Diary

A mixed bagRSS feed

Posted: Monday 19 May, 2014

by Rosemary Champion at 3:38pm in General livestock Comments closed

Well, the vet was here today to jag Bonnie to eliminate any unwanted pregnancy. Although she will go to the bull later in the summer, she'll have grown a bit by then.

I've been practising haltering for a few days and she's been very good and I can now fairly reliably slip a halter on her in the field. When I check the four of them in the morning and in the evening, I slip the halter on each in turn, give her a good scratch then take the halter off again - it's just a bit of practice and they associate being haltered with something pleasurable. Not sure how happy Bonnie will be with haltering tomorrow - although she barely lifted her head out the feed bucket when the needle went in, bless her.

Dickie, our wether, has a sore foot. I think it's just a touch of scald so I've sprayed it with antibiotic spray, after cleaning it up, and I'll keep an eye on it. The vet brought a new can of spray because my chum has the old can to treat her hen, which was subject to a fox attack in her garden on Saturday afternoon. One hen had to be culled and one was injured but seems to be recovering. Bold foxy - she has two dogs but when she let them out, one of them brought back a squeaky toy :-)

And I found one of our hens dead this afternoon. Not the fox - it had just died. It was one of two White Leghorns that we bought in 2011, I think. Bonny hens but amazing escape artists.

And while he was here, the vet repaired our new drystone wall that the ponies had scratched on yesterday and knocked a top stone off. How's that for a versatile vet? You can take the man out of Cumbria but you can't take Cumbria out of the man. He's actually good at walling and has done loads round his smallholding.

And finally, the John Deere mechanic was here to sort Miranda's oil leak. He also did a bit of routine maintenance - topping up and tightening various bits. Nice man.

 

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