Washbay!

Here are some pictures of the washbay that was added to the stables by John and his Dad this week - enjoy, I am :)

Stables!

Long time, no post! John and I have been working very hard over the last two months both at our day jobs and also getting the stables erected and fitted out so at the end of each day we have been exhausted. It has all been worth it though as the stables are now at a point where I can at least use the breezeway to treat Pete's injured hoof.

Here is the journey....

The stables, finally erected.

Electricity on its way. Lamp posts every 3m.

Concrete for the tack room and breezeway.



Wood waiting patiently for frames.



Brushing the surface of the concrete to create grip for steel horse shoes. Thank you Eli James for helping!

View out the back roller door. The wash bay will be through here.

Tack room skeleton.

New toy for Trisha! or was that Happy Birthday Sweetheart...

Tack room skin.

New water tank - hurrah! 25,000 litres :)

Lots of tools. Thanks to my brother for the steelwork :)



Feed bins made by John's Dad, overhead cupboards assembled by me!



Outside of the stalls is complete!



Feed bins get some colour and old bins get empty.



Inside the tack room. Mmmm, nice! Cupboards assembled by me :)

So that's where we are up to. The stalls are still not useable and are having external doors put into them to allow the horses to come and go as they please and the washbay is being concreted this week, weather permitting. I've still got some minor painting to do as well and the front of the stables will be concreted too. All things in time :)

Farewell little chick :(

A terrible thing greeted me upon my return home from a trip to the theatre yesterday. One of my little chicks had drowned in the duck pond :( This was a very sad discovery as the chicks had been going so well but I think that the new rooster is establishing the pecking order in the chicken yard and accidentally chased the chick into the pond; he's been chasing everyone and everything! I think is what happened because another one of the chicks nearly ended up with the same fate today. Luckily I was on hand and watching but as it happened the chick aquaplaned across the pond and out the other side. Needless to say there is no duck pond in the chicken yard anymore and the pressure is on John to build the permanent duck pond and accomodation.

RIP little chick

Rain, rain, rain

This post was going to be about how well we have managed to drain the soggiest parts of our land however, Mother Nature had other ideas - not limited to our neck of the woods but apparently for a large part of this country and the world - so while we still feel very successful in the event of normal levels of rain, the recent deluge saw us underwater again.

In November we had a great rain event and we were able to really see where the land was not able to run the water off successfully. The parts we were mainly concerned about were the horse laneway and the chicken yard as we use these parts of land regularly at the moment. Here are some pictures:

  

We did some rudimentary trenching to try and alleviate the problem.

When the ground finally dried out we decided that putting in some trenches and filling them with some rocks would help the land to drain itself. Our block slopes toward the front right hand corner so we are using this natural sloping to help all water drain in that direction. One of our biggest problems was flooding in the chicken yard so this area was definately a priority. Here are some pictures of the trenching we have done so far:

This is how it held up after the first recent rainfall:

We were very happy with this result and so now we are confident to do some more trenching using the same method.

Of course, after these photos were taken we experienced the recent deluge of rain and I don't think anything we could have done would have helped us to clear the water any quicker. The good news is that our trenching has really helped the ground to dry out more quickly than it did before and we are walking on the ground after only 2 days where it was over a week after the November rains.

Thanks to Roy, our trenching machine :)

A new rooster

Eliza Jane found a little chick on the side of the road and it turned into a rooster! Eliza Jane has to move house and unfortunately she could not take her rooster to her new accomodation so she asked if we could keep him for her at Gryphon's Landing so Gryphon's Landing says bon jour to:

Dieman the Faverolles rooster!

Arena Revamp

Over the Christmas period John's father came down from Queensland for a visit and they decided to do some man bonding by revamping the arena fencing.

The arena is full size with a sand surface, you can see it in these photos:

The problem with the arena fencing was that the posts are actually inside the arena and the railings were on the outside. Now this may not seem like a problem but the issues are that; a. the arena rake cannot get the the edge of the arena to rake out any sand which has accumulated there, and; b. if the horse you are riding moves too far toward the wall, you bang your leg on the posts and if the horse is being naughty they could pull you off.

The other issues were that the posts were all crooked, there weren't enough of them and the railings were buckled as a result which made the arena look run down. Here are some before photos:

 

In the overall plan, the arena will only have two sides as the side closest to the internal road will have a hedge and one short side will be facing the stables and have either a hedge or potted plants so we were able to reuse some of the posts from the sides that are being dismantled which saved us heaps of money.

Here are some construction photos:

 and the finished product:

Nice straight posts and railings which have been cemented in.

Only the last few posts to be removed which will now be easier because of the rain deluge!

As you can see, we've built a garden bed on the road side for he hedging to go into and I also installed an automatic watering system - not that we currently need it...

Stable Cats

So I said to John's grandfather (Deda) that I would like a kitten for the stables when they arrive so that it could live there and eat the mice. Deda lives with John's Uncle Tony on a farm up the road from us and they have a feral cat problem so they always have kittens looking for homes.

The problem was that Deda didn't just catch me one kitten, he caught three.

Tiger Lilly



Alexander



Snip

Deda is 86 years old and he is old, old, old school so he said I should choose a kitten and he would then get rid of the rest. Of course, I felt responsible that the two kittens I didn't choose (and how can you choose????) would be gotten rid of so Gryphons Landing welcomes Tiger Lilly (named by Isabelle), Snip and Alexander as stable kittens.

Chick Update

It's been a busy Christmas and New Year period hence the lack of posts! This first post of the New Year is a Chick Update and a surprise *grin*

The chicks were born on the 28th of November and I was pleasantly surpised at how quickly they grew! We ended up with 3 chicks out of 7 that were viable. We lost some chicks due to our inexperience :( but we will know better next time. We also lost our first born chick as we left it with the hen and it had disappeared by the next morning :(

Two chicks were born on 28/11 and Number 3 came along a few days later. Here they are at one weekish old.

Here they are at two weeksish enjoying some outside time.

One month after they were born I put them in a secure pen inside the chicken yard so that the ladies (and Milton!) could get used to them before they joined the flock fully and yesterday they were integrated into the flock.

Axle and a hen check out the chicks "safe house"

And now for a surprise! As one of our hens was deterined to sit on eggs we put a duck egg underneath her and yesterday I went to the Hen House and found the following:

Too cute! We've put the duckling in the incubator and it is going great guns :)