A day off today to take Xacra and Golfinho to the vets for her AI. We tried loading in the field at first and although Xacra walked straight in, Golfinho took to galloping around yelling in his tiny foal voice, causing mum to panic as he hove out of view at speed. It soon became obvious that a change of tack was called for, so once again we took the gate into the corral off its hinges, rolled out the telegraph pole from its spot under the picadeiro fence and reveresed the trailer tight up to the entrance. We left them for a while to have a sniff, during which pleasant interlude the gate fell on Knickers' head and very nearly brained her, then got Xacra back on board and kept her calm while Golfinho faffed around and Knickers encouraged him back towards the trailer. Within a few minutes he appeared at the ramp and with mum's encouragement clambered on like a good boy, just as the heavens opened and down it came.
Pheel arrived just as we were mooching down the drive ready to go, to do a quick inspection of the hard standing at the back of the boys' paddocks and discuss next steps. It was only as we were on our way to the vets that I realised that while I was nodding and smiling while he spoke, I actually had no recollection at all of what he'd actually said, so resolved to call him once we got home.
The journey to the vets was straightforward and made better by the fact that this time I wasn't going to make the mistake of driving up the wrong street, the narrow one with the cars parked along one side; the one that requires very careful reversing down while anxious car owners look on. The vet came to take Alfama and Gualter for her final scan before leaving, and we unloaded Xacra and Golfinho in the car park and put them in the paddock. Golfinho trotted off through the long grass in a very high-kneed fashion, every inch the mini Luso. Sweet. Meanwhile Gualter was looking MAHOOSIVE! The car park was awash with lorries and trailers, which meant that a number of random people were on hand to coo over him and remark upon how lovely he is :proud mum: Alfama loaded straight away and after a bit of hesitation and the help of two assistants each with an arm around his bum, Gualter loaded in a few moments as well. Splendid.
The trip home was uneventful and once restored to their paddock the two of them spent a pleasant half hour charging around and catching up with all the news. Very glad to have them home.
At this rate we'll be collecting Tigre as well as Xacra & Golfinho on Saturday, and then our reasonably sized collection of Lusos will be restored to their rightful place at the homestead.
Meanwhile, the pixies had been and flattened the last load of stone in Q's winter paddock, leaving the unavoidable conclusion that one further load was going to be needed. So if anyone out there is wondering how many lorry loads of stone are required to make two lots of hard standing for small all weather turnout areas, the answer appears to be 4. The mind boggles at how much rubber will be required to finish it off.
Wednesday 22 June 2011
Sunday 19 June 2011
This year's breedings
We've hemmed and hawed for some time now over arrangements for this year's breedings; we knew which stallion we wanted to put with which mare, but having opted for AI, it remained to determine how that would be achieved. Initially we didn't want them to have to go away but realised this was the only practical solution, especially when using frozen semen for one of them and the attendant need to have the mare scanned every six hours. That would make for a pretty meaty vet bill in no time flat, and AI is not a cheap option. If we could drop everything at a moment's notice to get the boys off to stud so that we could use fresh, it wouldn't necessarily be such an issue, but we don't, and so it is. Live cover starts to look increasingly appealing :)
We had the mares scanned on Friday, with the aim being to try and coordinate the girls being inseminated at near enough the same time. Alfama was nearly ready and Xacra a while off so the vet left me an injection to bring forward her season to give yesterday, and arrangements were made to take Alfama (and by association, Gualter) to the vet's today, and Xacra on Wednesday. Made arrangements with Madeleine for chilled semen from Tigre (for Alfama) and frozen from Q (for Xacra) to be delivered tomorrow, and dashed about getting a single breast bar for the trailer etc yesterday in preparation.
Alfama loaded like a pro this morning but Gualter wasn't having any of it. We tried everything during the course of a pleasant few hours but in the end called in reinforcements (thanks Dan!) to bodily lift him on to the trailer. Once in he was fine and they travelled really well. I can now say, as a result of my maiden voyage with such newly minted and precious cargo on board, that I can clench my butt continuously for a whole 50 minutes or so that it took to get to the vets, while studiously ignoring the long tail plume of followers we accrued while negotiating some truly appalling road surfaces. I can also reverse the trailer down a narrow road with parked cars along one side when the sat nav sends me up the wrong street, with anxious neighbours looking on who are well accustomed to horse boxes reversing carefully down their narrow road with their cars parked along one side while they look for the clinic.
Alfama has been scanned again and pronounced ready; the semen will arrive tomorrow, so fingers are crossed that all goes well. And I look forward to doing the same again with Xacra and Golfinho on Wednesday.
Meanwhile back on the homestead things have been busy and productive. Knickers did her first complete solo lunge session with Q and did beautifully, so I am almost as pleased with and for her as she is with herself :) Q was an absolute superstar too. That boy is worth his weight in gold. Sid is finishing off the logo and the web site is coming along. We shall be spending a good deal of time trailering horses around in the next few days; T remains at stud next week having more semen frozen down, and we collect him on Saturday. I guess we will be collecting Alfama and Gualter on Friday evening, and Xacra some while later.
So, fingers crossed that all goes well and that the girls can be confirmed in foal without too much ado!
And oh yes, there is the festival in Lisbon to look forward to in about three weeks' time; 5 days of sun, Lusos, friends and stud visits to wallow in - bliss!
We had the mares scanned on Friday, with the aim being to try and coordinate the girls being inseminated at near enough the same time. Alfama was nearly ready and Xacra a while off so the vet left me an injection to bring forward her season to give yesterday, and arrangements were made to take Alfama (and by association, Gualter) to the vet's today, and Xacra on Wednesday. Made arrangements with Madeleine for chilled semen from Tigre (for Alfama) and frozen from Q (for Xacra) to be delivered tomorrow, and dashed about getting a single breast bar for the trailer etc yesterday in preparation.
Alfama loaded like a pro this morning but Gualter wasn't having any of it. We tried everything during the course of a pleasant few hours but in the end called in reinforcements (thanks Dan!) to bodily lift him on to the trailer. Once in he was fine and they travelled really well. I can now say, as a result of my maiden voyage with such newly minted and precious cargo on board, that I can clench my butt continuously for a whole 50 minutes or so that it took to get to the vets, while studiously ignoring the long tail plume of followers we accrued while negotiating some truly appalling road surfaces. I can also reverse the trailer down a narrow road with parked cars along one side when the sat nav sends me up the wrong street, with anxious neighbours looking on who are well accustomed to horse boxes reversing carefully down their narrow road with their cars parked along one side while they look for the clinic.
Alfama has been scanned again and pronounced ready; the semen will arrive tomorrow, so fingers are crossed that all goes well. And I look forward to doing the same again with Xacra and Golfinho on Wednesday.
Meanwhile back on the homestead things have been busy and productive. Knickers did her first complete solo lunge session with Q and did beautifully, so I am almost as pleased with and for her as she is with herself :) Q was an absolute superstar too. That boy is worth his weight in gold. Sid is finishing off the logo and the web site is coming along. We shall be spending a good deal of time trailering horses around in the next few days; T remains at stud next week having more semen frozen down, and we collect him on Saturday. I guess we will be collecting Alfama and Gualter on Friday evening, and Xacra some while later.
So, fingers crossed that all goes well and that the girls can be confirmed in foal without too much ado!
And oh yes, there is the festival in Lisbon to look forward to in about three weeks' time; 5 days of sun, Lusos, friends and stud visits to wallow in - bliss!
Saturday 11 June 2011
First appointment with the farrier, and other matters
In preparation for next winter (ugh!) work has started on developing an all weather area behind the boys' stables, which will allow them some outdoor space to mooch even in the worst weather. I really dislike keeping horses confined to a stable, almost as much as the boys themselves dislike it now that they are accustomed to being able to come and go as they please.
Stage 1: bring in large digger to scrape out the back of excess earth accumulation and flatten it down. We decided that while we were about it we might as well add some drainage to their winter paddocks since these fare the worst during the bad weather. I was a bit loath to have the ground disturbed but Richard, digger driver extraordinaire and Brad Pitt doppleganger, did an excellent job.
Stage 2: we are as I write awaiting the delivery of two lorries full of hardcore, which will serve as the base for the all weather areas. Again, Sod's Law dictates that in preparation for this work we had a lot of rain last night, but hopefully the paddocks will stand up well to it as it's all still looking pretty firm.
Stage 3 will comprise the installation of a rubber surface, at some as yet undetermined future date in the next week or so. Brad will be back on Monday to flatten it.
We had a farrier appointment yesterday afternoon; the first for Gualter. God, he's SUCH a poppet. He did wriggle a bit but was very good and is sporting a nice trim all round as a result, as are the girls who had undergone quite a bit of hoof growth in the intervening period since the last visit. Alfama is fine about having her feet handled while Xacra remains a little leery of her back feet, but all were done with a minimum fuss.
Meanwhile, success for T at stud, having grown accustomed to the dummy and provided his first sample on day 3 of training. He is charming everyone with his winning ways and his unparalleled ability to get his headcollar off at any opportunity.
Next we'll build a winter pen for the younglings between the two boys' all weather areas, and convert the stable designated grooming room into a proper grooming bay with cross ties. After that we'll make an all weather area for the girls to include the picadeiro, which will hopefully allow us to preserve the fields through the winter.
I've also got to get on to the vets about having the mares scanned in preparation for being put in foal again.
Never a dull moment! Or a cheap one, come to that.
Stage 1: bring in large digger to scrape out the back of excess earth accumulation and flatten it down. We decided that while we were about it we might as well add some drainage to their winter paddocks since these fare the worst during the bad weather. I was a bit loath to have the ground disturbed but Richard, digger driver extraordinaire and Brad Pitt doppleganger, did an excellent job.
Stage 2: we are as I write awaiting the delivery of two lorries full of hardcore, which will serve as the base for the all weather areas. Again, Sod's Law dictates that in preparation for this work we had a lot of rain last night, but hopefully the paddocks will stand up well to it as it's all still looking pretty firm.
Stage 3 will comprise the installation of a rubber surface, at some as yet undetermined future date in the next week or so. Brad will be back on Monday to flatten it.
We had a farrier appointment yesterday afternoon; the first for Gualter. God, he's SUCH a poppet. He did wriggle a bit but was very good and is sporting a nice trim all round as a result, as are the girls who had undergone quite a bit of hoof growth in the intervening period since the last visit. Alfama is fine about having her feet handled while Xacra remains a little leery of her back feet, but all were done with a minimum fuss.
Meanwhile, success for T at stud, having grown accustomed to the dummy and provided his first sample on day 3 of training. He is charming everyone with his winning ways and his unparalleled ability to get his headcollar off at any opportunity.
Next we'll build a winter pen for the younglings between the two boys' all weather areas, and convert the stable designated grooming room into a proper grooming bay with cross ties. After that we'll make an all weather area for the girls to include the picadeiro, which will hopefully allow us to preserve the fields through the winter.
I've also got to get on to the vets about having the mares scanned in preparation for being put in foal again.
Never a dull moment! Or a cheap one, come to that.
Sunday 5 June 2011
Ups and downs
After much deliberation, we've decided to call Xacra's little colt Golfinho. We kept a close eye on things in his first few days, and last Saturday afternoon we noticed that he was getting very agitated when suckling. Upon closer inspection it was clear that Xacra had little if any milk - argh. Timing of course couldn't have been worse, although there's never a good time for such things - about 5:30pm on the Saturday afternoon of a Bank Holiday weekend. I made an immediate call to the vet, who managed to source some milk replacer for us; Sid and Knickers went off to get that and some antibiotics for Xacra, while I ran around trying to get hold of a bottle. The farmer across the road had one but the nipple on it was for calves and much too wide a hole diameter. Argh. Luckily the vets had sourced one for us, so we thought we were all set aside from the obvious issue of how to go about the bottle feeding.
The marvels of Facebook meant that I had recently come into contact with someone who had tragically had to deal with an orphaned foal, so I knew she would be a good person to ask. In no time at all we were chatting on the phone and she gave me chapter and verse on how to go about the bottle feeding. In short we had to corner him and make sure we got some down his neck; not a nice thing to have to do but necessary. It took three of us in the end: one to hold Xacra, one to hold the foal and another to administer the milk. It's a messy business and was an anxious time for all concerned.
My FB friend (Jess) had also mentioned the need for caution when it came to feeding a broad spectrum milk replacer such as the one we had got from the vets, and offered to provide us with a specific foal milk replacer from the stock she had in for her boy, George. In the end we all set off just after 11pm Saturday evening on the hour's journey to Canterbury to collect it, and while we were there Jess and her partner Jamie gave us a demo of bottle feeding with gorgeous George, and basically gave us all the information we needed to cope with our crisis - including a lot of reassurance which was very much needed. What wonderful people to accommodate us, perfect strangers with only our mutual love of horses and breeding in common, in the way that they did, providing us with foal milk replacer, prebioitics and such a huge amount of information, at some ungodly hour of the night - especially considering their own three hourly feeding routine for George. Not only that but following up, keeping in touch to find out how we were all doing, over the next few days. If you're reading this Jess and Jamie, let me send your way one further huge "thank you" for your incredible kindness. I know you'll know just how much we appreciate it, and if there's ever anything we can do in reciprocation, you know where to find us!
Xacra was started on her antibiotics and Golfinho was much more accepting of the Aintree milk, so over the course of the next 24 hours we were able to get quite a bit into him every couple of hours. Once he got the taste of it we could offer the bottle from under Xacra's belly, and he'd latch on and glug it down. Xacra herself was amazing through this, so patient with me grubbing about under her belly, with her son getting very bumptious in his efforts to get milk - and one might imagine how uncomfortable that would be with rock-hard teats. She is amazing. I'm sure she was well aware we were trying to help her baby.
By the time Sunday evening came around it was clear that (a) he was starting to get some milk, and (b) he had lost all interest in the bottle. We took the communal decision to let them get on with it with just one 3am check, and thereon in they went from stretngth to strength, which was good because we were completely and utterly battered on the rather meagre rations of 2 and a half hours' sleep. Adrenaline will keep you going only for so long, but when you crash, oh god. I honestly don't know we'd have coped if the situation had gone on much longer.
Through this week mother and son have been doing well, and as he's been getting stronger we've let them out in the paddock on their own more and more. He's a bolshy little so and so! Methinks we are going to have our hands full with him.
In amongst all of this we had made arrangements to take Tigre to stud on Saturday morning, Luckily for me, as I was utterly battered by the end of the working week, Sid and Knickers gave him a bath on Friday and Knickers packed his bags for him, so all I had to do on Saturday morning was hitch up the trailer and load him up. He loaded and travelled well, and confined himself to a grunt and an arch of his neck as we walked along an aisle full of stallions to his stable. The stud's incomparable proprietor has kindly agreed to set up a small paddock for him so he can continue to go out on restricted turnout, and he starts his collection training tomorrow. I cannot say enough about the amazing team at Hobgoblins.
When we got back from stud, we put Xacra and Golfinho out with Alfama and Gualter for the first time. A moment of trepidation for us given the not insignificant size differential between the two boys (whom we might collectively refer to as Biggie Smalls) but all went well. What a thrill to see them all running around together, our little herd :) Xacra was being very protective and spent a lot of time laying down the law with teeth, feet and a range of truly appalling facial expressions, but as things went on it all settled down. It'll be a little while before we leave them all out together overnight, so they are coming into the shelter overnight or the stable if the weather is rancid as now, so Alfama and Gualter can have the shelter. We brought them all in for a spell this afternoon as it was raining hard and we wanted to do some preps for the farrier visit, and Gualter led in like a little pro. He is such a diamond little bloke! He needs to work on his herd place though as I was somewhat surprised earlier to see Golfinho chasing him around earlier :O
So all in all, things are settled again and at last we have some rain.
The marvels of Facebook meant that I had recently come into contact with someone who had tragically had to deal with an orphaned foal, so I knew she would be a good person to ask. In no time at all we were chatting on the phone and she gave me chapter and verse on how to go about the bottle feeding. In short we had to corner him and make sure we got some down his neck; not a nice thing to have to do but necessary. It took three of us in the end: one to hold Xacra, one to hold the foal and another to administer the milk. It's a messy business and was an anxious time for all concerned.
My FB friend (Jess) had also mentioned the need for caution when it came to feeding a broad spectrum milk replacer such as the one we had got from the vets, and offered to provide us with a specific foal milk replacer from the stock she had in for her boy, George. In the end we all set off just after 11pm Saturday evening on the hour's journey to Canterbury to collect it, and while we were there Jess and her partner Jamie gave us a demo of bottle feeding with gorgeous George, and basically gave us all the information we needed to cope with our crisis - including a lot of reassurance which was very much needed. What wonderful people to accommodate us, perfect strangers with only our mutual love of horses and breeding in common, in the way that they did, providing us with foal milk replacer, prebioitics and such a huge amount of information, at some ungodly hour of the night - especially considering their own three hourly feeding routine for George. Not only that but following up, keeping in touch to find out how we were all doing, over the next few days. If you're reading this Jess and Jamie, let me send your way one further huge "thank you" for your incredible kindness. I know you'll know just how much we appreciate it, and if there's ever anything we can do in reciprocation, you know where to find us!
Xacra was started on her antibiotics and Golfinho was much more accepting of the Aintree milk, so over the course of the next 24 hours we were able to get quite a bit into him every couple of hours. Once he got the taste of it we could offer the bottle from under Xacra's belly, and he'd latch on and glug it down. Xacra herself was amazing through this, so patient with me grubbing about under her belly, with her son getting very bumptious in his efforts to get milk - and one might imagine how uncomfortable that would be with rock-hard teats. She is amazing. I'm sure she was well aware we were trying to help her baby.
By the time Sunday evening came around it was clear that (a) he was starting to get some milk, and (b) he had lost all interest in the bottle. We took the communal decision to let them get on with it with just one 3am check, and thereon in they went from stretngth to strength, which was good because we were completely and utterly battered on the rather meagre rations of 2 and a half hours' sleep. Adrenaline will keep you going only for so long, but when you crash, oh god. I honestly don't know we'd have coped if the situation had gone on much longer.
Through this week mother and son have been doing well, and as he's been getting stronger we've let them out in the paddock on their own more and more. He's a bolshy little so and so! Methinks we are going to have our hands full with him.
In amongst all of this we had made arrangements to take Tigre to stud on Saturday morning, Luckily for me, as I was utterly battered by the end of the working week, Sid and Knickers gave him a bath on Friday and Knickers packed his bags for him, so all I had to do on Saturday morning was hitch up the trailer and load him up. He loaded and travelled well, and confined himself to a grunt and an arch of his neck as we walked along an aisle full of stallions to his stable. The stud's incomparable proprietor has kindly agreed to set up a small paddock for him so he can continue to go out on restricted turnout, and he starts his collection training tomorrow. I cannot say enough about the amazing team at Hobgoblins.
When we got back from stud, we put Xacra and Golfinho out with Alfama and Gualter for the first time. A moment of trepidation for us given the not insignificant size differential between the two boys (whom we might collectively refer to as Biggie Smalls) but all went well. What a thrill to see them all running around together, our little herd :) Xacra was being very protective and spent a lot of time laying down the law with teeth, feet and a range of truly appalling facial expressions, but as things went on it all settled down. It'll be a little while before we leave them all out together overnight, so they are coming into the shelter overnight or the stable if the weather is rancid as now, so Alfama and Gualter can have the shelter. We brought them all in for a spell this afternoon as it was raining hard and we wanted to do some preps for the farrier visit, and Gualter led in like a little pro. He is such a diamond little bloke! He needs to work on his herd place though as I was somewhat surprised earlier to see Golfinho chasing him around earlier :O
So all in all, things are settled again and at last we have some rain.
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