Exciting news for us hoof anoraks, as we have booked Dr Robert Bowker to speak at our conference in July this year, and we will have 3 whole days to ply him with questions and hear about the latest research :-)
There will be one day (Thurs 17th July) which will be open to all, and 2 days for UKNHCP members only, and we have ben very fortunate to be able to hire Bristol University's Equine Studies Centre at Langford for the duration, so huge thanks to Robbie Richardson for facilitating that :-)
I will put details onto the events page of the website, and it will also be on www.uknhcp.org shortly.
Friday, 14 March 2008
Tuesday, 11 March 2008
There's no such thing as bad weather...
...just inappropriate clothing...or so we keep telling ourselves...
Another horrendous day here, with rain, gales, and general meteorological misery.
The horses are making their views quite clear, as they are firmly in favour of staying in the barn, with occasional forays out to eat haylage in the firs or the yards when the weather is not too bad. They will do anything to avoid the prevailing wind, so we feed from whichever hay feeders are the most protected.
Even those who are fairly low in the pecking order are allowed in to share the undercover feeders, and there seems to be a "Blitz spirit" which means they are all able to eat together fairly contentedly round the most sheltered feeders in bad weather, when on a sunny day there would be rivalry for the best spots.
The sheep seem mostly to be crossing their legs, very sensible, and although we have fished out a couple of lambs over the last 24 hrs they are generally are refusing to come out till its sunnier, at least I hope so :-)
Another horrendous day here, with rain, gales, and general meteorological misery.
The horses are making their views quite clear, as they are firmly in favour of staying in the barn, with occasional forays out to eat haylage in the firs or the yards when the weather is not too bad. They will do anything to avoid the prevailing wind, so we feed from whichever hay feeders are the most protected.
Even those who are fairly low in the pecking order are allowed in to share the undercover feeders, and there seems to be a "Blitz spirit" which means they are all able to eat together fairly contentedly round the most sheltered feeders in bad weather, when on a sunny day there would be rivalry for the best spots.
The sheep seem mostly to be crossing their legs, very sensible, and although we have fished out a couple of lambs over the last 24 hrs they are generally are refusing to come out till its sunnier, at least I hope so :-)
Sunday, 9 March 2008
Dexter, Jack and Lucy
...what stars they have been over the last couple of weeks!
They are the 3 relative newcomers to the yard, and in the last 2 weeks have been involved in:
Mary Bromiley's clinic
Ben Hart's clinic
2 x Active Natural Hoofcare study days, and
UKNHCP Orientation clinic...
It was a new experience for all of them, and all 3 behaved perfectly on every occasion.
Lucy, who is not in work at the moment because of her tendon injury, really enjoyed the opportunity to be a star at Ben's clinic, and working with flags, tarpaulins, and other strange objects. She was also reunited with her old owner at orientation, and it was nice to hear how much better she thought the injury was looking.
Jack, who was formerly not trusted to be tied up or worked in the school has been a gentleman throughout, and patiently standing to be trimmed and whilst we talked about his hooves!
Dexter has a lot more experience than the other 2, and so of course took everything in his stride. It probably helps that he is now living with the "in" crowd - Bailey, Felix, Charlie and Conto - and he seems to be feeling rather smug about this social promotion!
He has not been trimmed, as he is not due for another week, but he was very tolerant of having his feet inspected by all the students, and although his hooves don't yet stand up to comparison with Ghost (the other "navicular" horse here at the moment), they are starting to look very promising :-)
They are the 3 relative newcomers to the yard, and in the last 2 weeks have been involved in:
Mary Bromiley's clinic
Ben Hart's clinic
2 x Active Natural Hoofcare study days, and
UKNHCP Orientation clinic...
It was a new experience for all of them, and all 3 behaved perfectly on every occasion.
Lucy, who is not in work at the moment because of her tendon injury, really enjoyed the opportunity to be a star at Ben's clinic, and working with flags, tarpaulins, and other strange objects. She was also reunited with her old owner at orientation, and it was nice to hear how much better she thought the injury was looking.
Jack, who was formerly not trusted to be tied up or worked in the school has been a gentleman throughout, and patiently standing to be trimmed and whilst we talked about his hooves!
Dexter has a lot more experience than the other 2, and so of course took everything in his stride. It probably helps that he is now living with the "in" crowd - Bailey, Felix, Charlie and Conto - and he seems to be feeling rather smug about this social promotion!
He has not been trimmed, as he is not due for another week, but he was very tolerant of having his feet inspected by all the students, and although his hooves don't yet stand up to comparison with Ghost (the other "navicular" horse here at the moment), they are starting to look very promising :-)
Thursday, 6 March 2008
Boing! Its lambing time...(!)
Of course, when you have clinics running and lots going on with the horses, what you really need is for your sheep to decide that now is the perfect time to start lambing....(!)
My own fault, as we clearly had a ram break out last year, because we are not scheduled to lamb normally til April...
So far we have been lucky and the weather has been amazing, and as we have 16 lambs so far, its just as well. We are only lambing on a very small scale compared with our neighbours, who have hundreds, or even thousands of sheep to lamb - phew!
No chance to post photos yet, but the lambs are seriously cute ;-)
My own fault, as we clearly had a ram break out last year, because we are not scheduled to lamb normally til April...
So far we have been lucky and the weather has been amazing, and as we have 16 lambs so far, its just as well. We are only lambing on a very small scale compared with our neighbours, who have hundreds, or even thousands of sheep to lamb - phew!
No chance to post photos yet, but the lambs are seriously cute ;-)
Saturday, 1 March 2008
Ben Hart Clinic
We have had a lovely day today, with Ben Hart giving a one day clinic on equine behaviour and training.
A mixture of UKNHCP members and "normal" horse owners trekked up to Rockley, and luckily for us the sun shone, even though it was chilly at times...
Thursday, 28 February 2008
Rockley Meet
Yesterday we had our meet, for the Exmoor Foxhounds, and it was a perfect Spring day - despite being the 27th Feb (!)...
I love to see riders, hounds and followers all eating and drinking in the sunshine, and we then had the fun of taking out our own horses - I rode Conto, Andy took Charlie, and a friend rode Felix, and we had a wonderful day :-) A lovely break in a really busy few weeks...
I love to see riders, hounds and followers all eating and drinking in the sunshine, and we then had the fun of taking out our own horses - I rode Conto, Andy took Charlie, and a friend rode Felix, and we had a wonderful day :-) A lovely break in a really busy few weeks...
Monday, 25 February 2008
Lots on!
We have a really busy few weeks on at the moment...
We have just had Mary Bromiley holding her second clinic here, for the UKNHCP students and practitioners, which was as usual fantastically educational for all of us and enabled us to learn a huge amount more about the horses in our care.
Then next Saturday Ben Hart is running a horse handling and behaviour clinic, open to everyone, and I am hoping we will have some interesting horses here for that (!)...
A few days more and then at the beginning of March there is the first UKNHCP orientation clinic, open to our new intake of students.
In between all this, there are horses to be exercised and trimmed, as always, and lots going on on the farm as well, although I am hoping that the lambs mostly hold off until later in March, so i doubt we will have time to be bored!
We have just had Mary Bromiley holding her second clinic here, for the UKNHCP students and practitioners, which was as usual fantastically educational for all of us and enabled us to learn a huge amount more about the horses in our care.
Then next Saturday Ben Hart is running a horse handling and behaviour clinic, open to everyone, and I am hoping we will have some interesting horses here for that (!)...
A few days more and then at the beginning of March there is the first UKNHCP orientation clinic, open to our new intake of students.
In between all this, there are horses to be exercised and trimmed, as always, and lots going on on the farm as well, although I am hoping that the lambs mostly hold off until later in March, so i doubt we will have time to be bored!
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