Saturday 7 April 2012

Lambing, lessons and a new pal

Hi all,

Well its been a busy week this week! For the first time we used sponges on our sheep to try and syncronise lambing.  The due date was Tues, so John and I took the week off - and I am pleased we did!

With a week to go we brought them in, although we had planned to bring them in a couple of weeks early but time got away from us again, anyway they were settled and munching in the large pen with the CCTV camera watching their every move. 

Then lambing was underway on Sunday night and continued on (slowly) until Saturday morning.  Unfortunately this did mean that every night this week we have been taking turns to get up every couple of hours to check them - I'm going back to work next week for a rest!!

Mum and Aunty Reta came up on Tuesday for a visit, it was lovely to see them but they brought some rubbish weather along! it was bitterly cold and snowing all day and night, which is a good reason to lamb indoors.




As the weather was so bad, we put the lambs (who would have been going out) into a stable to have more room to play, this turned into a great play pen! As the floors have rubber matting you could hear the tappity-tap of their feet as they were prancing around the stable!


Lambs are so funny - they love to climb all over mum and jump off - maybe we should put another camera on them for fun!

We had a fairly successful lambing, 6 boys and 8 girls.  Unfortunately we did lose one lamb.  I can safely say that the sponges really helped and we will definitely be using them again!

On Wednesday morning, Mum and Reta were heading home, but came with me via a local yard to look at some horses.  I have been looking for a project horse to produce while waiting for Haggis to grow up.  We looked at several horses and rode a few.  One horse stood out from the crowd and is now happily munching grass in my field!

So........


Introducing Charlie:


He is an Irish Sports Horse, 16.2, 6yo. he has spent his life so far hunting so requires lots of flatwork to get him ready.  Over jumps he is a bit green but there isn't a bad bone in his body.



Having passed the vet he is currently out in the field grazing, he is quite thin so will need time to build up and I'll get his teeth checked soon to make sure all is in working order!



After that is all systems go!





Charlie doesn't have a show name, John suggested we called him Bryland Bespoke.  I think its quite a good name, but I'm open to suggestions!  As we have the Bryland Flock and Haggis is Bryland Cheiftain a catchy name with Bryland in it would be great - get your thinking caps on!


http://youtu.be/HZHqWVytpfY

http://youtu.be/2Z3wP8Mfkek


Jack and I had a lesson yesterday, we are heading to Eden valley horse trials in a weeks time so worked through transitions and canter - Jack finds canter hard (unless we are galloping at jumps!) but by the end of the lesson he had taken some good steps forward.  Over the last few weeks I have been getting regular lessons from Liz and I can see a huge improvement in myself and Jack.  I am actually enjoying flatwork now and keen to improve so that can't be bad can it!



Just so Jack doesn't feel left out - the pic above is from him at a recent Almond Riding Club show, taken by http://www.sfetechnicalsolutions.co.uk/

Nice of them to have an orange jump isn't it!

So the week is nearly over!  today I am heading down to Penrith then its weighing sheep and halter training 




Until next time!  Remember to come up with show names for me! :D



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