Our big boy Quest is coming home !!! Sadly for Jamie his adoptive mom, circumstances have changed and she is having to return our huge bay gelding to us. He has been away to school over the past months and has apparently been an honor student, excelling in work under saddle and a perfect gentleman in the stall. We are excited to have our boy back and interested to see how his return will affect the horse dynamics here in the horse barn. Lady, his mom, our big Shire mare has been happily befriending the little chestnut pony mare Zinny since her boy left home. Across the farm road, Charm the chestnut palomino, also known as “beauty with attitude” has had an attitude adjustment since the big black appaloosa gelding ( with no spots !) arrived. Charm has for the past 8 years controlled and organised the various and changing occupants of his kingdom. No democracy existed in Charm’s pasture, the handsome Arab/Quarter horse regulated where in the pasture other residents ate, directed when they ate and regulated what they ate. Charm not so diplomatically dominated his pasture…until Starbuck arrived. Starbuck had been a stallion until he was a 7 year old, now 12 years old. Quiet and mellow in his stall, Buck is indomitable in the pasture and has successfully “persuaded” bossy boy Charm to accept his status change with minimal damage except to the palomino’s ego. Quest, all 19+ hands of gangly Shire gelding will tower over Buck and we wonder what will transpire when the bay giant returns home to rejoin the horse family.
The war with the carnivorous occupants of the Shack ( our smaller hen house) continues, every 20 minutes we try to surreptitiously raid the roosts before the dastardly egg eater beats us to the nest. Every 20 minutes the White Leghorns ( suspected perpetrators) set up a deafening cacophony of screeches squalks and cackles to announce our arrival and return en mass from the chicken yard to defend the nest boxes. In each nest box infuriated chickens growl at our intrusion, some lift their feathered butts and resign themselves to our kidnapping of their egg, others resentfully just peck once or twice in protest and some peck, peck and hang on !! I did notice that nearly all of the eaten eggs were in particular boxes….those boxes are now gone, there is an empty space where the crimes occurred, egg numbers were well up yesterday…. we wait to see what today will bring.
Another hot sunny day ahead and no rain in the foreseeable future. I hear England is drowning and the one sunny day they had back in May was their Summer. My new granddaughter far away across the pond is in the process of entering the world, please join us hoping for a safe and healthy delivery.
Got to go, the cuckoo has spoken…7.30am, take care, keep safe, M
The war with the carnivorous occupants of the Shack ( our smaller hen house) continues, every 20 minutes we try to surreptitiously raid the roosts before the dastardly egg eater beats us to the nest. Every 20 minutes the White Leghorns ( suspected perpetrators) set up a deafening cacophony of screeches squalks and cackles to announce our arrival and return en mass from the chicken yard to defend the nest boxes. In each nest box infuriated chickens growl at our intrusion, some lift their feathered butts and resign themselves to our kidnapping of their egg, others resentfully just peck once or twice in protest and some peck, peck and hang on !! I did notice that nearly all of the eaten eggs were in particular boxes….those boxes are now gone, there is an empty space where the crimes occurred, egg numbers were well up yesterday…. we wait to see what today will bring.
Another hot sunny day ahead and no rain in the foreseeable future. I hear England is drowning and the one sunny day they had back in May was their Summer. My new granddaughter far away across the pond is in the process of entering the world, please join us hoping for a safe and healthy delivery.
Got to go, the cuckoo has spoken…7.30am, take care, keep safe, M
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