Again, my thanks to everyone for your good wishes.
I've just got back from 2 weeks on the farm, I know nothing about horses so all that I can usefully do is driving and labouring jobs, but every little helps.
Now that I have some time, I intend to use whatever talents I have to fundraise, improve the management and use my photography for publicity.
Just a couple of new examples of what goes on there...
There's a Shetland pony stallion there, he's been there for a few months, a cruelty case that has just been left to run with the herd to rebuild his confidence, which usually takes a year or so, following which they are socialised, handled, trained and then hopefully new homes can be found. Anyway, this little fella couldn't be approached at all, so when Louisa was driving around on the quad doing her twice daily welfare check and he approached instead of running away, it was obvious that something was wrong. So she got hold of two horses that could be handled and led them back to the yard, and the stallion followed, and a gate was shut after him...
He had a very bad eye injury. The vet came immediately, didn't think that the eye could be saved but said that she would try. He was in the veterinary hospital for 3 days, they inserted a very clever tube that allows drops to be fed into the eye, and he came home. The drops had to be put in every 2 hours round the clock for 2 weeks, then it went to every 4 hours, and today the vet came back and took out the tube.. He has made remarkable progress and the eye is almost perfect now, and he has had a lot of handling and now trusts people again. And best of all, one of the veterinary nurses wants to adopt him!
Problem here is that the vet bill will be at least £1000. Once we have the final bill I'm going to start a crowdfunding appeal, and will probably get some donations.
And there's a brand new coloured cob filly, we've had her 3 weeks now. She came to us at just 11 weeks old, her mother died. Now, a foal should be with its mother for a year, although sometimes they are separated at about 6 months. 11 weeks is pushing it though, and she wasn't expected to survive, after all she didn't know how to eat and hadn't had any milk from her mother for 2 days.
So, 7.5 tonne horsebox to pick her up, then a drive to the nearest vet to get a horse passport, which cost £150. It's illegal to transport a horse without a passport and although some people will happily break the law, a charity can't.
It took a few days of hand feeding, but she is now eating out of a bucket and is also eating hay from the ground (haynets are a bit of a mystery to her) and she has now started putting on weight and although she isn't out of the woods yet, it's looking good. If she continues to progress, we'll be putting her in a field with another foal, aged about 7 months now, so that they can play together and she will be able to learn from the older foal, and its mother.
I took my camera there but like a fool forgot my battery charger, so the photos and short videos of these two are just on my phone, will sort them out when I can.
Also, I found that because of the hilly ground, my camera needed to be at least 9' off the ground - my Manfrotto tripod goes higher than that but the ground was too soft to use a stepladder to get up there, in fact it was too soft for me to get my off road car there to use as a ladder.
