The more observant of you will have noticed that I did not manage to finish Blog last night. Truth is I got 30 minutes into my video, felt shattered & went to bed.

My pizza was definitely 2nd rate compared to Michelle’s so they are under instructions not to go out on a Saturday night again.

There was a raging storm last night & the more I thought about the huge pine trees behind the cottage the more vulnerable I felt. The wind was hitting the side of the cottage with such force it sounded like a nutter taking a lump hammer to the panels.

A word about the weather in general.

Rain.

34 consecutive days to be precise.

Don’t get me wrong; it hasn’t rained all day every day.

It just feels that way.

At some stage every day the heavens open for a few hours. I am becoming quite fed up with it. I suppose it’s worse because I thought the very dry weather I enjoyed in Seddon was typical for NZ. Obviously not.

And if Q tells me its ‘happy rain’ one more time, I will cheerfully garrotte him.

I don’t have the time to do a separate Blog entry for every missing day since Wednesday so I will try & member the pertinent bits to tell you.

My overall impression of work so far is long hours, hard physical labour but I have quickly felt accepted. Maybe they are taking it easy on me, being the new kid & all but everyone is happy to share their knowledge & I am learning every day.

Tonight was the most pleasant way to spend an evening.

I was ‘foal-watch’ which means a shift from 5pm to 8pm.

The gestation period of a mare is 11 months & 10 days & from just before 11 months they are checked every 20 minutes during the day. Most mares will try & foal at night as they resent any human interference.

The responsibility of the person doing foal-watch is to check the mares during daylight & to transfer them to a floodlit paddock as the light begins to fail. This evening I was checking 6 mares every 20 minutes & another 5 every 40 minutes as they had longer to go until they were due to foal.

I have been told the signs to look for are sweating, increased respiratory rate, the mares turning & looking at their flanks & the udders forming a plug of wax over the ends. At this stage you have maybe an hour until foaling. The mare is routinely moved into a foaling paddock on her own.

If the mare was left with the other mothers she would separate herself at this stage. They will alternately roll, then stand. This indicates the beginnings of labour. If you have missed the 1st signs the mare can still be moved & separated at this stage.

The final stage is the breaking of the waters & the appearance of either a nose or forefeet (hind feet would be bad news). If you have missed the 1st 2 stages & the 1st thing you see is the feet or nose then the mare should not be moved but rather the other mums moved from the paddock.

Every evening one of the permanent staff members is on-call for foaling so theoretically all I have to do is spot the 1st signs then ring whoever is on-call. As you can imagine I am still at the stage, having only done it twice, of staring at the mares convincing myself they are about to pop.

This evening was a complete change from Wednesday evening when I did foal-watch in the teeming rain & was thoroughly soaked. I spent the 1st part of the evening in one of the staff houses, which has a veranda overlooking the mares’ paddock. I was chatting with Mark who is at Trelawney for 3 wks work experience & it turns out he was born on a stud so is very au fait with foaling.

After dark I moved down to the paddock with the intention of doing a check then retiring to the foaling hut for the rest of the shift.

What actually happened was I enjoyed being with the mares so much that I spent the last 2 hours sitting on a gate watching them. It was a warm, calm, still evening & as I was perched on the gate on of my favourite mares, ‘Clinique’ came over for a cuddle.

She looked so huge & uncomfortable that I gave her a back rub as she rested her head over my thighs. Within about 2 minutes she had dozed off & I didn’t have the heart to move her so with numb legs I stayed there rubbing her back & watching with a stupid smile as the foal moved around inside her.

Although I feel very uncomfortable with the idea of pregnancy in women I am completely gooey around mares (& any pregnant aminal, come to think of it). They look so lovely & serene although I am sure they don’t feel it.

It was while I was being gently squashed by Clinique that I saw the most amazing thing. A large, bright green moth, approximately the size of a sparrow landed in the grass. In a split second something soared past my face, swooped on the moth & carried it into the overhanging tree. It was a Little Owl. As soon as it had devoured the moth it came & landed on the fence post about 5’ away from me & continued to stare intensely into the grass.

At 1st I froze, thinking it hadn’t seen me. Then I realised it couldn’t have missed me, illuminated as I was under a floodlight & pinioned under a mare. The owl continued to sit next to me for about 15 minutes until it was disturbed by the arrival of the night-duty girl.

Occasionally he would turn his head towards me, fix me with his brilliant yellow eyes & simply stare. I have to say it was an amazing feeling being so close to a proper, honest-to-goodness wild owl. The only time I have seen them in close proximity before is in sanctuaries. I am going to write to Bill & tell him.

As I perched on the gate scratching my equine friend & watching the owl I felt very privileged. What a beautiful place to work.

Today was a very easy day. 7am start, some feeding & mucking out then Sunday was my own until I had to return at 3pm. I returned to Cedar Lodge, enjoyed the Sunday tradition of a ‘full English’ then worked it off again by washing the ‘Arkansas Chuggabug’ ie. Eric’s 4x4, which I travel to work in. I even cleaned out the interior, thus ‘making homeless hundreds of spiders’ was Michelle’s observation.

I did contemplate waxing it but the torrential rain put paid to that idea.
Meanwhile Eric began to erect the fencing around the pool & Michelle DIDN’T pour petrol in the oil-hole on the lawn-mower. I have been threatened with physical violence if I reveal this fact on Blog but like all oppressed authors I must speak the truth.

The girls washed Michelle’s car for her. Strangely, she seemed to have to help to get it finished.

We have 4 new arrivals at Cedar Lodge - much to Eric’s delight. They are 4 weaner piggies, all girls – ‘gilts’ apparently. They are 8 weeks old & very cute. One is black, one cinnamon, one red with a white girth & one treacle-coloured.

They have been named ‘Arwen’, ‘Aragorn’, ‘Frodo’ & ‘Bilbo’, or ‘Bingo’ as Harriette thought he was called. Need I tell you that the one, which will be saved from the freezer, is ‘Aragorn’? Despite the fact that they are all girls we thought the only decent girl’s name from LotR was ‘Arwen’

Somehow ‘Galadriel’ was just too much of a mouthful for such a ickle piggy. Eric has secured a large, grassy enclosure for them & they repaid his kindness by promptly turning the grass into muddy furrows.

Pics to follow if ever the rain stops for long enough to take any.

This morning on my way home from work I stopped to see if they were still in their enclosure. They weren’t visible at 1st but as I got closer I could see all four, top-to-tail, fast asleep in their hay under cover, very cosy they looked too.

The Tanners used to keep pigs in the UK & Eric especially is delighted with this latest acquisition. When he’s not outdoors playing with & admiring them his head is buried in a pig book.

I must take my leave now as it’s way past my bedtime & I have to work out how to cut & paste this onto Blog yet.

Thanks for all the enquiries asking how the job is going.

Will tell you more about work in the next couple of days when I am less bushed.

Goodnight UK,

Cx