Just before I went to bed last night I checked the valley webcam, I saw the Stag that was in the valley, in the afternoon laying down at the far end of the field. There were two Hinds with him, not one that he had with him a few hours earlier, in the afternoon. The second one was probably in the wood out of sight. Although he wasn’t very old, he was a good Stag, so he may well have more Hinds in his Harem. I will leave the valley webcam on most of tonight, in case the Deer come back.
This is the first year that we have not seen any large herds of Red Deer at Denbury. We regularly saw herds of up to fifteen in the valley, and in the far end field. It is more likely that I have not seen them, rather than them not being here. When I had Cattle I wasn’t best pleased to see large herds of Deer here. I needed the grass they ate for the Cattle, The herds Of Deer would eat as much grass as my Cows, and they would always be there in the Spring when the grass was growing for the silage we made. I didn’t have webcams when I had the Cows, but you could tell that a large herd of Deer had been here, by the grass that had been eaten and the flattened grass where they had been laying down in the field.
We finally started to get Bliss and Misty the Fillies ready for Auction, that they are entered in to at the end of the month. We have left it late. We have just over three weeks to get them ready, and there is so much work that needs to be done with them. Before today we have only ever had head collars on them twice. On both occasions they didn’t like them and pulled away, thinking that the head collars would not follow. Today we put the head collars back on to them to get them walking as we lead them. Quite important really, as they will need to be lead around the auction ring on head collars. Both Fillies were no better or worse than we thought that they would be. They started pulling away from us, as we thought they would. This time they are a lot bigger. When we first put head collars on them they were a lot smaller and we could manage to pull them back. The size they are now, we would have stood no chance of holding on to them. If they had decided to have it away, we could only have watched them go. Fortunately they are very laid back and kind Fillies, so the pulling that they did was half hearted to try to see if they could get away with it.
We soon had them walking with us, not necessarily by our sides, but it was a start. Misty was in front and a lot better than Bliss, which was a bit of a surprise. Initially they danced about on one spot rather than walking, but a little touch on their back ends from one of our Lads, got them walking forward. We kept this first session short, about fifteen to twenty minutes and by the end they were taking to it better. Within a couple of days they should be walking properly on the head collars. I will let you know how they progress.
As from tomorrow I will be feeding the Badgers from 7 to 7.30pm. The nights really are drawing in quick