One Thousand Feet Up

2012 First Quarterly Report

Graeme — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 16:52:52 +0000

Okay, fingers smacked for not typing last year and a bout of Man ‘Flu has doubly spurred me on to type a little about 2012 to date……

Horse numbers have stayed constant (kind of) with Orri due to depart to pastures new just over the border in England and Saedis arriving to balance things up. Trouble is that Kolvör is looking due to foal at some point in the next 3 -4 days and Dropi has, somehow, sneaked in with Jörð to discuss the upbringing of their youngster and has raised… the possibility of something for 2013? So doing the maths ……

Moving on a bit – hestakaup – aka horse swapping - Fiona has swifted Gola out from under my seat and put Tinna there instead, never one to look a gift horse in any orifice I’m quite happy and, once I find the stop button may even be happier. Fiona is also riding Stjarna and I have taken over riding Starjna’s little lad – Vinur.

Vinur was started by Fiona in March 2012 and is showing early promise – clear trot & canter with clean tolt only at a faster speed so, for the moment, I’ll stick to trying to destroy his trot whilst building up his strength for tolt.

Malcolm the lorry is slated to depart as he has become a bit of a luxury to insure and maintain given that we used him only a handful of times in 2011 (and not at all so far at all in 2012). He has been replaced by a trailer hauled by an LPG guzzling Korean 4×4 that, at times, frightens me more than Tinna.

Looking forward to in the next quarter: baby horse number 2; British Championships 2012; recovery from Man ‘Flu

New baby horse

Graeme — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 14:12:43 +0000

2011 Roundup

Graeme — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 20:16:59 +0000

The old website seems to have been getting somewhat neglected since February and I have been very tardy in letting friends & family what we have been up to. So here you go – the 2011 Roundup – playing catchup from Christmas 2010.
December 25th 2010 found us in the position of trying to move house, partially packed, not yet exchanged contracts, a foot of snow on the ground, frozen troughs and thirteen thirsty horses to water – cheerful stuff and then Fiona got Swine ‘Flu in a bad way.
That makes the remainder of December and January easy to cover – we did virtually nothing of a horse related kind but we did exchange contracts on the new place and said goodbye to Freya and Ósk who went off to Charlotte and Sarah (Charlotte had been Freya’s original owner so that was pretty cool in a full circle sort of way – Sarah just came with her to visit and left with Ósk in her pocket – bit like Tinna did to Fiona nearly a decade ago!)
Late February we moved the whole caboodle 220 miles up the road from North East Dartmoor to West Wales, swapping a detached nine acres of grazing for a slightly smaller mix of gorse scrub and grazing which, once upon a time had been ‘improved’ hill land but was now badly in need of liming and fertilising – the start of the ‘to do’ list. The land was very well fenced but lacked any water to the majority of the paddocks (‘to do’!) and came with a couple of stables and a decent area of hardstanding.
In early March we lost our trusty canine friend Harry the Lurcher aka The Giant Apricot Terrier – he had been with us for ten years and a better dog you could not hope for - definitely one of a kind.
March also saw us sending Jörð and Kolvör off to discuss Ugandan Affairs down at Edda Hestar – Jörð with her old friend and sparring partner Dropi and Kolvör with Smari’s young stallion – Breki. Both these mares have sweat itch and by sending them to the stallions early in the year we hoped to avoid too much itching whilst they were skipping around naked with the boys. By late March we had piped water to the horses by splicing into the bore hole feed just in time to nip off to Oakfield Farm for the 2011 Edda Hestar Easter Show which, in the South of the UK, was the first chance for us to let our hair down and blat around an oval track for a while. Fiona took Tinna and doubled up on Sweat Pea whilst I took along Hrymur. Good time was had by all even after my equipment failure – offside stirrup detached itself coming off the bend in canter and we did a cracking line of pace – unfortunately this was a four gait and not a five gait competition – ho hum, followed up with walk & trot minus stirrups and squeaky voice for a while afterwards.
We trundled back to Ysbyty now renamed Ys – ‘six hours from anywhere in a lorry’ – byty – in Malcolm and started getting setup for the Icelandic Extravaganza in Lincolcshire at Anne & David Savage’s – this was a breeding show combined with a number of other events for the non-breeders amongst us. Fiona took along Tinna for the breeding show and I took Hrymur to try some oval track stuff on and baby Tinna aka Gola to present as a young horse at the breeding show.
Prior to going we had spent a couple of weeks with the three year old Gola getting her used to the sort of thing that goes on at a Breeding Show – horses being shown for conformation are stood up for the judges to peruse and then have strange things done to them by the judges who will measure their height and width using measuring stick/big calipers, length of hoof using small calipers and so on – it is worth getting the young horse used being approached with sticks, allowing it’s feet to be picked up as, whilst the judges will make allowances for age, it is less stressful for everyone if the horse has an idea of what is happening. Prior to going we had entered Gola for a young horse assesment only but, at the event, bounced her up to a full conformation assessment. The chief judge – Johannes Hoyas – explained that Gola was really too young to carry out a proper conformation assessment on so we did the assessment more or less on an HC basis which gave us an idea of how she may develop without having the results entered in World Fengur which would only really have served to lower the BLUP on Gola and all her near relatives.
I found the Breeding Seminar very interesting – Johannes had been asked to give us a lecture on breeding in general but we managed to change that into us picking his brains. The bits and pieces that I filed away were part of his own personal breeding history -he has two farms, one high up in the Austrian Alps, the other much lower. They discovered that youngsters raised on the higher farm simply did not grow as large as the ones lower down so now they grow on their babies on the lower farm as the market is definitely for the larger horses – guess we’re going to be raising small horses up here then. He also went into the BLUP and stated that whilst it is a very useful indicator on how you can expect a horse, or projected horse, to perform it is still only 70% accurate as they are not machines and there are so many variables to be taken into account and that whilst the BLUP is the best place to start it is not the font of all knowledge. My own belief is that the temperament and spirit of the horse contributes greatly to the final package and you should bear that in mind when thinking about breeding/buying - my own preference is for the sort of horse that is 100% forward going and not a ‘dope on a rope’ – however others may prefer something quieter and Icelandic Horses are all different – they may look similar but no two are quite the same.
Jörð and Kolvör came back from their cavorting with their beaus and were immediately wrapped up in their fly rugs and hoods – our pregnancy detector, Tinna, told us that Jörð was in foal by mounting her – no idea why she does this but it’s worked twice now. Kolvör was a conundrum – Smari was not 100% sure that she’d taken and then the vet turned up to scan her without a scanner which seemed a bit of a waste of time and his manual inspection of her plumbing was inconclusive – ah well, let’s just wait and see we thought
Next up was the Spring Oakfield Show – unfortunately, a few days beforehand , I was practising on the hill for my new job as Crash Test Dummy when we all got a bit over enthusiatic and generated a GHSD (Graeme’s Head Shaped Depression) in the hillside. Trusty Troxel saved the old skull but was no help in preventing me catching Terminal Tourettes due to repositioned ribs and a shoulder that would have made Charles Laughton jealous, cue trip to local A&E driven by my very own Esmeralda and then a few months of doing not a lot (plus ça change huh?).
Whilst recuperating in my hammock, diaquiri in hand, basking in the Welsh Summer Sun (ha ha!) I did have to get up now and then to check on our very own Mystery Ailment Horse – Orri. Orri was four this year and I was tasked with getting him started for his owner before putting him up for sale in the Autumn – he had been progressing nicely until, suddenly, one day he was seemingly struck down with rigidity – we found him standing in the field, quite stiff, unwilling to lead and feeling hot to the touch. After placing him in solitary confinement we found he had a temperature of around 40 degrees and was not eating/drinking – vet came out and gave us antibiotics & bute but Orri did not seem to change – for nearly two weeks he was the same until one day we found him all drippy pus and snot – temperature came right down and he began to eat. Now thinking we were certainly dealing with strangles we got all BioHazarded up with chemical scrubs and the like – vet concurred on strangles but took a blood sample in any case. Blowed if it came back negative for strangles – we’d been dealing with some sort of abscess, probably as a result something he’d eaten getting lodged in his neck or head and working it’s way in to the flesh and building an abscess. It took Orri until September to start showing signs of picking up and, even now, he’s still being fed extra rations to help rebuild the muscle he lost – during his enforced fast it was interesting to see just how quickly the weight fell from him.
This meant that we also missed out on the British Championships at West Tarf in June which was a big disappointment but, to make up for it, we travelled to Scotland in August to visit my parents in ‘The Port’ for their Golden Wedding – it was good to see so many family together in one place again.
September and we once again got a chance to strut some stuff at Oakfield – I’d been back properly in the saddle for a few weeks and was only having problems getting off! Omar had been the steed of choice over the summer and he had settled down nicely into a placid, laid back, hard to ruffle neddy – I’d changed riding him in a treed saddle to a Torsion and that really made a difference to the way he went (funnily enough I’ve just now changed Orri from a Torsion to a treed saddle and that’s improved the way he goes – ho hum). I took him, Fiona took Tinna and I also took Sweat Pea along to ride in the FIPO classes.Omar was a little star – quite unfazed by all the other horses whizzing around in the group class and young Sweat Pea did a nice little V1 for me – he’s not yet got really fast tolt so his T1 was a bit flustered in the final as the older horses came thundering past – still fun though, he’s a cracking little horse with lots of go.
After the show I decided that whilst Omar was a good horse his zoom, zoom was not zoom, zoom enough for me so I decided to put him up for sale – at the same time we had just advertised Orri on behalf of his owner. However the lady that owns Omar’s mum said she would love to have Omar so off he went and I bought Orri – this happened all in the space of only a few days which seems to be the way these things go.
By now we had also deduced that being perched on a hillside one thousand feet meant that we had an almost constant breeze or howling gale which has the effect of making life very, very difficult for the midges and this much, much easier for the sweat itch girls. On a still evening we do get the little blighters but, on the 364 remaining evenings of the year they cannot be found – so we have decided not to rug the two ladies for a time and, so far, it is working really well – our consumption of fly spray and itchy cream has shrunk to almost nil and the to horses are looking better than they ever have. Kolvör was, by now, plainly carrying a foal so we have two early foalings lined up for 2012.
Much of the rest of the year was spent in trying to hack down that ‘to do’ list and failing miserably – it seems that we get one thing finished then another two or three pop up. However the place is starting to look a bit tidier and we’ve even changed the colour of the house from Algaefied Off-white to Poodle Pink. Hand spreading the lime & fertiliser was proving extremely time consuming (not to mention uncomfortable in the shoulder department) and, in October we finally laid hands on a secondhand Vicon Vari Spreader and collected in from Anglesey in Malcolm. We went the ‘scenic’ route from Aberystwyth up through Mach and Blaenau Ffestiniog – the landscape around the latter is incredible. I thought some of the countryside around here could look bleak but the area around Blaenau Ffestiniog (especially on an overcast, rainy day) was incredible – they grow slate there and boy, does it look austere.
In December we had another arrival – St Jarna, Hammerhead, Mother of Fluga & Vinnur came back to stay – she had been away for just over a year and we were agog to see what the reaction would be from her offspring and the others when she came back. After unloading her from the lorry we led her to the others who all looked up, shrugged ‘Look it’s Stjarna. Hi. Bring any scoff?’ and that was that – pretty minimal reaction and no photo opportunity.
So there we are, leaving 2011 with only ten and a bit horses, two and a bit dogs and a cat. The ‘bits’ are Jörð & Kolvör foals and, apparently, I am the proud owner of a new poodle?

New house

Graeme — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 07:26:32 +0000

Here are some pictures of the new place taken by Jane who came to visit…..

Never work with animals or children…

Graeme — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 22:05:30 +0000

WC Fields said “Never work with animals or children” – I guess that would doubly go for Baby Horses?

We’ve finally completed on our house sale and moved the whole shebang 220 miles up the road from South Devon to West Wales – three dogs, two humans, ten horses, one cat and the several tons of junk and detritus that accompany aforementioned mammals. Things went fairly well up to the point where the timetable hinged on working with the Baby Horses……

We had many offers of help moving the horses and Smári took the five oldest horses for us to their new home – we elected to shift the five youngsters and had worked out a timetable which would allow us to load and get back to the new place in daylight – looked good on paper!

None of the youngsters had been loaded before so the plot was to load the two yearlings first then Ára, Vinur and Gola. Fluga proved a little reluctant to get on board the lorry but, being a tiddler, was easily tucked under an arm and popped into the front of the lorry with a mound of haylage for company – Orka, being a Tinna daughter, was not so accommodating – mud surfing attached to several dozen kilos of athletic, hairy, fire breathing nutty neddy was not my idea of fun. Grumpy Scotsman.

A quick regroup with The Boss and we decided that we’d load the others and then see where we were. Vinur wandered up the ramp doing his mellow cross between Yoda and a Surf Bum “Hey dude, sit quietly do nothing, spring comes, and the grass grows by itself, cool”. Ára, who had been wandering around during all the previous shenanigans, simply followed a handful of haylage up to join Vinur. Gola, full sister of Orka, almost loaded herself when she spotted food to be had.

Back to Orka. I reckoned she’d take one look at all the other horses loaded up, munching away and be up the ramp in no time. Nope. Another hour of sweat and tears followed until we bored her into stepping onto the lorry floor and we were able to get going – back in daylight? Well in February 10.30pm is mostly dark in the Northern Hemisphere.

I’m now off to patent a Baby Horse Loading Catapult – hang on to your knicker elastic.

Boxing Day Frost

Graeme — Sun, 26 Dec 2010 17:24:16 +0000

Overnight we had the hardest frost I have ever experienced – one or two degrees below zero would be considered cold for this part of the world but, last night, it was between -15 and -19 degrees (depending on where your thermometer was).

At least it gives the black horses a chance to look a prettier colour than the silver dapple.

New Horse

Graeme — Sat, 25 Dec 2010 08:23:11 +0000

I got a new horse for Christmas – my very own Wee Ómar!

He’s kind of cute and was made by a lady called Kirsten Miller at www.quernuscrafts.co.uk

Snow!

Graeme — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 20:46:37 +0000

Silly Video

Graeme — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 18:43:35 +0000

Summer 2010 – a quick bit of editing with Microsoft Movie Maker
(it’s so simple even I can use it)
and this was the result – Five Go Tölting

Saint Jarna gets unretired

Graeme — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 19:45:18 +0000

Stjarna (known to our vets’ computer as St. Jarna) has been dragged out of the Kindegarten along with Tinna to resume their riding careesr. Fluga and Orka (the foals) are quite nonplussed about the whole affair, probably thinking that their mobile milk tankers will be around for ever (weaning time looms. Muwhahaha)

Anyways, Saint Jarna is suited and booted (saddled and shod) and off she went in company with Toots – sixteen months off has left her with a saggy belly and not so strong in the back – just like me! We met some ickle, wickle piggies on our way out and here’s the video: