Blog - Page 82 of 109 - Farm Holiday Cottages - Fishing and Wildlife Holidays

I hope none of you who had wanted to see Bliss and Misty being worked for the last time missed them being ridden. The weather was a bit grim this morning. fortunately the weathermen got it right today and it brightened up this afternoon. It didn’t rain as hard as they forecast but it was very windy, so much so that most of the leaves on the trees around the Farm House have blown off. We have a number of Acacia trees in the yard and they are completely bare.

Both Bliss and Misty worked well today. Misty was on her toes a bit. With the leaves being blown off of the trees she could see the Sheep properly, that previously the trees had obscured, they made her look a bit, so I needed to walk with her a little. We have taken a few photos of the Fillies that I will post on the website as soon as I am shown by my web man.

I must admit every time that we see the Fillies we start talking about them, about them not being here after tomorrow. We have no preferences for any of the Horses, but Bliss and Misty will be missed more than any that have left Denbury previously. Both are very kind and want to be around people which has made them very easy to work with, especially when they were being broken. What ever happens in their racing careers, both will return to Denbury to be Broodmares.

Marie asked if any one who knows Bliss and Misty will be travelling with them to France, and will they be close when stabled. They will be travelling over night, arriving in Chantilly about midday on Tuesday. There is no one spare at Denbury to travel with them. I really cant afford the time to travel there myself, but I will sometime in the week go. Bliss and Misty will be stable next to each other. The Trainer also has a double stable, that he may put them both in. I will let you know all about what happens to both Bliss and Misty over the coming months.

I was speaking to one of the UK Trainers who I had enquired about training Bliss and Misty. He never came back to me as he had lost my phone number. When I told him that I had decided to send the Fillies to France, he said that he did not blame me, as he agreed that the training fees were a lot less than in the UK and the prize money was a lot better in France. He also knew the Trainer, and had visited his training establishment. He was impressed with both. The Trainer that they are going to only trains about fifty Horses at a time, and has a good reputation.

I am having problems with my computer. I am unable to get the WBC site, the Forum or Diary. Someone is updating the Forum for me and pasting the Diary on to the Diary page from an email that I have sent.

After watching the Red Stag Rut last night, I sat down and glanced through this weeks local paper, only to read the article below. The Quantock Hills are from where the Red Deer that you saw last night on the webcam come from. They are very close to Denbury. As you know I am not a supporter of Hunting, but unfortunately this is one of the down sides of the Hunting Ban. The Hunts have over many years controlled the Red Deer numbers.

These are the contact details of Dr.Jochen Langbein in case you want to make representation to him.

*Phone number 01984 641366 Email info@deercollisions.co.uk Address Greenleas. Chestnut Avenue. Washford. Somerset. TA23*

Deer cull proposal labelled a ‘shooting spree’
/By Lloyd Vaughan /

THE number of red deer on the Quantock Hills could be halved if plans by a conservation group go ahead.

The Quantock Deer Management and Conservation Group has sent letters to landowners on the hills to drum up support for a mass cull of red deer on November 30, which will target fe-male and young deer.

The group claims deer numbers are ‘unacceptable’ and that the animals are causing damage to forestry and farming interests.

The group aims to hold an annual cull over the next five to ten years to re-duce population levels.

But the South West Deer Protection Group has condemned the cull and branded it “a shooting spree”.

Its chairman Kevin Hill said: “One problem with the proposed shooting spree is that any deer in the sight of the gun might be shot.

We’re not against the principle of culling deer. Our job is to make people think.

“I’m into the minimum number being culled, but this looks like one big blast.”

Deer biologist and secretary of the Quantock Deer Management and Con-servation Group, Dr Jochen Langbein, told the County Gazette that action must be taken to protect farmland from damage.

“I think they don’t really understand that it’s meant to be one day of culling not a major slaughter of deer.

We’re aiming to try and get deer back to levels people are happier with over a period of about five years,” he added.

“Almost every farm we work with feels there are too many deer and most are happy to see 20 or 30 deer roaming the fields, not 50 or 60.”

The group hopes the cull will take place in the morning and evening of November 30.

The Quantock Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty group is also supporting the plans.

Group development officer Iain Porter said: “It’s not designed to eradicate red deer but to bring levels back to a sustainable deer heard.”

The Stag that you have seen tonight is a Royal Stag. After seeing the Deer on Wednesday night I thought that they would be back, as the way the Stag was mating, I thought that they must be using Denbury for the Rut. The Stag chased away a young pretender who tried his luck with one of the Hinds on Wednesday. There does not seem to be as many Hinds tonight, although there could well be some in the woods. I must admit that I am pleased that they have returned. Moments like this make the webcams worth doing, and what we are seeing is live.

No, Elsie we haven’t planted the trees yet, to be honest I ha-vent even ordered them. I was told by my supplier that they would be in by now. We do need to do some tree planting on the Farm. Since we have lived here we haven’t done a lot, just the odd tree here and there around the lake and holiday cottages. We have lost a number of nice trees since we have lived here, mainly by the wind. My Lads have been cutting up a few over the past weeks for firewood. We have decided that we are going to plant about sixty whips, consisting of Cherry, Elm for the hedges, Silver Birch and Maple. We will also put in some more mature trees, and a eighteen foot Weeping Willow around the Lake.

Jan, when there is no one in the Hide, the Fox are always watching me put the Badger food down. I did get a little worried earlier in the year when there were six of them feeding. I thought that they may have been shot. I think that there are three coming to feed at the moment, one of them only now and then. There is one Fox that is going very close to the Badger Sett entrance. You may have seen him on camera one going in to the gap in the hedge that the Badgers come out from, The Sett entrance is within inches of the gap, he will be caught by the Badgers one day.

Who ever asked if the Bliss and Misty had gone to France yet? They are leaving the Farm Monday night and will arrive in Chantilly about Midday Tuesday. Not an over long journey, but we will worry about them. We will try to put travel boots on their leg to protect them, and tail bandages to stop them from rubbing there tails out on the journey. The intention was for us to be in Chantilly for when they arrived, and after meeting the Trainer we were going to spend a couple of nights in Paris. That has now changed. I am going to France on my own, a day or so later, trying to get there and back in one day. It is going to be tight as I wont fly. As I am travelling from Somerset, it is a two and a half hours journey before I get to St.Pancras for the Eurostar. Chantilly is only half an hour by train from Paris. There has been a few rail strikes in France, so that may cause me a problem. If I need to stay over for one night it wont be a disaster. The Trainer has offered to take me to a good restaurant and I do like France. Normally the French trains are never late. UK railways could learn a lot from them, for keeping to timetables, cleanliness and their very low cost fares. We will shortly be able to upload photos on one of the website pages, so as well as other subject I hope to be able to show you how Bliss and Misty are doing. When I am in France I will also see if there is a Television Channel in France for Horse Racing that I can pay to get here. What ever I will let you know how they are getting on.

As last Sunday we will be showing Bliss and Misty working for the last time in the sand school before they go to France.

Pat and all the others who have asked, Lady’s pregnancy is all as it should be. Unfortunately we did see Willow feeding from her yesterday, so we will need to wean her from Lady.

We are always looking out for new wildlife sites to broadcast webcams from. Often we are asked to get involved in a project, on other occasions we contact organisation to see if will let us broadcast from their venues. There are various reasons why we are unsuccessful and are unable to broadcast from venues. Often it can be that there is little interest, others do not want a third party to be involved in their websites. The overriding reasons for not being able to broadcast is the locations and a lack of a good broadband connection. We were unable to do a Golden Eagle from Scotland because the site being so remote. We are still talking to the people I told you about earlier in the year and four other sites, two with Beavers and another with a Bird of Prey. An other that we hope we will be doing is with the Barn Owl Trust.

Today I got an email from Simon, about a site in Spain. I have copied part of the email that I received to give you the information. The are a number of problems with the site. One being a low Broadband connection, another the remoteness of the location, needing solar power and maybe wireless camera. Simon is very keen to get it going, so I am sure that if we are unable to broadcast from the site, it wont be for the want of trying. Check out his website Simon is a photographer. www.wildaslife.com

Start of Simons email.
I am making a general inquiry regarding the placement of a webcam in one of several Griffon Vulture nest close to my home in Andalusia, Spain.

I am an English freelance photographer, with a strong passion for the natural world www.wildaslife.com contains examples of my wildlife images, also I have stills images and 16mm film footage of Patagonian Pumas and a rare and endangered species of deer the southern Andean Huemul (hippocamelus bisulcus ) from Chile in the www.arkive.org library in Bristol.

Since moving to Andalusia 5 years ago I have spent considerable time in the Sierr Ctrestallina close to the village of Casares. On the west side of this 4km long sierra is a year round colony of Griffon Vultures, with approximately 80 pairs nesting there. I have been photographing them soaring close to my position on the rock face and have built up considerable portfolio of them soaring close to the face as well as them coming and going from the nests and roosting spots. I have managed to locate 3 nests where I am able to get very very close and in 2 casesenter if I wished.

I believe one of these nests would provide a fantastic opportunity to place a webcam and allow the public to view the feeding of the chick in the nest by the adults. I have observed and photographed this, and have attached a number of jpegs to give you some idea of what could be seen with a camera. The very latest nest I have located allows me to sit in a perfect position looking down into the nest which is only 10ft away from my observation spot.

Pat and all the others who have asked, Lady’s pregnancy is all as it should be. Unfortunately we did see Willow feeding from her yesterday, so we will need to wean her from Lady.

Start of Simons email.
I am making a general inquiry regarding the placement of a webcam in one of several Griffon Vulture nest close to my home in Andalusia, Spain.

Going by the Forum, none of you managed to see the DENBURY FARM RUT last night. It as only by luck that I managed to see it. The last thing that I do before going up to bed, is to pan the valley camera, to see if there is anything of interest to be seen in the valley. It was quite late, about 12.10am that I first caught a glance of a Red Deer Stag grazing close to a Hind. I initially thought that it was the Stag that we saw a few weeks back, mind you it could well have been. In the distance I saw a couple of sets of eyes that caused me to pan around more. The Stag without me seeing it must have crossed the stream, and as I was panning he came into view just as he was covering a Hind. A little later I also saw a young Stag trying to mate, unfortunately for him the Hind was having none of it. I managed to see at least ten sets of eyes in the distance, some of them from the wood, I should imagine that there were more that were not facing the IR lamps, so it was a fair sized Herd. By about 12.50pm they had all gone into the woods. I managed to record a bit of it, but the view at the end of the valley was poor, my fault as I had not changed a bulb that had blown months back. My lads have also laid armoured cable in the stream, so that we could put another lamp further down the valley. The Electrician is coming at the weekend to wire it up. In the meantime I put a new bulb in the IR lamp that had blown. I think that the lamp is at the right angle, so if the Red Deer return tonight it should be a better view than I did last night.

I don’t know what time that the Deer came to the valley last night. I usually put the picture in picture on with the valley camera going, whilst watching the television, but since Monday when I fitted a camera up in the barn to try to see what had startled me on Sunday, when I went to get the Badger food, I have been watching that camera. ct and Karen asked about the camera. All that I have seen since watching the camera since Monday, is a Field Mouse last night. One of my Lads saw a Rat this afternoon in the barns doorway. It was not a Rat that I saw, it was either a Stoat or Weasel. I will only put the camera on if I see anything. Believe me its like watching paint dry.

My Duck cam is going to be started this evening. I only got the engine and other bits and pieces today. I had to go and buy another two Mallard decoys as I cut the hole in the decoys before I had got the rudder, and it is in the wrong place. Fortunately they were not very expensive. It is going to take me a couple of weeks to get it on to the water working, then I will have to get a very small wireless day night camera. It is not worth buying the camera until I get the Duck moving on the water.

Val, every thing that you saw Bliss and Misty do is what they have learnt in the breaking process. When they turn they are being controlled by the reins and the riders legs, by the gentle pulling of the rein to the left or right is the direction they go. Pulling evenly on the reins will make to Horse stop, well you hope it does. The most important part of breaking any Horse is to be gentle with the rein. When Horses are broken you use a very light bit. If you are hard or heavy with the reins the horse will need a stronger bit. Being hard will eventually make a Horse hard mouthed, they can then sometime be a problem to stop. All the time you let the horse know what it is doing with voice commands. Walk, walking, trot, trotting etc. I don’t know who is going to have the bigger problem when they go to France, the Horses or the French people who will be looking after them, as they will be spoken to in French. They have been extremely good being broken, a really enjoyable experience. Some Horses can be right pigs to break. A few can be very dangerous. I cant ride myself. I use to drive a pair of Horses, but I just don’t have the time now. I have got to speak to the French Trainer tonight to make all the arrangement for when Bliss and Misty go. Anything interesting I will let you know.

It has been quite cold and windy at Denbury, today. Fortunately we haven’t had a lot of rain, so we are managing to keep the Horse out, coming in early morning and late afternoon for their feeds. It is much better for the Horses to be out, as long as they are rugged up well to stop them getting wet if it rains and cold on frosty nights. Of course it does save us a lot of work with the mucking out, but we will not leave them out at night if it is cold and wet. That’s one job that I don’t like a lot. We muck out all of our stable every day.

I seemed to have had a few broadband problems today. I lost my connection on one of my computers a few times and the webcams went down. They seem OK at the moment. Both SWT cameras have been off for a few days, I have phoned to try to see what the problem is, but unfortunately I have been unable to get an answer. In the Winter months the centre is closed. Peter the Manager does not go there every day. I am sure he will get the webcams going very soon.

Both Bliss and Misty were worked in the sand school today. I am sorry but I was so busy I forgot to turn the camera on, I will try to remember tomorrow, if they are worked. I didn’t see them work myself today, but I was told that they both did very well. Misty is sound now, her foot must be a lot better as there is no sign of her being lame.

Elaine, I missed the Deer the other evening, so I cant tell you what they were. I have only seen the Muntjac Deer once this year, and that was early in the Spring. This is the first year for a long time that I haven’t seen them all through the summer. I would regularly see them with a Fawn.

Elsie, I should think that most of the Ewes that are in the fenced area around the lake are in Lamb. I check them regularly to see if their udders are getting big. It look like Dolly and Minty could lamb before Christmas, but don’t hold your breath, as I have said many times before I am not a very good Sheppard. If any look as if the are going to lamb soon, I will put them in the stable that the lambs that went to Market on Saturday were in. The stable that they were in is in the same little block that we do the Foaling from, so the camera is already in place. My Lads will be mucking the stable out later this week. I thought that I may have got a phone call from the Auctioneer that were selling the Lambs, telling me that they had not sold. It wasn’t the Rare Breeds sale on Saturday as we thought, we missed read the paper, it was the previous week. The lambs were not the best that we have sold. On a Rare Breed sale there would have been no problem with them selling, but being it was a general sale I did wonder if they would sell, and I was expecting a call. What ever, the cheque that I get for them wont make me very rich. I shouldn’t think that I would get any more than a couple of pounds each for them.

ct, today I fitted a camera up in the barn that I thought that I had heard the Rat in last evening. I also put up an infra red lamp and I am watching the camera as I am typing. I should think that it is a Stoat or Weasel. If I see any animal in the barn I will put the camera on the website. I don’t know if Rats attack humans, when I see one or even think that I have heard a Rat, I don’t hang about to long for them to get the chance. I have heard like most of you, that if a Rat is cornered it will jump over what ever is cornering it, and that it has landed on what ever it was. I really cant see that, but who knows.

I hope that those who managed to see Bliss and Misty on the webcams this morning, enjoyed seeing them working. A couple of you got their names the wrong way round. Bliss is the Bay (Brown) and is Lady’s Foal, Misty is the Dark Bay (Black) out of Woody. Bliss is going exceptionally well. In all intense and purpose she is broken. She will trot in the sand school on a lunge line on a voice command. She will be trotting under saddle within a couple of days. As you noticed I was walking with Misty, she has not worked for three days because of being lame, with her bad foot, and she would still be getting a little discomfort with her foot now, so it was important to give her confidence with me walking with her. Misty is a little behind Bliss in the progress of the breaking, but only because of her bad foot, but she will be going as well as Bliss within a couple of days. As you could see, both Fillies were happy working, even with the dogs running around and very close to them. It was also very windy in the sand school whilst we were working the Fillies, with a few bits and pieces flying around, that would have made even an experienced older Horse spook. Being broken as they have will be of benefit when they finish their racing careers. They can now quickly adjust to become good riding Horses. We are very pleased with them. They are on their way to France tomorrow week. They will be worked most days next week. I don’t know what times it will be, but as long as I remember I will turn the camera on, so that hopefully you may see them.

As I was entering the barn in the Farm Yard opposite the Farm House to get the Badger food this evening, something started to squeak very close to the door. Thinking that it was a Rat very close to me, I made a hasty retreat backwards, that being a quicker way of getting out of the barn, rather than me trying to turn around. Unfortunately I forgot that I had left the generator that I had used this morning, to get the camera working, to show you Bliss and Misty in the sand school. It tripped me over backwards, I was left laying flat on my back with my legs being supported about eighteen inched higher than my body by the generator. The noise and scream that I made should have frightened what ever was close to the door, but it didn’t, and I couldn’t get up as quickly as wanted to get away from the Rat, being in the position I was. Even after the noise I had made getting myself up, I could still here what ever was in the barn. By now I had realised that it could not have been a Rat, it would have been long gone with all the noise that I had made. What ever, I still had to get the Badger food. I tentatively made my way into the barn looking into the direction of the noise that was being made, by what ever creature it was that I heard squeaking. If it had been a Rat I could well have finished up on my back again. What ever it was it must have seen me before I had seen it and I heard it scampering away under the contents of the barn. I can only think that it is the Stoat or Weasel that I saw the outline of a few days ago in the barn doorway, and that it is living or nesting in the barn. I was going to get my Lads to start clearing the rubbish out of the barn tomorrow. Believe you me, it needs it. But I would much prefer a Stoat or Weasel to be living in the barn catching the Rats, than it being tidy. I will try to get a camera and infra red lamp in the barn within a couple of days. If I see any thing on my monitor, I will put it on the webcams.

Farm Holiday Cottages – Fishing and Wildlife Holidays

I hope none of you who had wanted to see…

I am having problems with my computer I am unable…

The Stag that you have seen tonight is a Royal…

Pat and all the others who have asked Lady s…

Pat and all the others who have asked Lady s…

Going by the Forum none of you managed to see…

Val every thing that you saw Bliss and Misty do…

Val every thing that you saw Bliss and Misty do…

I seemed to have had a few broadband problems today…

I hope that those who managed to see Bliss and…