Thistle do

Yesterday dawned cool and clear and turned into a warm and sunny day. After a week of sunny days. This information is specifically for our northern readers facing the autumn approaching. We've got the sun, thanks very much, we'll lend it to you occasionally and send it back next year.

What this means, however is that the plant population, only transiently resident during the rest of the year, really excels itself with the combined rainfall and spring warmth to create swaths of bending grasses, waist-high weed infestations, very fat sheep and thistles. Lots and lots of thistles. Between the barbarous stinging nettles, welt-inducing cleavers (known around here by the delightful term "sticky Willy") and the thistles-with-razors-as-leaves the garden and paddocks become a bit less hospitable, never mind the poisonous stinging and biting creatures that come out this time of year too. Regarding the thistles we do have some help. The sheep do their best, last year denuding whole patches so they could be got through with newly-shorn and therefore more tender flanks.

Even so, they grow higher than a horse. Literally.

Princess likes to delicately nibble the flowers and get the sweet stuff out from inside the nasty nests of thorny spikes (prehensile lips come in handy, er, so to speak). This helps the future seed population, but not the current skin-flailing growth. To this end all the free-range sheep have been moved to the paddock formerly known as the Sheoak paddock, but due to another vegetation disaster now Sheoak-less, (more on this later) and SO has spent the best part of three sunny days eradicating thistles in the rest of the wilds. Which has made him a bit spiky and inhospitable too.

Today's study revision: The amazingness that is the digestive system when it comes to sorting out sugars, carbs and proteins and which bit to use first.

Glare reduction

Kalara took advantage of two things last night, the downpour after the thunderstorm and the fact that it was too warm to rug the pony trio. Using her decisive horse sense (horses are only sensible when they decide to be) she knew today would be clear and sunny so she attempted a glare-reducing mudpack just like Bear Grylls'.

The animals were there

A little child might be born of lines of kings, have rich and famous people visit with expensive gifts and have generations celebrate it's birth, but the humble people (such as the shepherds in fact) being included in this celebration is what makes it so special. Not only the humble people, but the cows, and the sheep out on the hills, the donkey and the camels. The animals.


There are no better witnesses for love. We can learn so much from them about how to look after our young, how to stick together in a flock and how to be loyal and brave. No-one needs a McMansion, all we need is a warm bed of straw and to be surrounded by our animals.

Merry Christmas everyone.

Quietly gleaming

The horses love to go halfway up the valley to a flat spot among our current crop of thistles and just mooch about. The weather gods have been playing with their yo-yos this spring but today was one of the sunny, warm days. Gem and Princess got in a spot of show practice, standing perfectly square and side by side for well over half an hour. It's highly unlikely these two retirees will ever be shown again, but they like us to know that they've still got it. Kalara, the oldest and most show-experienced was playing judge and scrutinising them from all angles.

Princess demonstrated how to be pretty and golden, but Gem showed everyone how to just ooze gloss. Kalara was clearly impressed when it came time to call the numbers.

There were no rosettes as this was only practice. Although they could have used the purple thistle heads.

Pet status application pending

This friendly chap is a Standardbred called Sontiago. He is known to his friends, for some inexplicable reason, as "Mods". He is a retired racing trotter and is therefore broken to harness, but is also an "Open" riding horse having that rare attribute in harness racers - the ability to canter. He's only 10 years old. A whippersnapper by Celestequest standards, and mostly ridden now in the combined disciplines of hacking, dressage and a little light showjumping.

He was a topic of conversation with the lady who owns the barn where the bees currently live. She also owns him. The bees are on their way to our place when they settle down and pad out their frames more. Sontiago does not need to pad out his. It's padded to the point where he almost has no withers. The abundant winter and lush spring have been kind to him. Nearly killing him with kindness really. If Sontiago is allowed to continue gaining weight he will have health issues not unlike obese humans but with the added complication of possible founder, a disease of the feet in hoofed animals. Horses with uncontrolled founder - technically called laminitis - may get so bad that the pedal bone rotates inside the hoof and may even reach the sole. Not only is this very, very bad but it's very, very painful. It's also irreversible so horses at risk of founder need to keep to their slimming diets with mild exercise and no extra binging or they may end up with a one-way trip to the great pasture in the sky earlier than nature intended.

The lovely lady who owns him currently also owns 16 other horses and agists several more for various people so Sontiago has been taken off pasture and put in a yard to save him. She is looking to find him a good home. She offered him to me for the price of a cup of tea after his free delivery. I have known this dear lady for many years but even so this is an incredibly generous offer. The jury is out on accepting it. There are only two of us to make decisions here and one of them doesn't think it's viable. Sontiago thinks it's a good idea, but he doesn't have a vote. Yet.

Old winter coat

In patches all over the hills lately there are drifts of white stuff.

At first glance it looks as though there has been some sort of animal fight, they're tufts of white hair.
It just means it's now full spring and Kalara the grey mare is shedding again. Those are her rolling patches. She's mostly Arabian, but that tiny bit of Welsh Mountain Pony in her make up means she has a coat deep, dense and thick enough to stuff a horsehair sofa on her own. It starts as a lot of hairs sticking to the brush in late winter, and builds up to a crescendo where you can get handfuls off her by just by rubbing her with your fingers. Or even just looking at her. We spend hours grooming her and the hair just keeps coming. Sometimes I think that if we just kept on brushing her without stopping she'd be hair all the way to the middle and we'd end up with no horse at all. We get buckets of it, and we really do fill bags because I collect it for people with aviary birds. They love it for nesting material. Wild birds here also covet it as the essential luxury furnishing for their new homes.
On hot days the sheep wish they could shed their fleece the same way.

Gate Operator

With all the fuss about lambs going on lately Gem finds that sometimes breakfast is late and he just has to start the morning routine himself. Like letting the equine contingent into the raceway in search of their hay ration. The raceway gate, as mentioned before, is not the most robust of farming contraptions and really only works on the honour system.

Most of the time the horses pretend to respect it and stay on the outer but when he's really hungry Gem just gives it the old heave-ho. Having first wedged his dextrous muzzle into the gap between the ancient strainer post and all the makeshift piping, chicken wire and baling twine...

he opens it wide enough so that he and the girls can saunter down to the pine tree to make their presence known in the yard.
By standing where we can see them from the shed and whinnying at us whenever we pop into view they ensure they won't be forgotten. As if they would be, but some mornings with the sun well up before their food orders have arrived they feel the need to harrass the waiters and remind us.

Do you have enough for everybody?

Gem has his dinner stolen by the free range sheep regularly. He often leaves it to investigate what the other horses are having (the same) and returns to find one of the mares eating his too. Sometimes one of the wethers reaches through the fence for a mouthful. He just shakes his head at it, which is horse for "Garrrn, get out if it!" The most angry he'll get is to shake a snaky head at a wayward lamb, ears pinned back as he pretends to snap at them. Then it's back to munching his mixture. Tonight however, even one of the peacocks had a go.

I thought this might be the last straw for Gem, but instead he just looked sideways at me, flicked some of the mix out of his bowl with his muzzle as if searching for tastier bits at the bottom and continued to eat. The peacock gratefully pecked at the flicked bits. I'm sure I heard Gem thinking "Here," flick, flick, "Now leave me alone!"

Princess

This is Princess, the Palomino mare. She's the one on the right although the one on the left is a bit of a princess too. Princess the horse is a Thoroughbred albeit a small and dainty type, never raced and never been trained to race but was born and bred just over the hill from here at a specialist Palomino stud. Her life has included some rather successful dressage and a lot of years that I don't have the history for but obviously trained her well before I got her from a beautiful and well-meaning young girl who hadn't the foggiest notion about horses.

This girl bought Princess, because she was pretty, and an old cob she called Troy to keep her company and discovered that being a horsey person often breaks your nails. Long, acrylic ones painted bright pink anyway. It also makes your expensive jodpurs and designer clothes dirty. But the girl was sweet and loved her horses and her parent's had no clue about horses either so Princess, or "Hayley" as the girl re-named her, and Troy were put on show in a paddock.

The paddock was full of Salvation Jane, a Declared Weed also known as Paterson's Curse and rather bad for animal internal organs when eaten long term. The oblivious family simply saw green plants in the paddock and thought the horses had sufficient feed. Princess served her purpose looking pretty in the paddock for another year or so before the poor feed and liver damage took it's toll and she lost condition, the sheen on her coat and it's rich golden colour.

To be fair to the young girl, she knew something was wrong but not what. Princess was not injured and still ate carrots when offered, so she didn't call a vet. She threw up her hands, said "I can't look after her" and went to Japan with her boyfriend. Her father asked around his friends and business associates as to who wanted some horses, and so Princess and poor old Troy found their way to us. In a surprise move at the last moment he handed me Princess' Palomino registration papers, a real bonus for a rescue horse. Troy was more typically anonymous with just a few details passed by word of mouth. The papers told us Princess' real name and where she was bred, not 2 km away from where we ended up ten years later too.

Luckily no lasting damage was done and a good diet and decent care brought her and Troy back to their former glory within a season. We never found out Troy's history, real name or even his actual age, which was old even then. Whilst Troy eventually got inoperable cancer and had to be put to sleep, Princess went from strength to strength and became a lovely, if rather springy, riding horse. During the years I had to agist horses I kept her in various places all over the Adelaide Hills, and she carried me many miles in training although far too excitable to make it through the vet checks at any actual Endurance event. She loved being at events, perhaps the bunting, horse floats and general atmosphere reminded her of past success at shows, but she was too busy socialising, chatting, laughing and waving to all her friends to keep her heart rate down. I retired her to just hacking about - although at 28 years old she doesn't do that much anymore either.

Princess will never be moved on from here now. She's a part of our family. She may have travelled all over the place during her life, but she's come back to her home district for good.

Mud pack for the beautiful

Gem got a new rug recently, and as it was the only rug ever bought specifically for him and not a hand-me-down from all our other rescue horses over the years, he was determined to keep it in good nick. After two weeks of wearing it in the winter landscape, he's doing remarkably well to keep it as clean as it is.

Princess, on the other hoof, just loves to roll and roll and roll. Preferrably in the muddiest place she can find. Perhaps she thinks it's good for her skin?

She also knows, being a Princess, that her 24/7 entourage of carers (all two of us) will brush her off when it's necessary that her golden colour be admired by all. Or when they don't want to be too embarassed by the state of their animals. That rug is actually green, by the way, although ultimately horses don't care what colour clothes they wear. In this weather, Kalara's just happy to be warm and dry at all.

Preliminary preparations

The sheep get crutched on Saturday. At least, that's the plan, but the best laid plans of mice, rats and other rodents overrunning the place... So the sheep shed has had to be cleared and set up ready. This entails moving about 30 bales of hay to the horse shed (because of a slight planning oversight) to allow room for the portable yards to be set up under cover. The operation was watched with interest by key stakeholders.

The weather should hold for today and tomorrow but the Bureau of Meteorology has issued a Sheep Grazier's Advice for Saturday. Of course. Heavy rain and small hail. Every creature will be looking for cover. At least it will only be small hail.

The weather is only a partial concern to the sheep, however. Their fleeces are now at 3/4 length, about as deep as my hand and wonderful insulation. Their ears get a bit cold and hail is hard to live with, but that's not the main concern of the newest lambs, still not a year old. Their big worry is what, exactly, the rather worrying term of "crutching" means.

Hay table for two

Princess would be annoying to take out to dinner. She's the blonde one on the left. She is suspicious of anything new, "But what ARE rosehips and why do I need any? Can't I just have plain horse nuts?" She has a very set menu of favourites, "I'll have the lucerne. No, not the meadow hay. Just lucerne." And forget about adding condiments, "I don't like the smell of this white creamy stuff!" she wrinkles her nose at added wormer paste.

She also doesn't eat much although she has a lovely figure. Even when dining with her tall, dark and handsome friend Gem, she picks daintily around the edges of the hay on offer. Of course, that could also be because he's standing in most of it.

Self grooming for horses

How to get rid of excess hair and the itches of the day: Start clean and out of your rug. Your carer likes you clean so they can put your rugs back on at night with minimal fuss. This is not to be tolerated. For maximum attention, get as dirty as you can. Therefore you should select a spot to roll that is already churned up and if you desire a new spot, dig one up with your front hooves. Your carer can later reseed the muddy places. Make as many as you can for choice.


Once down on the ground, grind it baby! Rub your hips and shoulders well into the soil, get as much over your back as you can,


making sure you rub mud and grass well into your mane. This is particularly hard for your carer to get out and will ensure she spends a lot of time with you. If you can get some clods into your forelock all the better.

As you get up, ensure you pause for a moment to let the moisture and grit sink well into the hair on your knees and fetlocks. To keep your skin healthy your carer will have to spend another 20 minutes just cleaning your legs later on. Don't worry that she has other horses to do and other animals to care for, you must make sure she spends as much time as possible with you.


Finish with a token shake. This feels good and can make a pretty dust cloud in dry weather, but is pretty useless for mud and won't really ruin all your hard work in disguising your true colour. Your carer will still have to spend ages brushing you off instead of doing any other chores that would take her away from you.

Share and share alike

A while back I wrote about how Chesterfield the Finn x Merino wether likes to steal the horses' breakfast. Lately he's been nipping into their high-protein, formulated-for-elderly-horses (and clearly very tasty) supper mixes as well.


Normally Gem will get all snaky at thieving sheep. He doesn't with Chester. Gem has even been known to nip at precocious lambs testing the boundaries of equine tolerance by pestering him like flies. He's never threatened Chester. Chester always looks at him carefully first, asking nicely. Chester has an overbite that makes it difficult for him to graze. Perhaps Gem knows this. They eat peacefully together from the same small feed bucket. Sometimes they take turns to have a mouthful...


...each munching whilst the other loads up with another bite,


but they spend most of the time with heads down together. Perhaps Chester's woolly face keeps Gem's nose warm.


Or perhaps they have quiet conversations plotting farm domination over dinner together.

Valley view

At the beginning of the year the valley is dry and the grass cured - what little grass is left from the animals grazing it. It won't start to grow until the first real rains around April. If we're lucky.

When it does start to rain the valley starts to go green again.

Sometimes the valley is full of animals...



...and sometimes it's not there at all.

Equine queue

When the sun is over the yardarm, or at least the western ridge of our valley, the horses know it's time for tea and queue in the requisite orderly fashion at the raceway gate.



Not that we have particularly well trained horses or anything. They just think that by pretending to be well mannered they might be fed more quickly. Gem hopes we'll forget the times he puts his foot through the fence from pawing at it with impatience and thereby getting stuck. Princess hopes we'll exercise our discretion with the matter of the broken lead reins, and Kalara knows by now that we'll forgive her the occassional cranky nip when putting her rugs on.

We still feed them at the normal time, however. Perhaps they think that by asking for their meals earlier and earlier they'll one day clock themselves and get two feeds a day. They'll be waiting a while.