Darn

Thought I had done so well with rehoming the redhead but I now have to reserve judgement on that.

She may be back... we will see. (if she is back it will be as it is in her best interests)

Update: Appears things are probably going smoothly again now. Fingers crossed.

Update on the update: I HATE rehoming horses! Especially the special cases. I am not entirely sure what Ali's future now holds but where she is is not the right place for her.

Just for fun - from Kiwiblog

Analyse your blog type

Apparently Kismet farm is:

ESFP - The Performers

The entertaining and friendly type. They are especially attuned to pleasure and beauty and like to fill their surroundings with soft fabrics, bright colors and sweet smells. They live in the present moment and don´t like to plan ahead - they are always in risk of exhausting themselves.

The enjoy work that makes them able to help other people in a concrete and visible way. They tend to avoid conflicts and rarely initiate confrontation - qualities that can make it hard for them in management positions.








Looks just like me :-)

Maybe there is something in it

That males are supposed to keep their brains in their testicles...

In horses geldings are usually amendable and often a little dimwitted. Mares are a bit smarter usually. Calypso the stallion though is pretty darn smart.

The minis are on limited grass (it is a fact of life for them) and every morning they go out onto a grassy patch for a while and are taken off it and put back in a bare paddock after a couple of hours. This isn't necessarily to their liking as it is more fun on the grass if you are a short hungry horse. Anyway this morning Calypso waited until I put his lead rope on and left him to get his two girls. By the time I got back to him he had wandered off and was standing inside the gate of his bare paddock waiting to have his halter off. Now that wouldn't have been his choice of behaviour, but obviously he had decided it was inevitable so he might as well get on with it. The other thing he does is turn round so you can do his cover straps up - I used to tell him off for moving until I realised he was being helpful.

Health update

We have a guy at work who opens his mouth to change feet. His thought processes are unusual to say the least and he never ponders anything before just saying it.

I spent 8 hours in a car with him once and ended up ready to kill him. He would have been horrified if he realised how offensive he is, he doesn't mean it.

The other day he was holding forth in a fairly full room. His second cousin had breast cancer or something. I was 5 metres away talking to someone else when suddenly I was called at the top of his voice "Your cancer is fixed now isn't it?"

All eyes swivelled and there was a momentary silence "I wouldn't say it was fixed" I said cautiously "but I'm okay"

"well it must be fixed then" he said "your hair is really long again, you need a hair cut actually"

People are now looking at me strangely I shrug, say "whatever" and decide my empty coffee cup needs filling.

Anyway it isn't fixed, but it isn't progressing very fast. I am starting a new course of radiation this afternoon and we will see where it goes from there. Apart from the travelling to Hamilton every day I quite like radiation, fast, painless and appears effective.

One thing that was bugging me has changed with the change of government (a coincidence?) Late last year the local medical laboratory introduced a charge for a blood test that is an ovarian cancer marker. At $10 a time it wasn't a large charge but I objected on principle to having to pay anything. It felt as though they had singled out the women this test is important for and decided to hit them up because they are a fairly captive audience. I was so annoyed that I walked out and complained to everyone I could think of including Tony Ryall (National Health Spokesman at that time Minister of Health now). Eventually Tony sent me an email explaining they were allowed to charge for some tests in their contract and there wasn't much that could be done about it. I corrected the misinformation they had given him that they had been charging all along but really wasn't too much to be done except continue to complain to anyone who might be vaguely interested (health professionals mostly). As of this week they dropped the charge (said they just decided they would). I claim the victory as mine :-)

Yearlings playing

I took this video clip off the verandah this afternoon. Unfortunately it isn't really close enough. Storm and Tee are currently grazing the back run which is an L shaped strip of land about 8 metres wide down the side and back of our place. They love it in there under the pine trees as they have a good view of most of the area.

Update on Arnold calf

Arnold appeared to be healing quite well until this afternoon when he split the wound open again. Anyway we will see what happens.

His would be buyer is now spitting tacks and left me bad feedback on Trademe as I blacklisted him. He expressed a great deal of dissatisfaction on the phone that we would not sell him Arnold once he was healed up. I explained in no uncertain terms that I blacklisted him as I was not willing to sell him anything and definitely not a living thing. Had he taken Arnold after he damaged him he would now own him. Oh yes he might be up for potential vet bills instead of us...

Some people are just natural born dropkicks. I consider Arnold had a lucky escape.

As usual nothing goes according to plan

Arnold the steer was supposed to leave home in the weekend - enriching our bank account on the way. That was the plan.

We got him in in the morning and tagged him and gave him a pour on drench at the request of the buyer (who said he would pay for it) and left him until the buyer turned up, which he did with the most disreputable looking stock trailer which appeared to not only be a bad design job in the first place but also long overdue for some maintenance.

This guy raved on that he didn't know much about cattle. He was trying to imply that he was going to keep him for a pet forever but did confess to planning to eat him in due course when I asked whether he would be homekilling him (which may sound a bit callous to city dwellers but really steers have no other logical purpose) so either stupid or thought we were. Anyway Arnold was okay so we prepared to load him. The disreputable stock trailer had a variety of sticky out things so didn't sit right up against the yard fence the way other trailers do so we were left with doing the best we could. Not good enough for Arnold of course who attempted to escape down the side and took a chunk out of his shoulder on a sharp and sticky out bit on the trailer.

The buyer then became a cattle expert - this one was wild, would never load, he'd handled Angus bulls for years so he had seen it all, he was not fit for sale, now he was damaged, sale was off and he was leaving. So he did, no money, no apology, no further interest. Obviously just an a***hole.

So here we are with a steer with a big slice in his shoulder, tossing up. Vet - pretty expensive for a cheap steer and he's unlikely to go back into the race today, he really isn't that keen on the people thing at the best of times but definitely not when his shoulder hurts and he's already had his ears pierced today. Maybe we just call the homekill guy and put him in the freezer before he risks infection... uhh No - there is a 21 day witholding period for the drench he didn't need anyway as he was done a month before - and oh look a***hole hasn't paid for that either! Even less impressed. Not only has he damaged our steer on his crap trailer he requested we render him inedible and didn't pay for it.

In the end poor Arnold got a spray of disinfectant on his shoulder and returned to his mate Amanda.

So far - two days later - the wound looks dry and clean. Hopefully it continues to heal okay. Will then have to redecide his future.