Ice, Poo and Tinsel Wars

Hey,

Its getting very Christmassy round the fen now, even though the weather has warmed up ever so slightly. We've had Father Christmas take up resisdence in the wren building, and therefore lots of very excited children visiting him!
I had to collect poo samples from the Verrals herd of horses at the beginning of last week, which may sound like a gross job, especially in the cold weather, but as its collected fresh, it does keep your hands warm while your waiting for the next horse to poo! We have to analyse the poo to get an indication of the worm burden of the horses. I did feel slightly strange borrowing Santa's workshop for the afternoon to sort through poo samples though! I would like to add, that Santa had finished for the day, and moved on from the fen to do other very important work, after all its a busy time of year for him.
We have the vet coming in on friday to help us re-ear tag some of the cows. In preparation for this we have been baiting the harrisons herd into the corral, so we feed them in the holding pen every morning. On the first morning we did this, however, they came charging over the bank when we called them, and then stopped on the other side of the ice, and just looked at us as if to say, well we're not crossing that! So we spent the best part of 2 hours coaxing them across the ice with buckets, and trying to smash bits up with an old fence post. Ewan, our dominant bull, was brilliant and followed Carol, or more to the point Carol's bucket,  across the ice and to our amazment some of the ice was thick enough to hold his weight! The best moment though, that I will always remember, was when Edmund, a lovely looking big red bull, was half way across the ice, all four feet on the ice, and his legs froze in an iceskating Bambi style, and Carol ended up steering this massive bull across the ice by his horns!! Eventually we got them all over, and they haven't gone back since, thankfully.
We have been spending more time in the office over the last couple of weeks, nothing to do with the cold weather of course :-p, but the wardens have entered into battle with the education and admin staff to achieve the best decorated office! It looks like a giant box of tinsle and baubles has exploded in both offices, but unfortunately education are still just ahead of us due to the sheer volume of decorations they have managed to put up!

Snow!

Hello!

I thought I would let you know how our animals are doing through this cold weather and in all honesty they're coping a lot better than us! We've done the monthly checks on them over the last couple of days, and apart from one young bull with an on going hip problem, everyone is doing good. The cold and snow doesn't seem to bother them too much. I watched Hanty, one of the horse bachelors break through the ice with his front hoof the other day to get at the water underneath. I find it fascinating that they know to do this and must have many other cold busting tricks that I've not seen to cope in this weather. A few of the younger horses were even out on the ice, seemingly just for the fun of it, which for those of us who have issues staying upright in this weather, seems mad! 
We have officially named the new foal, that is now called Ellis, after the baby grandson of a member of staff at Wicken. The calf is still waiting for a name, as we can’t seem to find one that suits her. The name we came up with, Serafina, after the witch from the His Dark Materials trilogy, was decided to be too floaty for a cow! So we are now trialing the name Hedwig, which may have been influence slightly by my love for Harry Potter!   

Excitement with the horses

Hello!

Since I lasted blogged we've had a new addition to the horses. Krieka has had a male foal who is now a week and a half old. He has very long legs and is already being lead into trouble by Polly, another foal in his harem who is quite demanding for attention!
All the other horse are well, though there has been some unrest with one of the stallions chasing a mare that is not in his group over the past week. They have settled down now, and its going to be interesting to see how the groups in the herd will settle out after this small disturbance.
The cows are all doing well, and the young calf has been up with the herd, spending a lot of time with Ewan, the dominant bull. He is very tolerant of her bumbling around his feet and they do look very cute together!

Brand New Baby Girl!

Big News! Isle had her calf! She is a girl, and is a smokey grey colour, and is very cute! She's just over a week old, but we haven't got a name for her yet. It was a very exciting morning when we discovered Isle had calfed, as we had to find the calf, not only to check it was healthy, but to ear tag it and take a hair sample, all the while keeping Isle calm with a bucket of food. We keep getting glimpes of the young one, but as highland cattle stash their calves for a few days after birth it has been tricky, however it does make a pleasant afternoon wondering around the fen looking for a calf, especially when a barn owl pops out to say hello as it did when I was on calf hunting duty!

Lots and lots of Animals!

Hello!

I have been working as the Assistant Grazing Warden at Wicken Fen for just over seven weeks now, and am having an awesome time. The biggest task when I started was learning all the animals by name. This is no mean feat, with 44 highland cattle and 54 konik ponies, that’s a lot of animals to get to know on a first name basis! I’m still not there yet, I very nearly know all the cows but am still battling with the larger herd of horses, though that I can now recognise differences between the individuals of the mass of grey ponies has got to be a good sign. I can’t complain, however, as I spend most of my days at the moment walking around a lush nature reserve, in the company  of some very agreeable cows and horses, who never complain at the constant chatter I keep up when checking them.

So what exciting things have I been up to recently? Last Friday we vaccinated the bulls, which was very exciting and a little scary. One of the cows, Isle, looks like she might calf soon...ish. Apparently she can be a bit of a tease and take forever to calf after she first starts showing signs. We had the Halloween ghost walk on Saturday evening, when I was putting my severely limited acting skills to use being a zombie. The evening was a great success, despite the fact that I couldn’t quite control my giggles when my zombie partner walked into one of the grave stones.

We did the monthly checks on all the animals today. It’s a nice opportunity to see all the animals up close and they are all doing well. We were hampered slightly when checking the herd of cows by Wendy, the most dog like cow I have ever met! She was determined to get one of us to scratch her, and in the end we had to pat her in a relay type action to allow the other the use of their hands for at least two minutes before she realised they had stopped giving her attention. One of the konik foals, Polly, is nearly as bad, though as she only comes up to my waist, she is more manageable and very, very cute!