August 2011

August 30, 2011: Faeriewood Friesians

A friend of ours, Antoinette (Arwen, Siobhan and Achi's previous owner) runs a little Friesian stud. Recently she bought a whole new batch of horses, including imported stallion Oepke GT. I've been nagging Mom forever to go and see Antoinette's new horses so yesterday I got the chance when an equine nutritionist went to the stud to figure out rations for the 16 horses. Mom said it would be Educational and I said it would be Fun so the deal was made.

It was amazing!! The nutritionist turned out to be Margie from Grande Roux feeds where I've started to get my horses' feed (more on that drama later). I'm so glad that an equine nutritionist has finally come to Heidelberg, previously I've just walked into the shop, looked for something low on mealies and high on protein and bought it. It's high time because there is an astonishing amount of horses around here.

It was soooo interesting to hear everything that Margie had to say, especially about the business end of running a horse stud (that is my extremely weak spot. I want to run a stud, and I'm happy with the breeding part but not the selling part. My mentality is more horses = good, less horses = unthinkable). Antoinette ended up with four different kinds of feed; one for the stallions, one for the mares in late pregnancy and early lactation, one for the foals and one cheaper feed for everything else. It was really interesting to learn that foals cannot take in enough trace minerals in the first three months of life and therefore have to get it from the mare in the last trimester of pregnancy, also that foals shouldn't be expected to eat more than a kilogram of concentrates a day and that grazing is far preferable to feeding hay as horses will take in more feed when grazing than when standing around eating hay.

The best part, though, was seeing all Antoinette's new horses. She has two lovely young colts for sale, so anyone looking for a handsome black colt can go to her website.

The huge and heart-stoppingly gorgeous mare Barbara, a daughter of Bertus B

Faeriewood Ciara the yearling and the first Friesian Antoinette has bred

Santa Fe Timo Vee, a South African bred stallion and Ciara's sire

Timo Vee again (bad picture I know, sorry)

Further equine adventures are that we are having lots of fun with horse feeding at the moment. Alzu in Heidelberg has closed down so I'm switching to Spurwing Feeds, I think they are a cut above what I've been feeding before, because I've always just got the feed from primarily cattle feed producers who make a bit of horse pellets on the sideline. The mares are busy going on to Spurwing Tranquilo 14% and the foals are going to get Supa Start 16% when they've been weaned. At the moment the mares are on 1.2kg Alzu and 1.2kg Spurwing each day, split into three feeds. Skye is a little doubtful about the Spurwing, especially since we're going from pellets onto meal, but she's eating it and improving, I only put her onto half Spurwing and half Alzu (as opposed to one-quarter Spurwing and three-quarters Alzu) this morning and she seems happy. Meanwhile we've run out of that divine teff hay, so for the time being they have an eragrostis bale. The eragrostis is still high quality (over 10% protein) but they are pulling their noses up a bit, spoilt little brats.

Today Arwen and Skye were giving lessons again, my two students come every week for an hour or so of riding. It used to be half an hour but once they were good enough that they could ride together I let it stretch to an hour at a time. Dylan, the younger, rides on Skye and Brandon, one year my senior and luckily good-natured enough to have a younger girl tell him what to do, rides on Arwen. Poor old Dylan had his first fall about a month ago but he bounced and nothing was broken so we all survived. (There are few things I hate more than having one of my students fall off. I feel so guilty. Kevin thinks I'm just dumb about it. I rather agree with him). Anyway, some good did come of it because he now listens when I scream at him to put his hands down and bring Skye back to a working trot and not a half canter. Brandon and Arwen tend to canter off every now and then, even though Brandon theoretically doesn't know how to canter yet, but I've promised him that once he's got the hang of a rising trot I'll teach him how to canter.

Today's lesson was How to Ride Bareback because the mares were at the bottom of their paddock and I didn't feel like lugging the saddles all the way down there. The two of them already sort of know how to saddle up, put on a bridle, take off a bridle, unsaddle, and groom a horse, though it took me months to get them to run up the stirrups correctly. They were quite shocked when I told them that at some schools the kids just get on, ride, get off and hand the horse over to the groom. Brandon's exact words were "But what do they know about horses, then, if they only know how to ride?" Good answer.

So the bareback riding went well, I was a little worried about Brandon with Arwen's dreadful withers but we just walked and none of the horses were stupid, though Brandon almost slid right off Arwen's tail when she climbed up a hill and he decided not to follow my advice on holding the mane. Brandon's rising trot is improving, albeit really slowly. Dylan's trotting is also getting there, though he gives me minor heart attacks because he stretches his arms forward, giving Skye loose reins, and clings to her with his heels so she just goes faster and faster and faster. She really is an angel considering that she hasn't burst into a canter with him yet. Arwen would have done it long ago.

I just need to get a megaphone, because it was very windy last week and I had to shout my head off to make myself heard.

Look at Skye, marching along with her head in. She spends the whole lesson collected like a dressage horse.

We have only two weeks to go until the Standerton show. Originally we were going to take five heifers but it looks like that will be cut down to three. Hermoine and Kaleidoscope are haltered and Hermoine is stunning, she is perfectly tame on halter and also holding herself well on the show halter. Kaleidoscope is doing well too, though she has a tendency towards stubbornness. The two big ones are Hush and Ill Behaved, of which Hush was the tamest; we put her in the crush, fed her and stroked her (I have been feeding her and touching her for the past six weeks, as well), and put a halter on. She seemed fine until we got out of the crush and out of the crush pen and into the open. Then she shot off with myself trailing behind on the end of the lead rein, desperately trying to bring 400kg of Friesland to a halt. Suffice it to say that she spent forty-five minutes dragging me about and she just wasn't improving. I think we could still tame her if we wanted to, but we have so little time left, and I would rather take three well-trained heifers than five nutcases. Luckily Neil (a judge) has lent us his clippers so it won't be the usual fight with the old pair. Completing the team is little Moonlight, who has not been haltered yet but she is small and quite gentle so she shouldn't be too much of a problem.

I adore Hermoine, she is so sweet. I even got her to carry my saddle for me when she escaped and ran down to the horses yesterday after I rode. Yes, I know that's just weird.

Today was incredibly hot, we could walk around in T-shirts hurraaah! The peach trees and the big poplars near the house are in bloom and the sky is alive with bees. The willows are dripping green. It is spring.

August 26, 2011: Double Reef: A Horse's Story

About a year ago, Cheryl, the owner of Bush Willow Stables where I help Kevin out with riding lessons, bought/rescued a pair of thoroughbreds. One was a strangely yellow chestnut with an honest face, whose name was Sunny. The other was tall and bay with a long neck and he wore his suffering in his bony face. His name was Double Reef.

I liked Reef right from the start. He's not the loveliest horse to work with. He's fussy about his mouth and bites when you pull up his girth, and he has moody days when nothing can make him prick his ears. When Cheryl first got him, he was all skin and bones, with his long neck looking too thin to hold up his finely chiselled head. His back hurt. I was the only one small enough to ride him, and I rode him with two saddle blankets. He was a horrible ride. I loved him.

Reef's back recovered fully and his moody personality calmed to the point where he could be used for the lessons. Kids so tiny that their legs don't even reach halfway down his ribcage ride him, the ends of the stirrup leathers dangling down to his knees and swaying with his long, swinging stride. I taught him to jump in a freak snowfall. The first time he jumped from a canter he nearly left me behind by taking off a whole stride before the 30cm cross.

I liked Reef in the same way as I like all the horses and after hours and hours of lessons with him, he's really started to grow on me. I've always preferred Sunny, though. I think Sunny was named for his bright yellow coat, but it suits his personality, too. Carefree. Playful. Patient. Endlessly dependable. Yeah, I much preferred Sunny. Until tonight.

Reef did lessons again today and he was in one of his moods, attempting to bite several times and chasing Sunny away from his hay. Reef has moods like that, when years of pain and neglect show in his face. We all knew that he'd once been a racehorse by the brands on his shoulders. Tonight, out of sheer curiosity and after a long days' lessons and riding, I decided to try to look him up on the Internet. I was quite shocked to find him, and even more shocked to find another puzzle piece of Reef's history.

This huge dark gelding was born in Australia and named Double Reef for his pedigree: He has Mill Reef in two places. Mill Reef was a grandson of Princequillo, Secreteriat's maternal grandfather, and a son of Never Bend, who won the Eclipse Award and was a son of Nasrullah, Secreteriat's paternal grandfather. Reef was born in 1998, making him thirteen years old now, just one year younger than me. As a young horse he was imported to South Africa. That alone must have been some suffering; I know that flying is made as comfortable as possible for the horses, but I can't help but shudder at the thought of that young, dark horse with his huge sad eyes being crammed into a steel box in a great, whirring, groaning airplane to be flown to a country he didn't know full of smells that were utterly strange to him. That, I presume, was where Reef's suffering really started.

Double Reef was a successful racehorse in South Africa. He ran for several years as a young gelding and was viewed as a promising horse. I haven't been able to find much about him, but from what I could glean, I understand that he was destined (or rumoured to be destined) for the Vodacom Durban July, one of the greatest horse races in South Africa. He won the Natal Derby, whatever that might happen to be.

For a time, Reef was something beautiful. He is a massive horse; at least 16hh. I can see him blazing down the track like an omen of doom, those huge expressive eyes alive with energy, that long neck pumping, young strong legs flying to and fro. Whatever cruelties racehorse handlers may inflict upon their noble charges, there is one thing that no one can deny: God made horses, and He made them fast, and they love to be fast and to run. Once that was Reef, a mixture of steel and fire flying down the track towards glory.

For the less imaginative, here is a photograph of what Double Reef once was. It was with this picture that I really found the first part of Reef's story. It's impossible to mistake that face or expression. For the sceptical: How many dark bay horses with two white socks on their hind feet and a star are thirteen years old and named Double Reef?

So from his birthplace in Australia to his new home in Africa, Reef had endured a lot already, but that was just the first chapter. Since he was a gelding and no use for breeding, once his career was over, Reef was just "thrown away". Somehow he ended up with the people who had him before Cheryl. He was starved, abused. There are few things sadder looking than a truly thin thoroughbred, and thoroughbreds are very good at becoming truly thin. The coat that had flashed like ebony when he was racing became a dull fluff. His ribs stood out with hollows in between, and the powerful muscle that had driven him to victory melted away as his malnourished body drew nutrients from his muscles in a desperate attempt to say alive. The noble face, with that cosseted "chiselled" look as if Leonardo da Vinci had sculpted it from living marble, became simply gaunt, the hollows above the eyes sinking deeply. Always moody - the flat ears and grumpy expression in the photograph prove that - Reef became an irritable, touchy grouch because of the way he was treated.

Then some time ago Kevin introduced me to the big, dark bag of bones with the sad, sad eyes. Cheryl's new horse. A thoroughbred. Double Reef. Want to ride?

Fast forward around a year. Reef has filled out. I would like to see him rather fatter, but thoroughbreds are not naturally inclined to be fat. Presently, he's as woolly as a teddy bear in his soft winter coat. His nose is as soft as a foal's. His eyes, once clouded with misery, are starting to take on a look of, if not utter peace, then at least contentment. There is still suffering behind them, as I see on his moody days like today. But I guess you can't blame him. Our race has exploited him, contained him, beaten him, starved him. When he ran to win, he was rewarded by being sold on to owners who mistreated him.

God said to Adam and Eve that us, humans, would have dominion over all the animals. But He meant us to be kings, not tyrants. Caspian and not Miraz. Aragorn and not Sauron. Racing Reef was not the unfair part. Horses love to run; there's nothing wrong with asking them to share some of that love and that speed with us. But racing Reef is not one tenth of the story. Did anyone ever love Double Reef? Did anyone ever accept him for being a horse and one of God's creatures? I bet his jockey and his owners and his trainers fussed over him when he won his races. Did anyone ever lay a kind hand on him and expect nothing in exchange?

Does that sort of a thing matter to a horse? Oh yes. They're not stupid, you know. They know when they're being patted because they have been good, or at least better than all the others, as opposed to when they're being patted for being who they are. Anyone who has ever loved a horse will know that. They may not be very intelligent, certainly no smarter than dolphins or dogs, but there is something very emotionally intelligent to a horse.

So that is Double Reef's story. Bred, exported, raced, sold, mistreated... rescued. Fortunately for him, he was rescued. Now he is thriving on plenty of feed and companionship and work. As far as Reef can be happy, he is happy. But the first part of his story can apply to the millions upon millions of racehorses whose careers end before most horse people would consider them fully grown. Every year, thousands of thoroughbreds are thrown away, bound for neglect, slaughter, or, some lucky few, new careers as sporthorses or riding horses.

What can we do to save this massive surplus of thinking, breathing, loving creatures of the Lord? What can I do?

I don't know. But I think that giving Reef an extra rub and a few more kind words would be a good start.

August 24, 2011: On Books

There are some books that only come along once every six months or so. The sort of book that is special not just because it's put together well; not just because it's a simply enjoyable read; not just because its characters are believable and its plot solid, but because somehow by some writer's magic that I still hope to learn, you live in the book, you become friends with the hero and hate the villain with the hero's bitterness. You want to go there, because it's the sort of book that is REAL in a way that reality can never be REAL, in the same way as the Velveteen Rabbit could be REAL. (I know that's a story for very young children, but all good stories for very young children strike a chord in the hearts of everyone. Think Narnia).

The book I'm thinking of right now is The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. It's an amazing book. It's wonderfully well written and despite being a real doorstopper of a novel, it's an easy read. In short it's the sort of debut novel that I drool about. With a debut like that, you can't go wrong. Just buy it, okay? And the next one, The Wise Man's Fear, though I have yet to get my eager hands on it.

There's a part of the story where Kvothe, the hero, a musician, is playing his lute to a huge audience. A lot depends on him getting this right. Rothfuss weaves words back and forth so well that you can hear the edge of the song. Then, one of his lutestrings breaks. The suddenness of it, the wondrousness of the passage makes you grind to a full halt. You can hear the audience's silence and the echoes of the twanging string. It's a book that you live in. Just buy it. One day when I'm old and grizzled and have written many stories and lived many days, then maybe I'll be able to write something like that.

The bad thing about The Name of the Wind? I can't put it down. I pick it up to read a page while the kettle boils and stay rooted to the spot for two or three hours, reading. You know in The BFG by Roald Dahl the BFG tells Sophie about a wonderful dream where someone writes a book that no one can not read? Where everyone in the world is walking around reading this book because they simply can't put it down? If this were Giantland, The Name of the Wind would be that book.

I know I sound like a raving fan but you if you haven't read it yet you won't know what I mean. I dunno. It just resonated with me. I read it once more than a year ago and the whole story has just stayed with me until I had to get it out of the library again.

August 20, 2011: Neither Rain nor Snow nor Glom of Nit

Such is the rather odd inscription above the doors of the Ankh-Morpork Post Office, the Post Office being a fictional establishment in a fictional city in a fictional world named Discworld, which all came out of the mind of a man named Sir Terry Pratchett. Any self-respecting fantasy lover knows that name. Anyway, this particular title (Going Postal) was my first Discworld novel and though I was admittedly about ten years old at the time, I loved it. I still do. There's something special about a first, but there's something very special about Going Postal.

More to the point, the decrepit Post Office had once had the words NEITHER SNOW NOR RAIN NOR GLOOM OF NIGHT WILL STAY THESE MESSENGERS ABOUT THEIR DUTY written in copper letters above its doors and said letters were duly stolen, leaving Glom of Nit. I thought of it since things are really bustling on the farm despite the fact that we had gales, rain, sleet, snow and hail all in one day. Yes, we really did, I'm not embellishing.

It started around a week ago with a moody sky that would have made a rather mind-blowing sketch if I had the time or the skill.

By afternoon it was what passes for a howling blizzard in S. A., and my poor horses were freezing, especially Skye. They can tolerate astonishingly low temperatures and chill winds, but as soon as they get wet, things turn bad. I spent the day a miserable wreck worrying and worrying about my poor shivering Skye. There were three sick cows in what had once been my stable and the poor sick cows couldn't be kicked out, could they? So there was nothing for it but to grit my teeth, give her a few extra handfuls of feed and pray.

This winter, though the temperatures have not been as low as last time, is also looking to be a record breaker; this is the second time we've had snow. The previous time I was at Cheryl's stables, helping out with lessons like I do every Friday. There was a pale chestnut horse named Sunny who was then snowy. Poor guy.

Skye seems to be fine now, with no sign of a runny nose, fever or lethargy, thankfully. The vet has assured me that horses, though susceptible to contagious stuff like equine flu, don't easily catch cold simply from getting cold, unlike cows and humans. The reason being that a cow just has 27% of a horse's lung capacity. No wonder they can run fast and far with lungs like that. There is a nasty bug going around at the moment, though, a bacteria that thrives in dust and causes pneumonia especially in foals. It's called Rhodococcus equi and though my foals are nine and ten months old, well out of the most extreme danger zone (under four months), and R. equi is rare in adult horses, I'm still fretting. (As you may have noticed I am excessively good at fretting.)

Ooh, and there is explosively exciting news. After giving Skye a holiday from the arena for a month or five weeks (she was getting decidedly sick of it and started to refuse jumps, which is not typical of her) we brought her back about a fortnight ago and, as Kevin likes to do, jumped in straight at the deep end and did some big jumps. By the end of the session I was grinning all over my face, Skye was glowing and Kevin was being a stone pillar as usual but I think he might have been a little bit pleased, somewhere in there. Why? Skye and I jumped the BIG JUMP (85cm) several times including a combination totally clear! I don't know WHAT happened but Skye decided that she's going to do it and so without further ado she simply did it. We had cleared it once before, but this was the first time we were consistently doing it. I think Skye can count. I make my jumps out of tyres, you see. (Cheap, safe, and serviceable). You stack a bunch of tyres at either end of a pole and put a pole on top. She hated jumping anything with more than four tyres per stack, but Dad got me some bigger tyres so now 85cm is just four tyres per stack. I know it must be an odd theory but I can't think of a better explanation so we'll go with that one for a minute.

I am extremely proud of her. She has a lot of guts, to say the very least. I wouldn't jump something higher than my chest, would you?

This morning when I went out to feed the horses, they were halfway down their camp, grazing (I don't know if they were actually eating anything, since their paddock is bare as a mangy dog this winter. Why do they graze anyway if they have three hundred kilograms of the best quality teff this side of Capricorn right under their noses?) and not facing my way. I strolled along, thinking about horses and God. They all come at once if I whistle or even talk but I didn't make a noise, and I suppose my smell must have drifted down towards them. It was Skye who jerked her head up first and spun around, ears pricked, silver mane floating in the misty dawn breeze. A ripple of movement ran through the little herd as they all raised their heads and turned to face me. Then Skye, who was nearest me, broke into an extended trot, tossing her head and flicking out her toes. The horses exploded. Thunder trotted alongside his mother, skipping like a child; Arwen and Siobhan, furthest from me, began to gallop, tails high, heels in the air; Dancer cantered sedately after them, her long skinny neck outstretched; they reached the gate, Skye in the lead, and now she broke into a canter and thundered a lap around the bale. I stopped mid-prayer and just looked at them, utterly awestruck. Skye flows like water, a friend of the wind; she wears the sunshine like a cloak on her shoulders, and the moonlight like a scarf on her neck. She wears a star between her eyes, powerful as the earth, alive as fire. I have never seen anything so beautiful and I doubt I ever will. God must really love us because otherwise He would never have given us something as beautiful and gentle and spirited as a horse.

Meanwhile the horses are all shedding their winter hair. Blegh. Brushing Siobhan is not so much cleaning her coat as removing it. I end up wearing half of it. Siobhan finds this highly amusing. I never knew that horses could snigger until I met Siobhan.

Skye was the last to start shedding and is looking pretty scruffy at the moment with her winter hair half on and half off, but the foals look dreadful, like something the SPCA might rescue from a past of half-feral living in the veld. You'd swear they'd never been brushed before. They are growing fabulously though, at the age of nine months Thunder is almost as tall as his mother. It's that teff, they're still not eating any concentrates except what they can steal from Siobhan, who only gets a handful anyway. Arwen has totally dried up and weaned Dancer, but Skye is still suckling Thunder on a regular basis, unfortunately. I'll be weaning them soon, their paddock is almost complete. Thank you very much Daddy for putting up the fences and gate at eight o' clock at night after a hard day's work. I have wonderful parents.

It's a pity the foals are being weaned so late. Though Skye is still lactating and in work, she is in very nice condition, considering that she's eating 2kg of pellets a day. (It's that teff, I'm telling you. I'm gonna start swearing by that teff. Unfortunately it's horribly expensive. Why does good feed always have to be horribly expensive? Yes, yes, I know the answer to that one.) It's not the mares' condition that's bothering me, it's the foals' training. They are sweet little angels with impeccable manners near their moms, but take them away and they become awful nightmarish brats. I tried putting them in a rather flimsy paddock built to hold ponderously pregnant Frieslands. Needless to say that didn't last long. They smashed the gate twice and Thunder broke the fence. We've constructed their camp to be a lot sturdier, thankfully. I worked with Thunder for my last lesson and though he has improved his manners away from his mom, and is better about dragging me around, the problem will never fully go away until he is weaned. Dancer is worse than him; generally, he's a lot spookier and drags me around more, but he doesn't usually have tantrums and when he does have them they are not violent, short-lived and come with an early warning. Dancer will be just fine for a while, then suddenly blow up. There have been no bruises yet (Siobhan taught me how to dodge when she was eighteen months old) but when I tried to use her for the lesson, she blew up, I trod in a hole, I fell on my bum, I nearly got trampled and Dancer shot off whinnying her victory to the whole world. Brat. We were running out of time, so finished up the lesson with just trimming her feet. She is having trouble with her feet, they're growing extremely boxy like a donkey's, and Kevin had to trim her heels very short and leave her toes long to get her to walk like a decent horse. Dancer isn't turning out as nice as I'd hoped; I hope she's just going through an ugly stage, they do that sometimes, but she has quite a few conformational faults. Firstly, she has Siobhan's flat fleshy withers, so she'll have the same saddle fitting issues. Secondly, she has a horrible straight skinny neck with all the muscles at the bottom. (That one's quite fixable, I hope, with working her in the right sort of frame once she's older). Thirdly, her cannon bones are too long. Maybe she'll grow out of her faults. I really hope so.

Despite the sleet, the seasons are turning. The horses are shaking off their winter hair; the sun is out for longer and longer, and the sunsets are no longer the soft pastel colours of winter, but approach summer's blazing glory.

When Skye and I went riding in the Unchartered Territory (which I chartered about two years ago, incidentally) we came upon a flowering wattle tree.

Everywhere the sky is tinged with the hope of spring, and most tell-tale of all, the geese are back. For three years now I have always known that spring is coming when the geese come back. They say that spring begins in September but the geese bring it, they pull it across the sky, hitched to it in their V-shaped harness. In 2009 Skye and I saw them in the Woods; in 2010, it was Arwen and I who spotted them, again in the Woods. This time Skye and I saw them at the dam. Two Egyptain geese, fat pretty things with feathers the colour of a lion's flanks. I think it must be the same breeding pair, if geese mate for life (I don't know anything about geese), coming back each year. Or else geese just like it here. Anyway they were there in the shallows, or the shallowers, and Skye pranced on the spot as I reined her in to a walk from our flying half-canter half-gallop. They looked at us with red-rimmed eyes for just a few seconds before rising into the air, huge wings flung wide, crying out in a wild and houndlike way. And it was spring. The geese are back. The geese know. The geese always know...

On a more playful note, we have the current winners of our ongoing Cutest Calf Ever contest. Overall winner, and winner of Cutest Jersey Calf Ever, is Effentjies. Effentjies is Afrikaans for "a little bit" and it suits her. Her mom, Elfie, was born at fifteen kilograms; Effentjies was born at 14.2. She spends the night in the bathroom and the days in the veggie patch, because she's so terribly small.

She has the privilege of sleeping with the heater on at night, something that none of us humans are considered important enough to earn. One truly freezing day she stayed inside with her heater, but made a huge big mess. While I was cleaning up I let her run around in the rest of the house, but it was really cold and all her hair was standing up. I was terrified she'd catch a cold, so I fetched one of my old T-shirts.

Poor little angel. At least it kept her warm even if she managed to undress herself later on, it was a size small but still way too big for her.

Effentjies is also good friends with the dogs. In fact, she thinks she is a dog and we can hardly blame her.

Above is Runner-up of Cutest Calf Ever and winner of Cutest Friesland Ever. Precious came to us at just 60kg. She had been very premature. We promptly put her back on milk and she adores people. It's kind of hard to get a picture of her since she follows you around a lot.

Nasty and Nice, the little twins, are now almost three months old and doing swimmingly.

As you can see, we've taken to putting small white eartags in the calves' ears when they're two months old. Jersey calves are all born the same shade of brown and when you have forty small brown calves running about it's hard to keep track of who is who. They do have their little metal tags with numbers stamped on but we're Names Not Numbers, so we're giving them plastic tags with their names on. They look so cute.

Long ago Mom saw an advert involving a small Friesland heifer with a small pink eartag. Ever since she's dreamed of pink eartags. Well, after a long and tedious search we finally found them and put one in Freya's ear to see how it looked. She was quite pleased with her fashionable new earring.

This blog post is getting insanely long and probably difficult to download due to all the many millions of pictures, so I'd better wrap up with saying that Arwen is also jumping 85cm well, Siobhan is doing brilliantly and cantering around beautifully so I am immensely pleased with her, I rode Achilles for the first time in eight months and did not die of fright, and we're impossibly busy. I try to work four horses a day (ride three and work with a foal), which is doable if I plan very carefully in between feeding times (a pain because it's dark at six o' clock PM in winter), but I'm going to have to plan even more carefully because now we're getting ready for the Standerton show. Hydeaway's first breed show!! All right, technically it's not ours, we're showing the heifers of Lovett Stud (in other words, Brett's Frieslands). The plan is to train five heifers: Moonlight, Hermoine, Kaleidoscope, Hush Up and Ill Behaved (the latter two are well named, especially Ill Behaved, unfortunately for the trainer, i. e. me), show them in their classes, and then show again in the afternoon in the youth show. It's going to be somewhat hectic, but luckily the breed classes are usually short and the youth show classes are also quite short in the provincial shows, so the heifers who do two classes should manage. It's really hectic now because I have until September 15 to get them all show-ready, which includes clipping them. Only two of the calves are on halter as yet: Hermoine and Kaleidoscope. Hermoine has the most amazing temperament, especially for a Friesland. I find them much less stubborn and lazy than Jerseys, but much, much wilder and prone to temper tantrums. Hermoine's biggest problem is that she flatly refuses to let me stand on her right side. I'm not quite sure why, I hope she doesn't have a problem with her right eye but I can't see anything wrong with it so it's probably just a Thing of hers.

Rain is going to show with Kaleidoscope.

She wanted Hermoine, but I've done all the donkey work, so I called dibs on her and luckily the parents let me do so. I am unashamed to call Hermoine my dear favourite of all the current show heifers.

We're also moving forward in a big way with our Jersey genetics. We finally put the bull, King Arthur, in his own camp and we're going to start inseminating the Jerseys. (Luckily we've trained two workers and Dad. Though they are still rather sticky and inexperienced, I don't have to do it all anymore. Phew.) See the Jerseys page for more of that.