quite a spooky pale blue-green, incidentally, in horses) and then gave up and crawled under the duvet with the dogs, still fully dressed!

I was up at 6 and the horses were still out. They’ve been in briefly once around lunchtime, snatched a drink and fled back out hurriedly, so I must have been thinking too loudly! I suspect that they’re eating very juicy grass and rushes, so they’ve been getting more fluid from their food and haven’t felt all that thirsty. They’re also in loads of lush damp greenery and have no intention of coming in at all – I called them at dinner time tonight and they looked at me, then turned almost as one and walked in the opposite direction!

Needless to say, I’ve spent the day fencing. I did have another 500m of wire, so while the kitten knitting still needs unravelling, I’ve got the whole of the back fence covered, dug a thin trench to bury the run-out cable safely and linked it to the other stretch of fence, which covers the top end of the field and the top half of the road frontage, and I can confidently say it definitely bites! (Admittedly, I’ve been a bit lackadaisical about turning the fence on recently so I have to share the blame with whoever made off through the fence.)

There are no marks on the horses, which might be another indicator that a third party actually broke the fence – my suspected deer, perhaps? – but with bellies full of rich fresh grass, they’re all a bit on top of themselves. George amused himself for a while following me down the fence line pulling up the stakes I was carefully planting, and they’ve been prancing and bouncing about more than usual. I had to have words with George when he tried to include me in a run-past-and-buck game – he’s too big and I’m too fragile for that kind of caper! He clearly thinks I’m a party-pooper, but he did stop doing it.

On the other hand, my gallivanting around the field with torches in the night fetched my nearest neighbour out of the woodwork – Louise, a retired policewoman, lives in the lodge beyond my wood, and came up to check if I knew anything about someone with a powerful torch in my field in the night, so we’ve had a good chat. I explained the horses had been fence-breaking in the dark and I’d been picking up the debris and checking on them, she explained she sort of runs the local unofficial farm watch network, keeping an eye out for poachers and badger baiters, so next time I go past her place I have an invitation to stop and give her my phone number. I’ll get hers at the same time, and she repeated several times that if there’s any problem, I’m to go round and ask for help. She also told me where the Croft’s previous owner’s horses used to break out of the field onto the road, so I’ll get that bit connected to the electric fence next….

Apart from all that, the other critters are all fine. Having had three hours’ sleep, I’m heading to my bed tonight the minute the dogs are fed!

 

I moved the two buck rabbits, Dexter and Copper, up to the croft this morning so now all the livestock are in the same place, along with their toys, food, dishes, water bottles and other clutter. Dexter’s in with Tiger, who positively hated him on sight and is insisting on staying at the furthest possible distance from him, and Copper’s in with Nightshade. I don’t know what Copper’s chat-up lines are but they must be better than Dexter’s – within ten minutes the two of them were cuddled up snugly together!

Blue’s kits are opening their eyes, just starting to peek, so they must be between two and three weeks now.

I think she has nine. Considering she’s a very small rabbit, I’m all the more impressed!

Or not, actually, firstly because they were rooks and jackdaws and secondly, they weren’t doing any harm.

I glanced down the field as I was shifting a barrow full of muck this morning and paused – Abe, Dancer and George were all lying down in the sun while Poppy was drowsing on her feet nearby, but there was something big and black visible near Abe. On second inspection, it wasn’t near him, it was standing on him. There were also similar black things standing on Dancer and George, too – none of the horses seemed in the slightest concerned, even when the black things flew off with beakfuls of fur! I saw other rooks and smaller jackdaws all visiting the horses while they were sunning themselves, with absolutely no reaction from the horses even when a jackdaw landed on Abe’s head, right between his ears!

I think the local corvids have decided to cut out the middleman (me) on getting hold of enough nice nest lining material and gone right to the source! I just wish I hadn’t left the phone on charge in the house, because I didn’t get a photo.

The horses all came and mooched around the yard after I’d finished mucking out, so I spent an hour playing with feet, spraying Abe’s hooves with herbal sole cleanse against thrush and so forth.

We’ve moved the quail up to the croft now. After the trouble with rats around New Year we only have six quail left, so I’ll get the incubator set up tomorrow, I think, and start a dozen eggs off on Thursday – that’s about the right timing for me being back from a week’s holiday in time to see them hatch and look after the chicks.

In the meantime, how could the view from the lounge window be improved?

 

The fencing is completed, the horses are secure and I can let them stay out at night, finally!

That’s assuming they go. They showed no signs of eagerness to go out again after they’d had their feeds tonight…

This is the fence across the front that stops the dogs going onto the road – post and rail with chicken wire from end to end and top to bottom! The dogs have seen it and showed no signs of interest in breaking out, jumping over, digging under or whatever. I caught up with Wicket, in fact, as she decided the middle of Poppy’s barn was The Place to relieve herself, and by then she’d already visited with the ferrets and introduced herself briefly to the rabbits, though they don’t seem worried by a tame skinny wolf trotting by and sniffing at their cages, thankfully!

I’ve moved it out of sight for now, but I’ve devised a way of hanging the butcher’s curtain so the horses can start getting used to seeing it again. The extra-long extra-thick string used to tie up the bundles of hay bales the other night go over a roof beam, then I just haul the curtain up or lower it out of sight as required.

I hung all the bunting out after the yard fence was completed this morning, and the horses were utterly unperturbed by it. Poppy passing by close to George, however, was scary as anything!

The horses decided to be as disorganised as possible this evening. George came in first and went through to Poppy’s barn, Poppy followed and evicted him with a dirty look, so Dancer scurried back out of the way and then couldn’t get past Abe, while George specialised in circulating around his part of the shed and looming at the poor foal every time she plucked up her nerve to come in! I ended up putting George’s headcollar on and tying him up outside, then getting a rope over Dancer to steer her towards her quite worried parent, then sorted the boys out after I’d got the girls into the barn safely. George is still good at being tied up, though Abe decided to take advantage and was just about to start biting lumps off poor tethered-goat George when I caught the grey monster at it and yelled at him! Judging by the way he scurried off and assumed an innocent expression, he very well knows he’s being a brute!

 

 

 

Colin has been hard at work all day, crowbar and pickaxe to hand as he’s excavated holes for posts in the yard and across the driveway, and he’s nearly got all the rails up for the horses, (all the top rail, most of the middle but not yet the bottom one) together with all their posts and the gate.

The gaps where the last few rails will go in tomorrow are filled in with electric fence wire for the night, because I didn’t want anyone going under the top rail to explore! All the horses were very interested by this new addition to their surroundings when they came in, so it was as well I’d taken this precaution. The job should be complete tomorrow, the last few rails up and the posts trimmed down level with the top rail, then I’ll apply a couple of coats of preservative and possibly grow something like containerised crab apples up the posts…. the horses will enjoy browsing the bits they can reach, the bees will love the flowers and I’ll enjoy the greenery! On the other hand, the horses may spend all their time trying to get every leaf off the trees, so I’ll carry on thinking about it before spending the money to buy trees the horses will scoff.

The dogs and I went down to Loudon Wood for a walk this morning and visited the recumbent stone circle there.

Once off the main track and down this small side trail, we took a right onto a smaller path and then another right onto a tiny intermittent trail and came out in the circle.

The birds were singing their hearts out all around us and I kept bumping into a young lady with a stripy stick and a camera, so finally I asked what she was up to. She turned out to be from Historic Scotland, surveying the local sites under their care to check their condition (we agreed ‘slightly delapidated but pretty good for the age’ summed it up!) and then asked if the horses she’d seen me talking to on our way down the road were mine. It turned out she has a black Welsh Section D, a very useful breed of cob, and we talked horses all the way back up the road again. She admired them all but was totally smitten by pretty little Dancer!

The gorse is out and smells divine – for me, warm gorse flowers are the scent of spring.

Another sign of spring was hearing a curlew calling – I saw her (or him… I can’t tell!) flying over a few minutes later. Between the sound of small lambs and their mothers, the sight and sound of curlews and the smell of gorse, it definitely feels like spring has sprung!

Blue’s kits are all looking very lively. I retrieved three from under the flap of their cardboard box and put them back in the nest at lunchtime, where they all immediately burrowed down cozily with the others. I think she has about 7, but I’ll count them once they have their eyes open and are running about.

I spent a few minutes this afternoon making a start on the greenhouse. I’ve thrown out all the rubbish, cleared the weeds and swept the floor. It’s already warmer in there than out, and since it’s south facing with a white-painted wall behind it, it’s going to get scorching in hot weather!

Just before I get into a discussion of the patch of woodland down the bottom of the croft, I thought I’d just post this photo of the yard in today’s lovely sunshine.

Altogether it’s a space about 35 foot long by nearly 20 foot wide where the horses can have dry footing in any weather, an excellent sun-trap for snoozing in and a good space for grooming and hoof care work. Colin the handyman came by this afternoon to say he’s ready to start putting the fences up tomorrow morning, though he hasn’t received the gates from the local joiners yet, so I towed the caravan (now sold but not yet paid for or collected!) and the horse trailer out a bit tonight to make sure he has plenty of working room tomorrow. Not having the gates yet doesn’t worry me – I can use a bit of electric tape to stop the horses getting out in the meantime and it’s still more secure than the current arrangement!

Back to the woods. I’ve been meaning to go fossick about in the patch of woodland at the south end of the croft for ages and finally made time this afternoon. It’s an odd-shaped little bit of ground – on the plan of the croft on the ‘About me’ page, it’s the patch right at the bottom of the plan, all angles. There’s also a little triangular patch that puzzles me greatly about halfway down the road edge of the field, which is wooded as well, so we had a look at that, too.

The road boundary is a bit of a source of regret to me – there’s a truly splendid stone wall which has, alas, been allowed to fall down and become colonised by scrub trees in places, and there’s no way short of winning the lottery that I can afford to have it cleared and re-built. That’s a big pity, because it’s a much better stock-proof boundary than the wire fence that’s been put up just inside it! Even the local sheep would be pushed to climb a vertical five foot stone wall, which is what it is (where it’s still in good condition!) I sometimes wonder if I could offer it to a local wall-building course and get it fixed on the cheap that way…

Anyway, we walked down the road, which slopes slightly to the south, and arrived at the triangular patch first. The north corner of it has clearly been a proper field entrance, complete with a slope up to the road for vehicle access, and at some point I may well reinstate a proper gate there. The fence then juts out into the field for no reason I can ascertain – there’s scrub and a bit of slightly boggy rushy ground but nothing I could find to explain why it should be excluded from the field so firmly. The wall runs down the outside of it and it’s very definitely part of the croft’s land so, if at some time I scrape up the money to get the field fenced (or even get that wall rebuilt!!), I might well change that fence line to include the triangle again. The young trees there seem to be ash, which is a magnificent and incredibly versatile, useful tree. I’m not sure about the huge old trees either side of the old gateway – I’ll have to wait until I can identify them by their leaves, I think, to be certain what they are.

Further down we reached the end of the field and a good solid fence line, then the unfenced wood beyond. The croft’s boundary is a ditch that runs beyond the trees and disappears towards the much bigger wood beyond the field behind the croft (the field and wood that used to belong to the croft until they were sold off a couple of decades ago, along with the two big barns next to my collection of sheds) and we picked our way through the big conifers and a couple more young ash trees to the heart of the wood.

It’s a much bigger patch of land than I thought; I paced out the road edge and that was thirty-eight paces or roughly something just under a hundred feet. There’s a lot of stumps and the brash has been left lying (not necessarily a bad thing – it provides some excellent habitat for various wildlife, particularly insect larvae and fungi) but there are also willow, quite a bit of ash, some sycamore, wild garlic, I think flowering currant, goosegrass, nettles, sorrel and some plants I didn’t recognise, though they made me wonder about carnivorous bog-plants (I don’t think they were, but they were slightly like pix I’ve seen). The big willow tree we found was surrounded by cones from the conifers – all stripped of seeds, though not chewed, so I think someone with wings and a beak has been perching in the willow while scoffing pine nuts through the winter.

The ditch has a little stream running in it, seemingly just rising from a small spring near the road. I’ve spotted another spring in the field, plus the one across the road that provides water for the croft, so I’m assuming that the croft lies on the spring line of the hill.

I was hoping that it might be possible to make at least a narrow path through the wood and onto the road, which would mean I could ride from the croft to the woodland trails in Loudon Wood with only about twenty yards on the road, but it doesn’t look like it’s possible without a lot of money and heavy earth-moving machinery. Reinstating the gate halfway down should be much easier and cheaper, though, and will still only leave a hundred yards on the road before getting safely into the woods.

I intend in time to get in touch with the Woodland Trust, perhaps Scottish Natural Heritage or the local wildlife trust, and get some advice on what to do with the wood. It might not make a good access way but it’ll provide some superb wildlife habitat, with some help!

Finally, here’s a photo of George tonight, looking out of the stable shed over the slip rails. All those pale marks in his coat are scabs where he’s been bitten by that perfidious little monster Abe, just visible behind George’s head!

Finally, and to my back’s great relief, we’ve cleared the last of the hardcore off the yard and into the walkway, where it’s fighting mud beautifully. George gave me a bit of an odd look after glancing around the yard when he came in – a sort of ‘where’s my clover gone?’ expression, I suspect. He found a patch in the North Paddock gateway that seemed to suffice instead, at least until he meandered gently into the stables after everyone else. The herd seem to be getting the hang of who goes in when – Poppy won’t push past George to come in so we all wait until he mooches out of the way, but then I just have to hold doors and close them appropriately. George certainly likes having the view out of the shed over the slip rails in the morning, though he tried to help me move the top rail this morning by gripping it in his teeth and waggling it while I was sliding it out of the way, so it fell on my foot instead of being put down quietly. Judging by the way George hurried outside, my choice of invective didn’t please him.

They’ve been at the far end of the field much of the day, since I moved the fence last night to give them a patch of beautiful fresh grass, but they come back for the water bucket and to snooze when they’ve filled their stomachs. I watched for a while around noon while Dancer was investigating under George’s belly – he was very patient about it and merely twitched his skin around for the first few minutes, then turned his head and gave her a long look before lifting a hind hoof slightly and dropping it again. She took the hint enough to move round to the back and try going under his tail, so he flicked her in the face with it a couple of times. That seemed to do the trick and she went back to Poppy. She tried the same thing on Abe later on and he whipped round and chased her across the field, teeth bared!

Holly has now been jill-jabbed safely, though it took us two tries as she writhed furiously in our hands. She managed to get loose for the second time just as the injection was finished and yanked the whole syringe out with her teeth before hurling herself back into the bag and muttering rudely all the way home… at least she stayed in the carrier and didn’t escape!

Blue seems to be looking after her kits properly – I put a finger in this morning while she was scrunching her breakfast carrot and the litter all started leaping and squeaking hungrily, but by lunch when I put a finger in they just stirred around a bit and went back to sleep, so they’d been fed. I gave Blue an extra carrot at noon to ensure she stays well-nourished.

The cold-water overflow is overflowing again, so I put a hosepipe on the overflow from the waterbutt and led it round to the end of the goose run, where it’s now keeping a goose bath filled up with clean water. Hannibal has taken at least three baths in it today!

The quail are still laying quietly at my mother’s place, so I’m going to put a dozen eggs in the incubator soon. I need to time it so they hatch out in the second week of May, by which time I will have the adults up at the croft and have a place ready for the chicks.

We discovered where Blue’s put her latest nest this morning and it was accessible – right under the window, in fact, tucked behind the haylage bale and the feed bin – so this morning we assembled the four new runs that were delivered to the croft yesterday and set them up in the big dairy shed, then I simply scooped up the entire nest, kits and all, and popped it into a small cardboard box, caught Blue and put her in a pet carrier, captured Tiger and did the same to her (in a different carrier!) and took them all up to the croft.

I put the nest, box and all, in a corner of a run and added Blue, then shut the door and left her to settle. Tiger has the run next door, each with their names chalked on the top of the run. I hope Blue will accept the changed surroundings without rejecting her litter – it’s a risk but it’s better than letting them all get scoffed by rats. I’ve moved nests before without the doe being bothered and Blue had a look and a sniff of the nest in its new place, then sat and ate hay, so fingers crossed she feeds them at some point in the night – I’ll check in the morning and make sure they’re all fat and wriggly.

I’ll move Nightshade and Dottie up tomorrow, hopefully, and then the boys and their hutch the day after. We left a nice big space between the runs closest to the camera to allow for the hutch fitting in – there’s a drip in the roof there and the hutch has a roofing felt top, so the boys will be fine.

George left the stable intact overnight.

He was also in a scritchy mood last night when I did the last look around, so we spent a happy half-hour or so together while I scratched all his itches with the grooming gloves. He stood like a rock, just inching around to get my hands onto the next itch from time to time, and I picked up a lot of red hair off the floor this morning!

The others all had a groom in the field this morning, and there’s enough hair on the ground to line every nest for miles around. Dancer had so much ecstatic delight going on when I scratched both sides of her bum at once she couldn’t decide which way to turn her head and ended up wriggling!

I’ve moved the fence along again for them this evening, so tomorrow I should have less of the reproachful line along the near fence complaining there’s nothing to eat….

 

 

I went out this morning to be greeted by the sight of George’s caramel-stripe tail between the doors of the stable shed. Assuming he’d bounced his stable door open, I let everyone out and went back to examine the damage.

Crikey, what that horse does by just leaning on things!

The left hand door to his stable (remembering it’s two 9-foot stables knocked together!) was barely clinging on by its fingernails. The right hand door was overlapping the frame by a full half an inch. The wall between them had been sheared off its floor bolts and shunted sideways by that distance. The shared wall with Abe’s stable was pulled askew by a full foot at the back wall, and Abe’s other wall had been pushed in by an inch, nearly pulling it free of its floor bolts as well!

I mucked out while thinking about the situation, then set to work.

I removed both doors from their hinges and took them away altogether. I shoved Abe’s walls back where they came from, then put up two good strong slip rails across the main entrance to the shed. George appears to find it mildly amusing to circulate gently in one doorway and out the other, though it also gave him the chance to make sure Abe’s bucket was thoroughly licked clean.

I may start feeding Abe by hanging his bucket on the other door in his stable, though Dancer may get her nose nipped if she tries muscling in on Abe’s dinner, such as it is – he’s a good doer so, despite it being too early for the grass to grow properly yet, he’s managing to look tubby at the slightest excuse. Abe’s dinner consists of a meagre handful of hay replacement nuggets, while George and the girls get half-buckets of speedi-beet and chaff, but it’s enough to make sure he doesn’t feel left out at dinner time.

I may spend tomorrow removing the rest of the front wall of George’s stable, so he has the whole space to move around in freely (bearing in mind as he ambled into the stable tonight, he tapped one of the uprights with his hip and bounced the right hand wall off its floor bolts as well…). Remembering how heavy those partitions are, I think I’ll move the caravan across the yard, dismantle the electric fence, move the car in front of the shed and use it to tow the partitions out of the way, having simply chainsawed through the uprights at the top….

Please, George, don’t lean on anything….

If I don’t set to work on dismantling what’s left of George’s stable tomorrow, I’ll assemble four rabbit runs that arrived today, then I can start moving the bunnies up to the croft at last! Tiger and Nightshade are now out of their cage, too, so there’s three does and a very happy buck loose on the shed floor at the moment. If not tomorrow then definitely Monday for those new runs!

On another note, Lucy laid another egg this morning, so if she wasn’t in the mood yesterday, she’s back on song today. I also caught both geese squeezing quietly through a gap in the fence – I’ve been wondering how Hannibal sometimes turns up in unexpected places and whether he can actually fly a little, but  I’d written off the gap as far too small for such big birds. I’ve put a breezeblock in the gap now and I think it’ll take them a long while to climb over it, since they can’t use their wings to assist them!

Dancer, incidentally, is a mud puppy.

Days, that is.

Yesterday morning I found a new hay supplier and by mid afternoon 63 beautiful bales had been delivered, so by the time I’d stacked them all in a good dry part of the big dairy shed, I hadn’t the energy to write anything on the blog. If my maths is correct, at about 20kg a bale, I shifted about a ton and a quarter of hay. The sack trolley earned its keep for the year, since it’s all I can do to lift one of these, never mind carry them anywhere! I’m also very glad I have a good pair of gloves, since baling string is not the kindest thing on bare fingers.

That takes care of the perennial worry about finding enough hay for the horses and rabbits for a good while, anyway, and one bale provides enough hay for all four horses for a night, instead of me giving them a small bale each, not to mention all that plastic wrapping I’ve been taking to the tip….

Ivy had her annual trip to the vet for her ‘jill jab’ this morning, to bring her out of season.  Unless they mate, ferret jills don’t come out of season and end up developing a form of leukaemia so, since I don’t want hordes of ferret kits, mine get hormone jabs a week after they come into season each year. Holly’s a bit slower coming into season so she’s going in for her jab on Monday morning. Ivy behaved very well, refrained from biting anyone even when the needle went in and only escaped from the carrier twice on the way home – once conveniently close to a wide farm entrance so I could pull in hurriedly, and then again a hundred yards from home, so I grabbed her and hung on until I could park safely in the yard.

There was another dead baby rabbit in the bunny house this morning, so Blue’s had another litter somewhere. It was about a week old, at a guess, and a harlequin, but obviously got pulled out of the nest and chilled in the night. The ferrets did disposal duty for me in their usual manner.

I’ve shifted a lot more hardcore this afternoon and the yard’s starting to look something like it! It was hot and sunny – teeshirt weather for anyone shovelling hardcore and barrowing it away – so the horses didn’t get to help this time, which made life a lot easier!

I’m not sure what’s on Lucy’s mind but she seems to have stopped laying. She was laying an egg every other day, but she hasn’t left an egg in the nest for three days now. She looks healthy enough so I suppose she knows what she’s doing….