Yesterday we went through around 60 of our females cutting their toenails, scanning and giving them a shot of AD&E now that we have reached the dark months. These have all weaned their cria or are youngsters on their first pregnancy and the vast majority are pregnant with a handful who we decided to leave until the spring to re-mate or who have failed to get pregnant. It happens. Then we split them up into a sale field and a keeps field. The sale field will stay here for the winter but the keeps went to our new field Park Meadows. We were racing against time to get them over there before the light went as we wanted them to have time to explore. It is a huge field, now badger fenced, and it has taken ages as there were a lot of very overgrown trees in the hedges that had to come out and end up in my woodshed. Andrew has made a huge hay manger in the side of the corrugated iron barn there but we haven’t quite solved the water problem as the flow from the spring is not fast enough to go uphill at all. Chas is working on a pump solution but meanwhile we’ll have to haul water over there for them.
First big frost this morning but a beautiful sunny day and I am warm as I have my michelin man skiing trousers on. Clearly old age makes you colder as I am going to have to buy Chas a pair rather than suffer the anguish of watching him shivering pathetically in the barn.