We started the month with the Parelli fun day at La Porcherie, this was well attended and everyone had fun including the horses!

Because of the continuing dry weather and lack of grass growing back, we had begun feeding a little hay, as of November we are feeding it ad-lib - we do not scatter it on our track, we provide it in one place and the horses come and go - still moving! They no longer spend all of their time standing around eating the hay as they did prior to the track, but take themselves off to find grass wherever they can. The two bands have joined together well now and are together most of the time, however, if there is any cause for concern, the younger mares and the foal stick with the mare they know best! Innate herd behaviour is absolutely fascinating to watch, as many of our visitors this month have observed.

November Diary

November was a very busy month with lots of preparation for winter, organising hay, checking fencing etc.as we all know it's no good being 'caught out' with horses! At the end of the month the weather suddenly changed and we had rain and more rain! The areas of track which had been baked hard turned to mud in no time and the leat overflowed making wellie pulling mud on both sides, we started to worry about the horses legs, but they appeared unconcerned about it and continued to cross without any problem. After a long summer of dryness, it is amazing how quickly we humans start to panic about mud, and there is no point - it is here to stay for at least a few weeks! One of the great worries of winter is always mud fever - luckily we have never had this problem. There are some interesting thoughts on this topic, one of which is that horses who are barefoot and move around a lot are less likely to suffer, we obviously don't know if this is why we haven't had problems, but it an interesting thought!

and finally

As originally promised, we have have kept our diary for a year now. We want to say a big " thank you" to everyone who has shared it with us. Thank you all for your enthusiasm, encouragement and support. Please continue to contact us ( it's always nice to know what other people are up to and to support each other).

We felt that the diary wouldn't be complete without some up to date photo's to encourage us all :

Mud

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