Kindling and Horse Play

June the 2nd - due day for our two 'pet' rabbits, Ginny (pictured here, grey and white) and Padfoot (lop eared black and white, 2nd time around Mum). Both of these girls were taken off to Charlotte's rabbit collection for mating with two different bucks, on the same day that she came to collect our "buck", Buck Rogers. Rogers, you will recall, turned out to be an on-heat female, so we hurriedly changed 'his' name to Ginger Rogers. Charlotte took her anyway and mated her to yet another buck and she has now 'kindled' (given birth).

These two were due today but, as is the way of these things, you see very little and if you are wise you don't go looking. Anxious mother rabbits will quickly eat their young if put under stress, while they are still at the new born, pink, naked, blind stage. You are best off leaving well alone for 2 weeks and waiting for any tiny, fur-covered, baby bunnies with eyes open, to emerge from the nest. All you might see is fur in the grass - the rabbit will pluck some of her own fur to line the nest and we have seen this fur in both the females' runs. Any babies will be detectable from about the 16th by which time our big doe, Goldie, may also have kindled.

Now a part of the post which you might want to miss if you are an experienced horse owner (or even if you own these particular horses, Carolyn and Charlotte). You will either be laughing fit to bust or horrified at our cack-handedness, and especially mine rather than Liz's. I admit I do not know horses and I expected them to be biddable and steerable like sheep. I also do not know electric fencing and I expected it to keep the horses 'in'. Big mistake which resulted in some fun and games but, let me add quickly, no injuries or loss of life!

We have borrowed this electric fence and I had deployed it to give the horses access to the 'Primrose Path'. I tested the fence with the back of my hand, as you do and got a decent jolt off it, so I knew it was working. The horses were let out of their field and grazed happily in the new space for a couple of hours. Then Liz went out to wash some spilt fruit-squash from the front step and spotted Cody calmly grazing in the middle of the front lawn. Not a bother, Liz went for a head collar, got it on him and walked him back to the fence where-upon he happily ducked under the fence-strand as if it wasn't there! Fence too high on the posts? We lowered the fence in the escape zone but judged it to be OK for the rest of its length.

A little later I spotted that Cody was back out again, this time apparently having ducked under again but at the lane end of the lawn. I walked over to him, gently grabbed a hank of mane and steered him gently back to the fence thinking he'd just duck under again. Not this time - he stopped dead, rooted to the ground. At this point I am afraid I become an incompetent idiot. I let go the horse and nipped down to turn off the fence so that I could make a gap to let him back through. Instead of him going back through the other horses trotted up and piled through the gap. I now had 3 horses loose on the lawn, heads up and an excited look in their eyes. I yelled for Liz. Cody and Romeo got into a canter and headed for the woods. They weren't about to be stopped by me calling 'whoa' or doing any of my sheep-steering hand gestures. Our only saving was that the road gates were all closed.

Liz grabbed the Polo mints and got Bob's (The Shetland) attention, so he , at least, wandered over and was amenable to having a head collar and lead fitted, so Liz was able to get him back into the field while we tried to catch the other two. Not a bit of it. They were straight way galloping round the whole place, all fired up at the new freedom. The charged through the woods, scattered the geese and chickens, thundered past very close to our new pond (Argghhhh, No! Visions of ponies galloping through shallow water in cowboy films!) and down into the allotment where they, thankfully, ran down the path-ditches, not across the raised beds and crops. I thought I had them cornered but 2 excited horses are not anything you can corner, and they raced back up the allotment, along the dog-wood path and, luckily into the orchard field where I could at least close the gate on them and contain them in a small area.

Here the galloping turned into play-fighting and then, as far as we could see, to a proper fight. They raced in circles around the orchard doing 2-footed high kicks on each other, biting necks and legs as if to try to make the other guy fall down or sit down. The rabbits in their runs had never seen anything like it and were racing about all over the place trying to take cover. The horses avoided hitting any trees but were careering into fences and at one stage clunked the big goose-house to one side. It was a hot day so we thought it might run out of steam, but Liz suggested fetching a bucket of cold water to throw over them. I got Romeo a direct hit and this did seem to slow him up. Both horses stopped the running-battle and stood, panting hard with nostrils flaring. I was able to get head collars on the pair and Liz and I led one each back to the field where we bolted them in and sat back to draw breath. What a relief!.

In the afternoon we had to go out, but when we came back we thought we'd better lower the fence strand all along the length and let them out again. I noticed that the 'jolt' from the fence was by now very faint, so perhaps the batteries were going flat and Cody had spotted this. Things went OK in the afternoon session. With the fence lowered none of the horses challenged it and when it was time to go back into the field, the carrot-bribe worked as normal. Charlotte is possibly coming round to check the gear out. We might stick to the tethering for now, till we are sorted properly.

We have, sadly, one piece of bad news to report, which is the loss of one of the 7 goslings. We do not know how or why; the most likely reason being a snatch-raid by a hooded crow. When the goslings are as tiny as ours, the crows can swoop down, grab one by the head and nip off even with the parent birds standing guard. Anyway, by what ever method, we know we had 7 goslings this morning till about lunchtime, but by mid-late afternoon we could only count 6. We did a thorough search of the garden in case the little mite had simply been left behind in the various wanderings of the family. Ah well. These things happen.

All 8 chickens are still with us and now at almost 6 weeks of age have formed a nice little tight-knit group who move around together independently of the grown-ups. Broody Betty has little to do with them now and has re-joined the main flock and William.

With the pond now almost full after 2 days of hose-pipery, we have been able to start doing the edges and, in particular, our flat-stone 'beach' and some of the surrounding stone edging. Tomorrow we should be able to play 'bury the rubber edge' under the bits where we want grass edges. It is all starting to look rather good. We are very pleased with it.

Of Liz and Buck, Romeo and Ginger.

Liz is safely back among those present - I collect her from Knock Airport on Monday 29th afternoon. She's had a lovely (mainly) Girly Weekend among all the old chums from Darkest Kent and further afield (Aberdeen and Hamburg!), Diamond, Mazy and co, eaten and drunk in some lovely pubs and restaurants, chatted, caught up on the gossip, and generally had a good ol' time. These boys and girls have been together for years and they call this annual get-together, their 'AGM'. The location rotates around where-ever one or more live, so it was just a coincidence that the 'Kent Lot' got it just after we moved away. It gave Liz a nice chance to go visit and, while she was there, look up our former neighbours, Angel B and Jim.

 We have mentioned before that we have made some new friends in this townland (village), namely Carolyn and Keiran and that we have now done the all important mutual you-show-me-your (small holding) if I show you ours. On visiting 'theirs' we also got to meet 18 year old daughter Charlotte and 'new' (14 months) baby Henry as well as meeting all the livestock (including the pigs who we may end up doing half-carcass swapsies with for one of our lambs this year) and the horses. They are a great bunch and we hope we have made some firm friends. Keiran is also a carpenter so we may be using him soon on out-building doors.

For quite some time we found ourselves chatting to Charlotte who has a happy, friendly way about her and an accent which veers between local (Roscommon), Dublin (Dad) and Manchester (Mum). She has obviously grown up in the small holding environment and is very well versed in all things goose, pig, duck and, particularly rabbit (she has 18 at present) and horse (she has three miniatures and a Welsh Cob). Our chat around rabbits ended up by us offering her our Buck Rogers whom we had bought last year to mate with Ginny and Padfoot but who, we thought, might be too young or small; anyway, no babies materialised.

Charlotte's three miniature horses were used for showing around agricultural shows and in some cases in pony/trap driving competitions. What they do not have on their holding, however, is any winter grass for the horses to graze, so the 4 are kept in a sandy-floored yard and fed expensive hay and other proprietary feeds. All around here the farmers have been struggling with supplies of silage and fodder for cattle, and Carolyn has not yet been able to get agreement from the farmer who usually lets the horses graze his land. They are a bit stuck so Liz and I decided we might be able to help. We are about to have our 1.5 acre East Field fenced with sheep (and therefore horse) proof fence and will not actually need it for sheep till August or September, so why not let these horses have our grass. Horses are also good at grazing when tethered, so we could use them to keep the lawn and other bits down, saving me having to mow. Also in this mix is that the horses have grown a bit fat and lazy over the winter and Charlotte would like to get them fitter and leaner during the summer.

To cut a long story short we offered Charlotte the buck rabbit but told her she had to come and collect him in the pony and trap. That way we could try to reproduce our circa 1900 picture of the house with the ponies and traps queued up along the front which I have included in an earlier post. The lucky horse would also get to eat some genuine grass while we wrangled rabbits and drank tea. The horse Charlotte chose to bring was one called Romeo who is actually an International Champion horse. He is of the breed 'Falabella' but he is a cross with a Miniature English horse (sorry, didn't write this down so I am not sure what breed) and he is a gelding. The other two are a pure bred Falabella stallion and a miniature Shetland (I think). So we were honoured to have the impeccably behaved Romeo on our lawn.

Meanwhile, Charlotte wanted to get a good look round our rabbits. Buck Rogers proved to be an in-season female! That at least explains why he never got very far mating with Ginny and Padfoot. Because SHE is a pale brown, Liz promptly renamed HER 'Ginger Rogers' and Charlotte said she'd love to take her anyway. She then grabbed up both Ginny and Padfoot, found that Ginny is also on heat and offered to take all three rabbits home with her to put with her 'proper' buck(s) and see if we couldn't get both of them pregnant this time. Concerned that her Mum would be wondering where she'd got to after all this chatting, rabbit wrangling and horse photography, she loaded all the rabbits onto the cart, hopped back aboard, Hyaa!'d Romeo into an easy trot and set off back down the drive and the lane home. Brilliant! We were all grinning like loons!

Last but not least we come to our geese who, contrary to my last report now both seem to have gone broody. Here, I am rather ashamed to admit, we have been guilty of some appallingly bad husbandry and failed to take on board the generous and freely given advice of Mentor Anne and Simon. They warned us that we'd need to separate the geese or risk nest robbing and egg-snaffling between the girls so that you'd never know who was still laying or whose eggs were whose, or whether those eggs had all gone the full 28-35 days of being brooded. This has indeed happened.

We tried, when we realised both were involved, to give them a hay box each, with a 6 foot gap between, but the 2nd box and any eggs we put in it, were ignored. With the two boxes next to each other at least both get sat on but who ever is sitting while the other one goes out to poo and freshen up, seems to then snaffle all the eggs into her own nest. A couple of days ago Goocie was definitely on 15 in the left hand box. Yesterday she is on all 15 (or maybe 16) in the right hand box. We do not like to get in and upset everyone by forcibly moving geese or eggs, so we are just going to let this one play out and when both geese have done their times, if we get any goslings we will be happy with that. We will try to get more organised next year. Our first possible hatching date for any of these 15 eggs is Wednesday 22nd May. The one thing in our favour is that the two females have always been inseparable and seem to be best of mates, so there is no fighting or arguing over eggs and, we hope, no disputing over any successful goslings. Wish us luck. Poor Gander is currently a bit lost and lonely with no ladies to parade around, so he spends his day hanging around with William the rooster or by Broody Betty and her chicks in the run.

Finally, last time Sparks was here he commented that it must be strange as well as nice, to wake up and then decide what 'work' you are going to do today. Well, for the first time in ages I know this one in advance. Our fencing guy, Paul M came by today to drop off all the straining posts and barbed wire for our fencing job on the East Field. Tomorrow I will therefore be lugging posts about, handling reels of barbed wire, monkey-strainers, staples, hammers and crow bars. I hope it's another lovely day like today. Finally-finally, Broody Betty and the 8 chicks are thriving. It's looking very promising.

Good Feedback

Good Feedback. Now there's a business-speak expression I have not used a whole lot since finishing at DHL in Dartford in June 2011. We bloggers write these reports and fire them off into cyberspace hoping that maybe someone is reading them and enjoying what we have written. We cling to the 'site-meter' reports telling us how many hits we are getting and listening out for comments each posting. But I have an additional incentive to keep writing and to try to keep this interesting; this has become, for me, my letter home to me dear aul' Mum, the 'Pud Lady' mentioned in some of these reports.

Pud Lady (named for her marvelous steak and kidney puds) is of that generation (she's 86) that never got to grips with computers (except for word-processing), the internet or blogging, Facebook, Twitter and all that jazz. She does love, though, that we have moved to Ireland and started this small-holder life and she is hungry for news and fascinated by all the goings on. When we were living in the caravan and had no access to the printer, my brother Mark offered to print these posts off (in the UK) and to include them in his own letter home which already contained his 'blog posts' and other news. He has kept up the habit even though we are now installed. Thanks Mark - much appreciated.

Pud Lady is therefore now getting all my news, and probably knows more about what we are up to than when we lived in Kent, just 45 miles away from her, I am ashamed to admit I was never that good at writing or phoning. We know Pud Lady is enjoying it because we also now get old-style 'snail mail' letters from her every fortnight included in the UK-addressed forwarded mail posted on by my other brother, Tom. Thank you for these Mum, they too are much appreciated. Today's has them impressed by the height of our daffodils and comparing gardening notes (we are both keen gardeners), describing their snow and Tom's family's children's off-school adventures, and looking forward to the RSPB's "Big Garden Birdwatch" which we used to do every year. See? Good Feedback. Everybody is happy!

Liz has just described today's weather to Diamond as varying between lashing rain in strong wind, and glorious blue sky, sunny warmth. That's no exaggeration. I am trying to build three tough, fox proof rabbit runs and a tough, fox-proof house for the geese. The rain has driven me indoors, so I am trying to work in the Tígín which is a bit tight for space but nobody wants to be using an electric circular saw in the wet! The 2CV trailer has been pressed into service as a mighty sellotape-dispenser style wire mesh machine. The heavy 30m roll of 1" square weldmesh is threaded through with a pitch fork handle and slung across the trailer box so that I can unreel lengths of wire, hooking them over the back of the trailer while I go along laboriously cutting each strand of wire.

The plywood and rough-cut "2-be-1-and-a-half" lengths are in the car port and the tar-felt is already in the Tígín. Sparks has run power and lighting to the Tígín, so it's not a bad shed to work in. I tend to rough out a plan of what frame and sheeting I will need (mainly so I can go buy enough!) and then start with this but then let the part built frames dictate actual sizes and saw cuts as I go along. The width of the mesh (92 cm, 3 feet) dictated the width of the run and I went with half that for the height to minimize waste. 3 metres length we thought would give the rabbits enough space to run about while leaving the thing light enough for us to move it about from grass to grass. You can see from the picture that I have, tonight, completed one run. This one is for (Buck) Rogers, our bought-in male bunny who is now separated from his ladies. I had a bit of blue fence-paint left from an earlier job, so Rogers's house is painted blue to go with his eyes. Ahhhh.

When the paint's dry we'll drag this one outdoors and get some sunny pictures of it (with rabbit!) to give you some idea.

Kindergarten at 3 Months.

On 3rd September the pups and kittens all make it to 3 months so this is an un-ashamed excuse to publish a few cute pup and kitten pictures. I can also include Buck Rogers in this group as he is nearly as young. He is developing bizarre tufts of fur on his cheeks and his head. We have heard of a type of rabbit called a 'lion' variety, so we wonder whether this is maybe what that is all about. Buck is a bit small yet to be looking after his ladies, so Dad is taking Anne and Simon up on an offer to allow their bigger, meat-breed buck, Peter to do the deed first time round. Peter is a Californian White, a breed commonly used in rabbits-for-meat enterprises.


Also 'we' successfully fledged a family of three baby swallows from the nest in the Tígín. They flew around an returned a couple of nights but now seem to have left the nest for good and may be among the birds wheeling around and gathering in our telegraph wires preparatory to the long migration to Africa.

In the two pup pictures, Poppy has the sticky-up ears, Towser's are still a bit floppy. Nobody minds this. They may stand up eventually (His Father's (Maxwell's) apparently took and age) but Dad thinks he looks quite cute anyway and we can easily tell the bu**ers apart, anyway! Mrs Silverwood is rather meanly calling them Poppy and "Floppy" on Facebook. Poor devil will probably end up with a complex.

The tabby kitten, Blue has grown some rather fetching ear tufts and has in the past also had nice long whiskers but these are currently a bit short due, we think, to his keenness to get onto the dining table and wander close to the candles. This is a battle Mum and Dad are determined to win (they won eventually with a previous cat 'Utsire'). He climbs onto the table and is ejected by the scruff. He climbs back on and gets ejected again. After a couple more warnings he is scruffed into the living room and gets to spend the meal behind that closed door. He'll learn. In the lower picture he fails to notice that a robin has landed on the wall beside him. Dad only sees this as it flies off but it's there in the shot when we go back to look.

Next up is the tortoiseshell kitten Rolo who may not have the fancy ear tufts of his brother but at least he has intact whiskers. And finally let us not forget William the Conqueror, now a magnificent, manly, brave and fearless Rooster with the start of a tail. When he arrived he was fresh out of a large pen in which he lived with 150 'hins' all of whom must have been taking a peck out of his tail as he passed. No respect some hens. He had a rather sore, pink parsons nose from which sprouted two broken feather bases sticking straight up. Now he is a bit meaner and ruffty tuffty and doesn't take any such nonsense from his new ladies, it has started to grow back in a gorgeous iridescent dark green, almost black. It is about 3 inches long now but should form a proud arching 'rooster tail' like on the Cornflakes packet. He hopes. He is doing a good job now marshaling and protecting his ladies and utters low growls at any threat and charges with ruff expanded, chest spread and wings out to make him look as big as possible. He even tries it on Dad but kinda goes off the idea as Dad looks him in the eye!