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!