Escape artists

Got up this morning to find a little black cow in with the yearlings. Thought it was probably Arnold Betsy's big bad autumn baby and left 'him' there. Some time later I realised it was Amanda, escaped from the high fences in with the mares.

Further examination shows that it was no small achievement escaping from that paddock, the top of the netting has been pulled away from the top wire and bent over leaving a fence still at least a metre high that the little black biddy had gone over.

By mid afternoon she had got as far as the cows - through two electric fences - and was chasing her mother round intent on suckling despite being weaned five months ago.

So husband came home and we determined that we would separate Amanda and Arnold and put them in the paddock behind the garage which would be handy for Arnold who is leaving home this weekend and while they were both in the general vicinity of the yards we could tag them which is somewhat overdue.

It went exactly to plan (yeah right!) - we put hay out for the cows and started moving the calves out the gate - at which point the calves bolted down the other end of the paddock and the cows all ignored their hay and shot out the gate. Well I guess that separated them. Good thing most of our paddocks have more than one way in and out - with a change of plan we sent the calves in the other direction, chased the cows three or four times round and back through the gate, chased the goats round the garden where they had escaped to and returned them to the paddock before they ate all the fruit trees, and yelled at each other in a heated manner. In the meantime little Gemma came through the fence (she's good at that) to eat the cows hay and had to be returned.

Eventually they all got to where they are supposed to be. But it took ten times as long as it should have.

Ears

Doing her giraffe impersonation.

Roxy games

Play with me or

I'll eat the trees

And run off with the lead rope.

Adios to the redhead

It is so scary rehoming horses! You worry that they may end up in the wrong place.

Ali the redhead is really surplus to requirements. She's come a long way from when she arrived with problems letting anyone walk past her shoulder in case they beat her from behind - these days you can trim her tail even, and fart around standing behind her deciding to exactly what level you will trim it. She even got to the point where the vet could talk to her. (He went "Look I'm patting your mad mare")

Anyway I put her on Trademe, with suit paddockmate or broodmare, explaining that she was nervous, was probably unbroken and had a puffy knee, and that the home was the one non negotiable thing about her rehoming. The price was more or less what the dog tucker people would pay (to disuade anyone thinking they would make a profit from putting her on the truck)

So I got a lot of emails asking if she was suitable for a beginner...
A beginner what? A beginner breeder yes possibly, a beginner rider - ummm hello! what part of 'probably never broken' do you not understand? Does 'nervous (but not dirty), needs consistant kind handling' suggest anything to you? *sigh* obviously not...

Some girl rang up last week "I'll take her, she's cheap enough" A chat revealed that she last had a pony when she was five, so she has decided to get back into riding, she has no grazing, she has no vet, farrier or horsey friends... (possibly she has no brain!). She raves on about trust and riding bareback to become one with the horse. Must have been reading those kids pony stories. I suggest that this isn't the horse she needs at this point and get a curt and sarcastic "well sorry to waste your time" and hung up on.

In the meantime some people we know locally had dropped in and had a look at her. They are Parelli followers and Ali looked them up and down, checked out the savvy string figured it wasn't going to hurt her and decided that she would try her utmost to understand what they wanted. They thought she was reactive but promisingly willing and loved Tee so liked the idea of her as a broodmare. As homes go for the little red mare it was ideal.

So today we dropped her off to them. She didn't say goodbye to us, she was busy checking out her new paddock mate and her new paddock.

while I'm loading photos

Tee on the left and Storm on the right

Little Gemma showing her baby bump (she's due around Christmas)


And Tee - even bum high and gangly and with half a winter coat he's still a pretty baby

horseplay

By the time I got my camera they had stopped, but I took a photo anyway. The little black bovine is Amanda our Dexter heifer. She had her first birthday the other week. The problem was she also came into heat and she is too young to be mated. She is surrounded by our bull on one side and the neighbours bulls on the other (and those characters have no respect for fences). So to keep her from a teenage pregnancy we chucked her into one of the paddocks fenced for big birds - and currently occupied by the mares.

Roxy is entranced with Amanda - she tastes good apparently given the licking she has had and Rox keeps and eye on her most of the time. Amanda is sure that Roxy is the biggest cow in the world so must be herd leader.

The photo I missed tonight was the pair of them playing chase round the paddock. Sometimes Amanda was doing the chasing and sometimes Roxy was.

Waiting for the rain to stop

There are fifteen punnets of bedding plants (cheap from the red shed) sitting out on the front lawn. Garden is dug over and the trowel and gloves are waiting.

I had just got myself organised to add cottage garden colour to the garden in front of the verandah and the rain started.

Yesterday we went out with a few more plants to replace the winter casualties in the shelter belt (and save some from being engulfed in pasture) It rained at that precise moment too.

Think I'll go and read a book.

The long and the short of it.

Spring is in the air and even an old mare thinks about getting herself a stallion.

The problem for Ears (the dark old girl hanging over the gate) is that the only entire male horse in the general area is sort of short. This doesn't mean you can't flirt with him apparently.

Calypso - the short stallion in front of the gate - doesn't realise he is short of course. In fact he knows he is quite tall and also very sexy. He requested that the gate be opened several times.

Now that the three big girls have finished mowing the driveway and are back in their paddock he is standing at the gate calling Ears to come back. She doesn't seem THAT keen.

tanks again

So second plumbing attempts were more successful.

Now instead of one almost full tank we have two half full tanks.

Somehow that feels not quite as good as having an almost full tank, and I am still pondering why I feel like that - some deep childhood trauma must have affected me. Or maybe my grasp of volume mathmatics isn't that good.