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!