Today we went up to the yard to do the ‘spring baths’… This is not something lightly undertaken on a yard of now three Pygmy Goats and two horses (one being 16.1hh and the other being 17.2hh).
We started off with the goats, seeing as they are the smallest and more feisty of the animals meaning we were more likely to be soaked. With Beattie being a new edition to the yard this year (see my previous blog post for more on that), we decided to do the two boys first and leave her to last. I trimmed their feet which was a relative success and only resulted in one casualty, being a minor battle wound to my hand. Then we got on to washing them, despite some general fighting and jumping about they were quite good about it. They always have more of a spring in their step after a bath, it must feel good to get all of the dust build up out of their coats. Beattie was very well behaved for her first bath and her feet are starting to get some good growth after they were in such bad condition when we got her.
The next big task of the day was to bath the horses. This is a doddle compared to the goats as they aren’t nearly as wriggly! We wash all of the animals with tea tree shampoo which leaves them smelling fresh and gets them very clean.
I cut Oliver’s tail as it was getting very long but didn’t want to take too much off as we’re coming up to horse fly season soon (oh the joys of neem oil!) but didn’t tackle the almighty job of mane trimming. Last time I got the solo comb out after a long day I was accused of making Joshua look like ‘the village idiot’ so I think we will save that for another day when we have more time…
During the day we also ‘rolled’ the fields. I say rolled tentatively as we were using our neighbours old grey Fergie with a crate of water containers hooked up. It’s no high-tech operation but it did its job of flattening the fields nevertheless.
Overall it was a very productive day and I look forward to getting the horses fit for the summer over the next few months (once we’re all done with exams and rally!)…