Sunday 8 January 2012

Mud, mud, glorious mud

Last year it froze solid here for nearly two months and everyone complained bitterly.  This year it's rained nearly non-stop for two months and on balance I think I'd rather have the snow.  The top half of the bottom two fields, where the shelter is, has got a blocked drain somewhere, so Merlin has a half-moat round his shelter and the top 10 metres of field is like chocolate custard with green speckles on top.  And the winds lifted the felt on the shelter roof - we nailed it back down straight away but it's still leaking if the rain is hard enough.  We're going to put corrugated sheets over the top of the felt, once the wind dies down enough for Mick to get up there and measure up.

Not much news here.  Merlin is down to the bottom of the 498kg band and with only 10 weeks-ish to go until we start getting spring grass through, I'm going to keep his diet as is until either a) he starts moving a whole band on the weight tape in a week or b) he hits his target weight of 470kg.  I'm keeping a close eye on his wobbly bits, the fat pads on his quarters are about half what they were at the beginning of the winter but are still there, he still has a very small crest and I still can't even feel his ribs, though his shoulder is starting to look defined now.

1 comment:

  1. We've been swimming too.. water table so high it's coming up thro the floor in the steading .. winter field is trashed .. but otherwise the woollies are dealing admirably well ... looks like we have a let up in the weather for a few days at least.. I even managed a quick hack round the block on the lanes today.. Neets was errr keen ;)

    We'll be putting in an order for another bag of Charnwood linseed in a week or so.. let me know if you want one too which you can pick up when your next down this way... Zuzan from the UKNHCP forum.

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