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!