Dungarron Highland Ponies

Hard at work ... sleeping;

McLeod (Cloud) on the left, Harris (Harry) on the right.

It's looking a bit dry ... again, but from Harry's appaloosa impression

you can see we did actually have a shower of rain pass over.

Happy Australia Day! (ok, it was on Tuesday, but i'm just getting around to posting today)

Even the locals reckon it's too hot to be out in the sun.

Well, it's Jan 29 and today (friday) marks the end of the unofficial Australian holiday period.

School goes back, the long weekends are over, no mor cries of  " ah, CBF" will be accepted.

Knuckling down begins Monday.

We got an unexpected Australia Day surprise.

We don't usually plan calving in the heat of summer, but since reducing our herd to the absolute bare minimum,

We only run two mobs, and a bull runs full time in each mob.

Nice to see the bull is working even in the off season.

Ponies are all doing exceptionally well, not surprising considering they have done absolutely nothing for nearly 8 weeks.

All in good to forward condition *grin*

Flora looks great and looks definately in foal.

Gypsy & Flora have formed a bit of a club hogging all the good shady spots, making the younger

girls go find themselves a spot somewhere else.

The girls had to hike all the way from down in the creek to come see what was going on..

Tamaris...this girl makes my heart sing!

Partbred by Barrymoor Dorian out of Gypsy (above)

Once they'd all had a checkover and had been assured there was nothing

in the car except a skinny yellow dog, it was back to the the boys to turn off the

pumps and head back to the house. The sun was too high and glarey to take photos of Cloud and Harry,

but did get shots of big and small (not that either were happy about having their photos taken)

Cam is making a similar face to that which i seem to make if a camera is pointed at me!

Cam is also by Dorian, as is Harry.

Welsh troublemaker and standover merchant, Dez.

Obligatory shot of foalies and advice that there is yet more pics in their folders in the gallery.

Forecast for the next week - 34, 39, 42, 42, 42 then a cool change on Tuesday. Sheesh! I hate the hot weather.

New photos in the photo gallery. All the other ponies are here. I just seem to spend a lot of time in the afternoons when it's cooler sitting out with the foals. I will make an effort to get some pics of the boys as soon as possible.

...arrived with a vengence on Thursday 17th. What was said to be a cool change with up to 40mm of rain, became a cyclonic change ripping through at about 2.30pm. Connor and i were in Albury when the clouds startied building up, and we abandoned thoughts of going to the movies when the dust arrived. The past couple of years have seen plenty of dust storms, and they were generally a pretty good indicator of high winds following.  That combined with the chance of thunderstorms and the fact it was 40 degrees was enough to make the trip home in case of fires.

Morgan arrived home from work at 2pm, and had noticed the clouds and for a change parked her car in behind mine instead of under the red gum in the yard ... good choice Morgan. This is where he car normally sits! (The following photos are from the day after the storms.)

Storm was here and gone again in a matter of minutes, but it was a terrifying couple of minutes! Started with everything turning red with dust, that eerie light and muffled sound, and then the wind started, and got stronger, and stronger ..doors slammed open, garage gate slammed open, tried to close it only to be blown off my feet into the car, finally got it wrenched closed as the tiles on the garage roof started flying off. Limbs were falling everywhere, chook house door flew off, the sound of splitting timber could be heard over the howling wind. Steel sheeting tore off the machinery shed, Cloudy went over a fence as a tree in his paddock came down. Rain and debris were thrown across the yard horizontally in what we now know were 107km / hr winds. I headed out with a halter to catch Cloudy but as more limbs hit the ground and hail began to fall it was deemed too dangerous. So we stayed inside, listening, waiting, and in no more that 5 minutes it fell calm and silent (which in itself was pretty eerie and scary!)  after another 5 minutes it was decided it was safe enough to go and catch Cloudy and check all of the other horses (all well and pretty unfazed)

There were (still are) limbs down in every paddock under just aboout every tree. We only lost one whole tree ...

While checking the big mare mob on the creek i did find one casualty .. a barely fledged Blue Heron strutting about on the creek bank making little peeping noises. I hadn't realised that the heron's nested here, and have no idea where or how they nest, but this little guy could only just fly.

The mares are all looking fat and sassy. I normally wouldn't let them get this fat, and they've had so little opportunity to do so in the past couple of years. I just couldn't justify locking them up ...

Flora (BF Kylie), Tammy, and Verona.

Tammy, Gypsy, Romi, Verona

Flora

And have i mentioned how superbly Verona has matured??

Nearly Christmas. Things are heating up and drying out. Foals are going ahead in leaps and bounds, literally.

Heaps of new pictures of both Ghillie and Keziah in their respective photo albums on the Gallery page.

DG Keziah, just over 1 month old

After much deliberation, Millie's girl has a name. DG Keziah (kez - ee- ah) It's a family name that's not been used for a while, it's been in my head since she was born. New photo's in the photo gallery.

Millie was very tolerant this morning and let me have a look at baby while it was just waking up (before trying to double barrel me)

I got to have a pat, check eyes and navel and have a look under that tail ...and then duck and run.

Bub is well hydrated and no fly damage and definitely a girl.

now for a name...

A few new pictures of Ghillie in his album

Benacre Mill Buie has to be congratulated on her punctuality. She presented us with a beautiful foal this morning, November 12, at exactly 340 days. Yellow dun, tiny star, black mane and tail. Not 100% on sex yet, Millie is a very good but very protective Mum. Name will come when the sex is determined. Lovely little thing was born in the middle of a heatwave, but before the weekend of two days predidcted to be 40 degrees or over.