Pre-vet Activites

Hello!

Tomorrow the vet is coming for the day, and so preparations were made so that there isn't loads to sort out tomorrow morning. There are 4 radio-collars that are being put on animals (2 horses from the breeding group, and 2 cows), and to do this we will need to corral the cows into a crush and sedate the horses. So all in all, tomorrow will be quite a hectic day, but hopefully it will go smoothly! The idea of the radio-collars is that it will help us keep track of the animals, and will give us more information about where they spend their time. The software has taken quite a while to be sorted out, and trial runs have been made with me (and various others!) trudging around the fen with a collar around my neck or hanging off the RTV! So it seems to be working, and now the time has arrived for them to be placed on the animals - they're pretty hardy collars as they're going to have to cope with being bashed around quite a bit, although the animals will quickly get used to having them on - they shouldn't be a hassle to them.

Apart from preparing stuff for tomorrow, I carried out the monthly condition checks on Verralls ponies and the bulls. Although conditions have been dropping off due to the winter weather, none of them are in bad condition really - the female konik, Nadia, on Verralls is looking rather skinny, but she carries a lot of her weight on her belly, so it can be difficult to tell her actual conditions, but we keep an eye on her just to make sure she doesn't get too thin. The foal on Verralls, George, is so lovely!

Out with the bulls on Harrisons, we are monitoring Billy for a swelling that he has on his flank. It's probably resulted from a fight that he's got into, and doesn't seem to be bothering him, so over the next few weeks it should go down, but at the moment it's about the size of a football! Things were very quiet over there today though, which made condition checks easier, but when I did a data collection session for my project, it meant there wasn't any aggressive behaviour to record at all!.. Oh well, nothing is a result I suppose! During lunch, I was watched by the bull pictured below (Harrison) - I think he was intrigued by what I was doing just sitting there munching away at my sandwich.

Anyway, hopefully tomorrow will go well and all the radio-collars will be put on the animals - will let you know how it all goes.

Thanks for reading!