Harmony and Horses

Well we don't have too much harmony with the horses at the moment and purely because NiQi and I are quite frustrated with having to walk soooooooo very far every afternoon to find them.  They have access to every available bit of space at the moment on our neighbours' property as there are no gates closing off the various fenced areas.  They walk in and out at leisure and I guess they have a plan each day, where they walk up from us along the now well worn path that they have created, and proceed to go from one camp to another, going further and further away until by the end of the day they are in the furthest camp of all.

NiQi and I bought rope and yesterday tied off a few sections hoping that it would stop them walking so far....alas to no avail.  Lunch time today, I took a walk to see where they might be and already they were chomping on the most delectable grass in the furthest camp from us.  I let them be and came back home....

So later this afternoon Niqi and I will have to change our strategy and close off different areas...this time using more rope, much more rope, and I guess we will have to criss-cross it so it makes it more difficult for them to push their way through and under.

The fact that they walk so far away from us every day isn't the only reason that we want to keep them contained to certain areas though, it is also because our neighbours' place, sadly, isn't as neat and tidy as ours.  There are pits of broken glass, cut wires lying in the open grass and plenty of thorn bushes that they pass between and scratch themselves on.  Every day we noticed another scratch on one or other of them that needs to be doctored and they are tending to look quite scruffy and neglected, when the reality is, that isn't so at all.

If it wasn't for the fact that at least they have more grazing than us, then we would opt to keep them home.  I certainly hope that with the couple of days rain we have had so far, our grazing starts to recover soon....and will grow quickly so that we can get back to having harmonious horses....

This is the fence that our flock of sheep were herded through when stolen last December