Weaning Victor – Day 3

Friday 28th October 2011 – (Today’s my Dad’s birthday!)

Well, today when I got up I was doubtful as to whether Victor (our five-and-a-half month old miniature Shetland foal) would still be in his new field after his spectacular escape the day before yesterday. Luckily it seems, the enormous amount of fencing, repairing holes and creating new stronger boundaries that my Dad and I did yesterday seemed to have withheld Victor’s attempts of escape back to his mother’s field, as he was still in the field this morning.

I finished all the fencing late yesterday evening in the dark so I had a good look this morning. We’d put across and secured in place six more long wooden poles, varying in thicknesses, in different parts of the field.. As was proved yesterday, Victor (actually called Mignon Velvet) is quite an escape artist as we have had many animals, ponies and cows, in that field and none of them ever got out – despite our stallion’s desperate attempts to get into the field where Tulip, my first mare, was.

With the incredible amount of rain we’ve had recently, ground that is regularly walked over has turned into a sea of mud – literally. Unfortunately such an area is now the ground by nearly all the gates in every field; the gateway separating Rosie and Tulip from Victor and Gradbach is particularly muddy, and it seems that Victor spent the whole night there judging by how muddy he was this morning! In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a pony as muddy as he was!

Victor was very pleased to see me, it would seem; he came trotting over to me as soon as he saw me – how cute!

I climbed over the metal gate (no point in opening it and risking ponies getting through!) into the mares’ field, where Hermits Velvet Rose (Rosie) and Morjoy Tulip (Tulip) are. After a bit of walking through the rushes Rosie came trotting over to me neighing loudly. She’d been further down the field, next to the boundary between her’s and Victor’s field. She walked over to the gate with me, splattering mud everywhere, and neighed at me then turned and neighed at her foal. It was as though she was trying to tell me her baby was on the wrong side of the fence.

In the mares’ field I also saw three deer and a young fox before I came across our other mare, Tulip. She was on the other side of the field, to Rosie, by the trees, and she was was rolling a lot, getting up, rolling again, and then grazing whilst lying down, which was a little worrying (it’s the same sort of behaviour she exhibited before she miscarried last year), but she seemed a lot better later on in the day, [edit 28th Oct 2011 6.34pm: I’ve just been down to the ponies, and she seems fine, she’s rubbing herself on one of the swinging branches).

Gradbach has remained very calm throughout the whole day, just grazing as normal. Although this morning Victor was doing his best to annoy him! The cheeky foal kept running up to Gradbach and kicking him, then running away. Poor Gradbach just stood there and neighed at him.