Ducky's new girlfriends

Lucky Ducky has grown to enormous proportion and towers over all the other ducks on the pond. Jessica and I waded into the pond to encourage him to go swimming with the others; it took a few attempts but he now swims around with them, I’m not sure if they are his friends or they are simply fascinated by him. 

Once he has his morning ablutions at the pond he waddles back to the chicken pen to check on the latest chick arrivals like a worried father.

My friend Helen texted me some time ago to say she has a chicken sitting on two duck eggs! Maybe one will be female and a spouse for Lucky, at least she will be content to make her home with the chickens in Lucky’s pad.

They are now bigger than their foster mother and all white, one is larger than the other but they are still difficult to sex. Helen’s husband, Graham told me something I never knew before about ducks: apparently a male duck will make a short clipped noise sounding like ‘mum mum, mum mum, mum mum’ where a female will have a longer tone sounding like ‘ naaaaaggg, naaaaaggg, naaaaggg, naaaaaggg’. Fascinating and funny at the same time!

Copyright ©2014 Helen Hilliard

Emma's Room - Kindle/PC book
Titan's Tale - Kindle / PC book
www.helenthehealer.co.uk

Spirit the Hungarian Circus pony: Life down on the farm.

Life down on Spirit’s farm has been interesting these past few months: the spring grass was so rich this year with no really heavy frosts last winter to kill it off, meaning laminitis is at an all time high in the area. Although Spirit had only an hour of the spring grass per day before his muzzle went on... he managed to carry on eating it once he was muzzled! 

Yes, his laminitis returned, not as bad this time. We all rallied together for the little chap with his caring farrier, healing, no more grass, plenty of TLC from Jessica and an incredulous vet unable to believe how Spirit was standing let alone walking on feet that x-rayed so badly; ‘You will never see this again in your whole career!’ he said to the visiting trainee vet.

Spirit is now back out in his tiny paddock with short cut grass and a muzzle from the onset.

Yesterday he managed to limbo under the electric fencing between Blacky’s field and his as the grass was obviously greener. He had hoped to be able to pick at the longer grass through his muzzle but Blacky had other ideas: Blacky was so pleased to have a visitor he proceeded to show Spirit around his large pad by walking backwards whilst pulling Spirit along by his muzzle ‘here is my water trough, and this is the top of my field ...ohh and this bit is the bottom of my field, and over here is where I can see mum through her window.... ooohh look here she comes now in a bit of a hurry!’

I do not think Spirit will be trying that trick again for some time!

Copyright ©2014 Helen Hilliard

Emma's Room - Kindle/PC book
Titan's Tale - Kindle / PC book
www.helenthehealer.co.uk