Stone the flamin' crows...

We have been losing all of our eggs lately, every last single one of them! We haven't been able to pinpoint what has been taking them, so we installed a hidden surveillance camera in the chook pen which takes motion sensored pictures. It took a few days, and I thought the problem had gone away as no eggs were being taken, and then all of a sudden, they were all gone again, this time with photographic evidence...

Darn crow !! I'm not too sure how we are going to fix it, we've never had a crow taking our eggs in the 20 odd years that we have had chooks...I think Damian might have to get handy and build some rollaway egg laying boxes so that the crow can't get to the eggs...one day soonish we may build our proper chook pen as this one was always meant to be temporary...hmpff...we've also lost 2 chickens over the last few weeks, we lost our little polish girl a few weeks ago, and in the last few days our araucana has disappeared as well, both of them have just vanished...no feathers, no anything....another mystery...it's getting to the point of keeping them locked up all the time...
It's the start of school holidays tomorrow, Kasey is off to a horse riding camp for a week, and Damian and I are heading away for a couple of days for our 25th anniversary...yikes....25 years....wow...where has the time gone??

Peppers' journey so far.....

Last weekend we rescued a little pony from being sent to slaughter at the doggers. I don't know how she has ended up there. She is an absolutely gorgeous little girl, but she is so scared of humans. When I went to the yards to pick her up, we had to corner her in a small yard, and she just shook when I went near her. She was pretty grubby, with mud caked on her and when we got her home, we gave her a good scrub and she was so good. Still very scared, but no nastiness in her at all.

Above is how she was when we picked her up, she is the same colour as her face all over, so you can see how dirty she is. After her bath, I gave her some food and let her go in the front paddock which is about an acre. She wouldn't let us back near her after that. The next afternoon we rounded her up down the back to a small yard, and managed to corner her in a little laneway, where I did a bit more handling with her, and Toni and Kasey both sat on her and she took it all in her stride, as we found out she had been broken in.

The next day I approached her a few times in the smaller yard, and already she is starting to improve, and did not have to be rounded up quite so much, she stood in the one place and let me approach her, still very nervous though.  If she was in a larger yard I don't think I would have succeeded.  The next day with some very patient coaxing, we loaded her up on the float for the 4 hour trip home. She wasn't too bad, took about 15 minutes to get her on, but she went on slowly and calmly, and was really good for the whole trip home. When we got home I put her in our cattle yards for the night, fed her and rugged her. The next day (yesterday) I put her out in the BIG paddock with the other 2 horses and crossed my fingers she would come back. Yesterday afternoon I tied the big horses up while they were eating, and sat and held a bucket of food and she eventually approached me and had some dinner while I held the bucket. (In the middle of all of this, Doughy our bull decided he wanted the food and I had a bit of a fight on my hands as he can get a bit nasty if he doesn't get his way, Damian and the dogs had to end up moving him on) I did the same this morning, and she came up to the bucket pretty quickly, so from running away terrified to eating food out of a bucket from me in a few days is a really big step for her. The next steps will be to get her relaxed enough to actually let me touch her while she is eating from the bucket... I'm not going to rush her though....I'm still shaking my head as to why and how she has ended up being sent for dog food, she is only about 5-6 years old, and will be an excellent kids pony with some training and patience....

Welcome to our family Pepper....