New pony!

Well it's official, I have a new pony. His name is Oscar, he is a dark bay thoroughbred gelding, probably about 16hh and has three socks and a stripe. He's just turned five and is really really green but such a sweetheart (i.e. a sook) and a very willing young boy. Had a great ride on him today, our first proper one and he was a star. Quite wobbly and choppy feeling to start with but the more work he did the better he got.

Some trot work - just as this pic was taken I started asking him to work from inside leg to outside rein and he just went all soft and into this lovely outline. Great effort for a baby! Shocking position from me, let the team down a bit!And some free walk where I started giggling because it was a bit too free and we went wobbling all over the place, haha. But a great relaxed frame from him and if this is what he does on our third ride together then I am stoked!!

Got home to find a fantastic clean house (Ben had his pinny on and hoovered, did washing and tidied up, was fab!) and two gin and tonics in the fridge - great to end the day with!

Ben had a bit of a burn off of some branches in the paddock where the heifer and Harry live and they both positioned themselves downwind of it, the cows seem to love the smoke. Harry even came over and got really stuck in, inhaling it all, the little pot head.Harry managed to get into the next paddock yesterday and his mum was funny - got sick of standing there waiting for him to come back through so just wandered off. Very liberal mum! Went down and herded him through the gate, she didn't even try to come through the open gate into the paddock he'd escaped into, just waited for him. So he has had his first herding/gate experience and his first belt from the electric fence. Bit rough when you're only nine days old but at least he knows now.

Introducing Harry the Hereford

It's a lovely morning here and heifer 30's calf is full of himself today. Clearly the castration hasn't slowed him down too much - or at all! He has been named Harry by heifer 30's owner, so he's now Harry the Hereford. Went down to give mum her feed and he put on a great rodeo display. Maybe it was his way of telling me I wasn't getting near him or his boy bits again.
And mum showed just how clever she is by multi tasking, once junior had had enough of the hooning around. What a woman - eating, feeding her calf and peeing all at the same time....
The pigs meanwhile took a more sedate approach to the morning and, well, ate like pigs. They are growing well, and are heaps longer than they were. Tummies getting bigger too. They should be ready to go in 2 months, in about the last week of November. They discovered puha yesterday and chowed down on that pretty happily. Still not keen on vege scraps, spoilt buggers.

Teeth, testicles and tanks

Have had a busy couple of days, out and about with a friend who is also a horse dentist, helping her out and picking her brains about stuff. Learnt heaps and had a wee play with a few horses' teeth so it was all good fun and great to work on sedated horses. Nice to have a day off today though and catch up with stuff around the farm.

Heifer 30 is looking good, the hard feed is keeping her in decent condition and she certainly doesn't look like she's lost weight since having bubs. Bad news for him is that today is the day he loses his manhood. We borrowed an elastrator from a guy down the road and this afternoon Ben and I go on a mission to castrate the calf. Ben has kindly volunteered to hold the head end (wonder why?).

Also been organising our new water tank. The old one is a corrugated iron one and has been sprouting a number of tiny leaks over the past couple of months. It's right beside the house on a tank stand and I keep expecting it to burst open and hit the house with a mini tsunami. So we have a shiny new plastic 5000 litre one on the way and have just been hunting out some posts to use as a new tank stand. We don't have a pump so need to have the tank as high as possible for gravity feeding. Should have it all up and running by early next week, yay!

Forest excursion

Me, Ellie and Sarah took the ponies to the forest today, was a lovely day and it's our first excursion out to the forest in a wee while. Choc's first one altogether, although he has been to the beach before and was pretty good there.

Loaded them all up and headed off about half two. The forest is only 20 mins away and is such a fantastic facility - there are heaps of tracks all well marked and it's really well maintained.

Choc was good and seemed pretty relaxed and about a third of the way through the ride we decided to stop and take some pics. The first pic is me and Choc on the left and Ellie and Spyke on the right.

And then there's Ellie and Spyke with Sarah and Bert - they are both completely wild ponies as you can see....

So things were all good until then, when we started off again and Choc decided he'd done enough (all of 20 mins walking). Little bugger started doing his specialty buck/rear manouevre which seemed to be getting progressively worse. So I hopped off and lead him for a bit, thinking I'd hop on again a bit further along the track. Then I made the mistake of trying to make him walk through a big puddle. He pulled away from me and then trotted off into the distance - in the opposite direction to where we were going...

Once he realised no-one was following him he turned back and followed us, but was a complete twit hooning around and wearing himself out. Bert and Spyke were great though and didn't go silly when Choc came belting up behind them. Ellie managed to grab Choc's reins after a bit and after some stern words (swearing) from me I hopped back on. He of course was puffing as he's still unfit, but the bad news for him was there was still the rest of the ride to go including a nice big long hill at the end. That should teach him to waste all his beans on being a twit early on. He did redeem himself slightly by doing some lovely collected trot work though...

The grass is definitely growing so perhaps that's his excuse. The cows are loving it and heifer 30 is looking ok too. Have her on some hard feed to help out with her milk production, but she looks ok and baby is full of beans and bouncing around heaps now, very cute! The piggies are growing too, although seem to be growing longer more than anything?!

Finding his feet

The calf is doing great, had a quick cuddle this morning and it looks good, full tummy and mum is still looking after him well. He is pretty steady on his legs now has even had a few runs around, managed to fall over, which was hilarious (he didn't think so, looked very sheepish about it all).
He had a sniff through the fence with his aunts and uncles and they are mildly interested but not been bugging him at all. Mind you he seemed to spend most of yesterday snoozing in the sun. Today has been a bit showery but he's been hanging out under the trees a lot. His mum is loving all the grass and we'll start her on some pellets today too, to help her out a bit. We're pretty low on hay now but she is first priority (am sure the ponies won't be impressed to hear that).

Will move the rest of the mob into a new bit of paddock today or tomorrow, they have been in the same one for about ten days now and am surprised it's lasted that long. Red (funnily enough she is the red one) is looking good although the three Murray Grey steers could do with a bit more cover over their backsides. Having said that Red is the greediest, noisiest and first to complain if they are low on feed.

Ben planted some cucumbers yesterday and had a nice bit of rain overnight for them. Still seems to be hard to find seedlings anywhere though, bit nuts really.

It's a boy!

Well heifer 30 was a bit sneaky about it all in the end! Checked her yesterday and udder wasn't much bigger, even had the guy down the road have a look and he reckoned she was a wee way off yet. Was looking out the window this morning and noticed she wasn't with the others (they usually go off on their own to have their calves) so thought I'd better have a check.

Threw some hay out to the others and she was down the hill a bit, but started wandering up when she saw the hay. I noticed a brown lump on the paddock and my first thought was it was still born. The heifer definitely looked like she'd calved, so I had a bit of a panic and ran down the paddock to where the calf was. Woke the poor little bugger up!He is very cute and looks like a couple of hours old in this photo. Still a bit wobbly on his legs but looks healthy enough. Haven't seen him drink yet but did see him wee (which is how I know he's a boy!). Have moved them into the driveway paddock where there is more grass. Now just need to make sure her placenta has come out - didn't see anything in the other paddock but I think it can take a couple of days for them to expel it. She's being a good mum so far though and definitely knows he belongs to her.

And her udder is just huuuuuuge now!

Gardening time

Yesterday was garden day, and it started off really foggy - driving up the road you could hardly see 20 metres in front of you at some points. But just as we started to hoe (or rather as Ben started to wrestle with the rotary hoe) the fog burnt off and it was a real spring day.

The rotary hoe is great but the soil was a bit soft and wet still I think so it made it hard going - not for me as I was in a supervisory role but it kind of looked hard work for Ben. I had to disappear halfway through it all as I had a riding lesson, so when I left, the garden was still pretty rough looking and Ben was still wrestling with the hoe.

Came back to a hoed garden and this morning we planted some lettuce, carrots and peas. There are lettuces on the left, peas on the right and carrots down the back.

Also have some beetroot to plant, and will do more carrots and peas in a few weeks so we don't have them all coming on at once (that's the theory anyway). Now we just need to make sure the chooks don't break in and dig everything up!

No udder pics today although she is filling up more and more each day. Will probably put her in the small paddock by the end of the week although I think she is a wee way off yet.

Lesson yesterday was great although Choc (and me) were both pooped at the end. He was even sweating - I clearly don't work him hard enough normally to make him sweat like that! Also I think the neighbour's arena is a lot harder going for him than the pony club arena that we used yesterday.

The cats were helping us with the garden too, Mera was all over the rosemary plant we got and ended up cuddling up to it. Sunny came over to hang out with her and they all sat in the sun happily for, oh, four minutes? The pics tell it all really...Not much love going on there!

Couldn't help myself...

Here's an udder action shot!

And just in case it seems I am udder obsessed, a bit of variety... this is the burgeoning wood pile with the deluxe woodshelter (made from corrugated roofing iron, like just about every other shelter around here...). It will withstand gale force winds according to the designer. The pile in front is the drying out patch and the branches are what Ben brought up from the goat paddock this morning.

Oh and a goat. The goats got into the horse's paddock and this is Basil. There is also Rosemary (Rosie) and Caramel but they were more interested in hanging out with the horses than following me back down to their proper paddock. Until I produced a bucket of pellets, then I was everyone's best mate.

This is more like it!

Loving this pic of today's weather from MetService - we'll have more of this please!!

The driveway paddock is dry enough to take the tractor down with the trailer and bring up some branches for firewood. Already getting wood up for next winter, takes so long to dry it out properly. Seems odd to be bringing up wood while we are still having fires (having said that, someone had one last night while I was out, and it was so warm he had to have the door open...). But nice to see the woodpile growing again instead of shrinking.

Tried to hire a rotary hoe for the vege patch today but the one we needed was out already - the other options were an industrial sized one half the width of the vege patch or a tiny one suitable for hoeing a flower bed outside your lounge room window. So have booked the mama bear middle sized one for tomorrow morning. Will head out later and get some seeds and seedlings ready to go. Have a nice pile of horse manure festering ready to hoe through and then bring on the sun!

Had a good ride on Choc yesterday, he is still wearing his best behaviour pants although was a bit distracted because there was a third horse in the arena (my mate Ellie joined us with her boy Spyke) and Choc being a social butterfly was quite keen to just go hang out with him. Fair enough they haven't seen each other for probably six months and Spyke is a handsome bugger!

And because no post would be complete without an udder update - no change in the udder today really, for all the udder fans, I promise there will be more photos when there's more to show.

Due date

Today is cow 30's due date and her udder is getting bigger by the day. Poor girl having all her bits photographed! But everyone loves a good udder pic so here are a couple:And just to keep things even, one of the other end (I suspect she was thinking something along the lines of "will you piss off away from my udder" at this stage...)So looks like she might be getting moved in a few days and then she'll really get sick of being checked on...

Sunny day today so off for a ride shortly. Have a lesson on Choc on Monday, first one for me in a couple of months and first one for him in ages, maybe a year even? He will probably be completely pooped afterwards and expect me to carry him home, he'd be mistaken about that though.

Udder watch

The heifer has started to develop an udder! She is due in three days and her udder has started to fill up. She is still not doing the waddle (when their pelvic ligaments all loosen up) but as you can see is pretty lopsided.

She's still in with the others until her udder is well and truly there, then will move next door to the flatter paddock which connects to the yards. Fingers crossed we don't need to get her into the yards and that the calf just pops out no worries.

Apparently they can bag up (get an udder) a lot earlier than cows who've calved before. She's looking a bit thinner than the others so I guess the calf is already taking a bit out of her. Her maternity paddock has been empty for a while so there is some grass in there for her and it's not tooooo soggy. Should have enough hay for her too once the calf comes.

Piggies are getting friendlier by the day and spend more time wandering around their pen instead of hiding under the hay. Still not keen on eating much apart from their pellets! Spoilt... think they have been talking to the chooks and are getting to be fussy eaters.

Poo picked yesterday to start a compost pile for the garden, once the weed killer has done its thing will rotary hoe it and dig in the horse poo then start planting. Have some tomato seedlings from dad already and will get some peas, corn, zucchini and spring onions soon too.

Piggie update

Just been out to check/feed pigs and they came hooning over as soon as they heard the bucket. They are getting more adventurous - they would only go a few metres away from their bed a few days ago, but today they ate out of their flash custom-made pig trough (some old spouting wired to the fence).

They are a bit wary of it as there is an electric wire running around the bottom of their pen and we think one of them got a belt from it last week. There is some alkathene pipe covering the wire near their food trough though - don't want to put them off eating!

The one closest to the camera is called Hock and the other is Ham.

The chooks all came running over too as they thought they'd be in for some feeding (like Dee they also clearly think they are starving - don't they know they are meant to be "free range"?!). But they still really don't like the pigs so didn't even try to nick their food.

Juggling hay

Been a pretty quiet week, and mostly fine which has been fantastic for the ground. Raining again today but apparently it's mean to disappear this afternoon. Been so nice getting the horses out of the paddock and their legs aren't covered in mud!

The ground was even dry enough to finally take the tractor and trailer down to the bottom woolshed and grab some hay. The stuff in there is better than what is in the big shed and would rather feed that to the horses. I tried taking the Bighorn down there earlier in the week and got well and truly stuck (dumb road tyres...) so had to ask the guy who grazes his heifers here if he could tow me out with his tractor. Got called a townie and no doubt won't hear the end of that for a while! There was no hay left in the big shed for the horses though (only stuff good for cows) so it was getting a bit grim.

Dee thought it was great having a moving buffet come through her paddock and followed the tractor and trailer around grabbing a mouthful when she could. It's not the best pic as it's from my phone but you can probably see she is not exactly starving - just thinks she is.

The others were a bit more intelligent and actually ate the hay that I'd already thrown out for them. I think Dee just has a thing about trailers and wheelbarrows, she sees them and seems to automatically think there is food in them - just for her.

The piggies are getting friendlier, and know the rattle of the bucket now. They are very cute and still burrow under the hay to sleep, and pop their noses out when they hear the bucket. Their appetites seem to be growing so hopefully that means they are too.

Mother to be heifer still has no udder, she is due in a week from today so once this rain eases off I'll bring them all over from the far paddock and put them into the one next to the house so we can keep an eye on her and her udder.

Managed to ride Choc on Wednesday and Saturday, he is still being pretty well behaved although Saturday was a bit of a dick - had forgotten to give him his toxdefy for the previous two days so am guessing that was it. Asked for a canter on the lunge and we had some pretty cool bucks - the type that would send me over the handlebars easy peasy, so am glad I wasn't on board. He was really spooky leading up the road too but heaps more settled on the way back down to home. We are going to attempt a dressage day with the riding club on Oct 5th. They are usually pretty laid back days so I think it'll be good for him. Have done one before on Maddy and it was good fun so at least I know what to expect. Am sure he'll be fine, he is pretty good in new places usually.

The piglets hit town

The piglets arrived on Saturday night, but didn't get here until dark so spent the night in the tack shed with a pile of hay to snuggle up on. My mate Jacqui drove them down from up north (yes she's nuts) and ended up with a distinct piggie odour in her car. They were a bit shell shocked when they arrived and the next morning when we moved them to their new enclosure at the end of the cattle yards they were not thrilled to be handled. But they have settled in heaps, are loving the pellets I got for them and seem to spend an awful lot of time snoozing on their king sized bed (a couple of pallets with hay on).
Spot the piggies....

Getting stuck into their pellets - breakfast in bed, nice for some huh! They are about the size of a large fox terrier right now and love to burrow under the hay and snuggle up together, very cute. Glad there are two of them to keep each other company. Just try not to think about what will happen in 12 weeks.

The chooks are not very impressed so far. They made an attempt to go and scavenge some of the pigs' food but once the pigs actually moved the chooks thought better of it and scuttled away. The horses seem ok so far, but a certain black pony has noticed something is new in his paddock:


The paddock still looks pretty awful but it is actually heaps drier than it was a few days ago and I am sure I can see some grass growing....

Checked the cows today and mum-to-be still looks the same. A bit rounder in the belly but no udder yet so she can stay where she is until the end of the week and then we'll bring her up next to the house in the flattish paddock to keep an eye on her.

Started de-weeding the vege patch on Friday, sprayed it all out as it was completely over-run and will get a rotary hoe from the hire place in a couple of weeks to dig it all up. Dad has planted some tomato seeds for us so we'll get those going along with some peas as soon as possible, yum!!