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!
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