Eggsy Pony and Friends : February 2022

Monday, February 21, 2022

Stormy weather

Living on a small island in the Atlantic means that we're subject to storms and these past few days three have passed our way. Storm Dudley, Storm Eunice and now Storm Franklin. Fortunately being in the east of England we haven't been subjected to the worst of the weather but we have taken a battering.

Strong winds and heavy rainfall have left the fields with standing water and of course

we do have poaching by the gateways where the horses congregate waiting for us humans to bring them essential supplies of forage and their hard feeds. But we have to say considering Eggsy Pony's insistence about living out 24/7 the paddocks are bearing up well.

Which is more than can be said for 3 of the field shelters on the yard which ended up on their sides during Storm Eunice. Fortunately there were no equine or human casualties.

Luckily the field shelter in Eggsy's field stayed put, probably because it's a bit ramshackle and the wind could blow straight through those gaps!

Eggsy has his own way of sheltering from bad weather, standing as close as possible to Maddsie, who being larger than him acts as the perfect windbreak but

unfortunately even Maddsie can't stop the wind from playing havoc with Eggsy's hair do!

About Eggsy Pony:
Eggsy Pony was abandoned with locking stifles when he was just a foal, you can read about his abandonment here, his care is funded via donation.
If you'd like to you can help Eggsy in the following ways:
Follow Eggsy Pony and Friends on Ko-Fi where if you choose you can also buy him a coffee, which isn't really coffee, the coffee money goes towards his feed.
Follow, like and retweet @eggsypony on Twitter
Follow, heart and share eggsypony on Instagram
Make a donation via https://www.gofundme.com/f/z8gpxg
or Paypal : eggsppony@gmail.com
Take a look at Eggsy Pony's Redbubble store, he gets a small % in commission on any item sold which goes toward his feed.

Monday, February 14, 2022

Things Eggsy Pony misses from Muddy Bottom

1. Not the mud that's for sure but we all miss the trees.

2. Hansel the goose being part of our little herd and honking at perceived dangers.

3. Gingee the yard cat, though I for one do not miss him pooing in our field. Yeuch!

4. The woodpeckers their drumming and jungle like calls.

5. The deer grazing near our paddock & sometimes pinching our water.

6. Bumblebees, the kindest of bees, who often had to be rescued from our water buckets.

7. Corvids, crow, magpie and jackdaw, always hanging around, always arguing with one another, often shooing each other away.

8. Geese, swans and ducks flying overhead.

9. Our resident barn owl.

10. Buzzard who hunts at Muddy Bottom every day.

11. Jay who liked to steal Gingee's food.

12. Weasel, rat and vole, rarely seen together except, well, when one was consuming the other.

13. The gypsy ponies who sometimes came to visit, even though they weren't supposed to!

14. Fox who walked past every day at lunchtime in search of her own lunch.

15. Mr Hoppy the pheasant and his harem of grey ladies, bet Hansel misses them too, he used to share his grain with them.

16. The mouse family who, when it was very cold, would nest in the tyres that held our water buckets, I suppose you could say the tyres were their winter residence.

17. Heron and egret hunting in the drain.

18. Moorhen and her chicks.

19 Dragon and damsel flies with their iridescent wings sparkling in the sunshine.

20. Robin always blagging food.

21. Blackbird singing.

22.Cheeky flocks of sparrows.

23. So many fieldfare swirling through the sky you felt as though you were in a snow globe of birds.

24. Rabbits hopping

25. Apples, pears and plums of course

I'm going to stop now before I make myself sad ........

26. Cow parsley! I do NOT miss cow parsley though the others do, I think it's yeuch, though I've always refused to taste it, I do however miss the flags, no chance of getting them here....

About Eggsy Pony:

Eggsy Pony was abandoned with locking stifles when he was just a foal, you can read about his abandonment here, his care is funded via donation.

If you'd like to you can help Eggsy in the following ways:

Follow Eggsy Pony and Friends on Ko-Fi where if you choose you can also buy him a coffee, which isn't really coffee, the coffee money goes towards his feed.

Follow, like and retweet @eggsypony on Twitter

Follow, heart and share eggsypony on Instagram

Make a donation via https://www.gofundme.com/f/z8gpxg

or Paypal : eggsppony@gmail.com

Take a look at Eggsy Pony's Redbubble store, he gets a small % in commission on any item sold which goes toward his feed.

Wednesday, February 9, 2022

Moving to a livery yard

Hello this is Eggsy Pony's new blog where we're going attempt to keep you all enthralled with Eggsy's adventures and those of his friends.

If you've read the last blog post on Eggsy's old blog Overcoming Adversity A Pony's Tale you'll know that over the last two years things have changed dramatically for us, as they have for many.

Due to changes made by our landlord we were forced to relocate the horses to a livery yard while Hansel the goose and Gingee the "yard" cat have had to come home to live with us in the garden and house respectively.

Moving day was 19th January, Boo and Pip went first, they travelled well and settled remarkably in their new stables whilst waiting for Maddie and Eggsy to arrive.

That's when the trouble started. Although she loaded well, Maddie has never been a good traveller and Eggsy refused to load. Mads got impatient waiting for him to load and as she was beginning to get stressed we decided to take her by herself and come back for Eggsy.

It wasn't a long journey but Maddie still managed to hurt herself, she came off the box with a cut above the eye, dripping blood. If you've ever cut your forehead you'll know it bleeds a lot and upon investigation we were relieved to find that it was just a surface wound and that she'd be fine.

Back to Muddy Bottom and Eggsy did actually walk onto the ramp this time but that was it he wasn't going a step further. He resisted the temptation of carrots, haynet and even a bucket of feed and just stood planted on the ramp for an hour and a half. In the end the horse box driver resorted to the old trick of a lunge rope behind the hind quarters and he gradually moved up the ramp and into the box.

Eggsy unloaded like a seasoned traveller and went into his new stable with just a moments hesitation BUT he had no intention of staying there and immediately tried to climb out getting his hooves stuck over the door. He was like a Jack-in-a-Box everytime we lowered his hooves he climbed back up.

The yard owner had a plan, he fixed weaving bars to the door to try and prevent Eggsy from climbing out. It worked for awhile but Eggsy kept on trying to climb out until he exhausted himself.

Our hope was that Eggsy would give up his attempted escape and settle unfortunately this was not to be. Every single time he went in his new stable and the door was shut he'd try and climb out. Of course this was upsetting the other horses and eventually we decided, as the weather was dry, that it would be okay to allow them all to live out 24/7 until we could work through Eggsy's issues and persuade him that a stable isn't a bad place to be especially when you're surrounded by your herd.

So that's where we're at for the moment, everyone is living out 24/7, the yard owner is okay with that as long as we don't turn the paddocks to a bog. Fortunately this winter has been drier than most and the weather has been kind to us so all's well for now though, this being Great Britain, we do, somehow, have to get Eggsy Pony to accept being stabled before the return of "the deluge"!