Fame at last!

The beautiful painting pictured below is by the world famous artist type person called Jackie Morris - or as we know her - strange woman who lives in the hills!

The painting was created by Jackie for the musicians benevolent fund's christmas card.

But why fame? I hear you ask - well look carefully at the horses in the painting - yes they are coloured, hairy horses - our coloured hairy horses!!!

I am sure my coloured darlings feel as honoured as I do that she chose to portray them in such a great painting!

Clever lady! Dodgy wellies though!!

Introductions!

The pics above are of my gorgeous stallion Blue and the equally gorgeous Alicia who is my chief helper and 2nd in command here at horsefarm.

Blue came here 6 months ago and spent the first 3 months challenging me to be boss of the horsefarm, he would charge at me in the field and bite anyone who went near him. Lots and lots of time spent talking to him and grooming/massaging him (he is now a massage addict) and he suddenly changed and became very friendly.

Alicia came here 6 months ago and spent the first 3 months challenging me to be boss of the horsefarm. Lots and lots of time spent talking to her and making her coffee/toast (she is now a coffee addict) and she suddenly changed and became friendly.

Today was a big day for Blue - I bought him as a breeding stallion, he was supposedly broken for ride and drive but we had never put a saddle on him before. Alicia decided it was time and tacked him up just to see his reaction to it (brave woman) . He was a good lad so I decided to hop aboard for a few seconds. He was as steady as a rock, I was the nervous one!

Thanks to Alicia, a massive step forward with Blue.

Seems a long way up!

Me looking very nervous!

Bad Week

Firstly, my apologies for not updating for a while, it's been a busy few weeks.

This last week has been a very sad one for me, on Monday I found a foal laying dead in the field.
She was a lovely 6 week old filly, very strong and even a bit chubby.
The vet did a post-mortem and discovered she died from poisoning, so off I went to search 30 acres of grassland to find out what had killed her. With the vets help I managed to identify an area in a ditch where some plants were trampled and broken - one of the plants turned out to be Hemlock Water Dropwert sometimes known as "dead man's fingers" - the killer of my little filly,
a plant very difficult to remove, so the area has to be fenced off.

Then two days later, a beautiful Blue Roan mare called Bethan who has been ill for 4 months suddenly died.
She had liver fluke ( a liver infection caused by worms, possibly contracted from sheep).
We had been nursing/treating her for all this time and thought she was on the road to recovery when she just lay down and died - such a sad thing - even this old horse farmer had a lump in his throat when he found her!
Having so many horses (216), the chances of some fatal injury or illness is quite high but make no mistake - it doesnt get any easier each time you lose one!
It is the one side of the horsefarm life that I just don't like.

Hopefully my next update will be more cheerful.