Every day Taktur has his food to make him big and strong as well as maintaining his Handsome Princeness.  Note the pink bucket too.  Extra gorgeous now.

But there are others that covet Taktur’s bucket and they don’t give up easily.

That white chicken with the red leg ring means business.  She follows the food and she is tough.  Always there.

On a plus note, Taktur is not scared of chickens or birds under his legs and he is fairly unflappable (see what I did there? geddit?)

Our chickens are opportunists with no boundaries.  Drop it and lose it.

Chicken in a bucket, anyone?

I believe in true honesty. I try not to sugar-coat this blog.  Warts and all is how it is.

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I knew we had to keep little cattie in for at least two weeks but I always get so hot at night and I slightly opened the bedroom velux window (a window that is built into the roof and slants to open).

Little cattie made her escape first thing on Sunday morning and, since then, we have all been searching every shed, every hole in the ground, everywhere for her.  This is not made easy as we are coming up to lambing and I cannot take BeAnne with me, despite being the only one little cattie adored.  It would be wrong to do this.

I leave food in the two sheds by our house that she could get into and, the night before last, one lot was eaten which got my hopes up but then last night’s food was untouched.

Perhaps little cattie is making her way back to her previous owner who lives, as the crow flies, probably 3 miles away.  I really hope so.

On a positive note, where we are is perfect cat territory – endless bunnies, mice, birds and shelter everywhere.  There are no predators and outdoor cats do very well here.  Little cattie was, according to her previous owner, a keen hunter.  Our roads are not busy, either.

What can I say? It was totally my fault.  I feel gutted, a truly awful animal owner and nothing like this has ever happened to me before.  I have let little cattie down.  I think she saw us as her captors and not her friends, though she adored BeAnne.  I can only pray she is safe and well.

Her Maj is doing ok. She seems to have become used to being on her own and just follows one of us wherever we go.

So now you know.

I doubt anyone will ever trust us with either another cat or dog, to be honest.

If there is one thing I know – it is that Iacs, aka Mr Bimble, loves a neep so this morning I gave him half a neep for a present.

His little face lit up. He was very happy.

I thought by putting it in an empty silage box, he could get at it better.

Klængur approached to see what Iacs had got and to ask why hadn’t he been given his own neep.

To be fair, Klængur had all the root veg peelings to himself in a silage box, which he chose to ignore.  I had to gather them up later and distribute them fairly.

But Iacs is kind.  He let Klængur have the bits that dropped off his neep.

And Iacs took his neep outwith the box.

His method of eating his neep is to scrape his teeth along the top flat surface.

I hate them eating out of the mud but it was Mr Bimble’s choice.

And then Kappi turned up so the others ate up very quickly because Kappi would’ve had the lot – luckily for all he was the wrong side of the fence.

A neep is not a turnip. It is a swede.  A swede is a rotabagga or rutabaga.  So, now you know and Iacs loves them!

Sometimes if they are cheap in the supermarket, I buy a few to give to Iacs.  It is nice to see him smile.

Dreki is not brilliant at loading.  In fact, he is pretty terrible at loading so I vowed, after the last rugby scrum to get him home, he would learn.  To load would be part of his (and all the youngster’s) training.  I hate a battle.

And I had a Cunning Plan.  To feed him in the van – so I opened it up and showed Dreki his purple bucket.

After an initial not-sure sniff, Dreki put his front feet on the ramp.

I moved the bucket inwards and Dreki thought about it.

He began to see what I wanted.

Dreki is a quick learner.

In he goes because there is a bucket of his food in there.

Dreki is not a stupid horse at all.

He thinks while he is learning to trust me and he has a huge amount of wanting to do right.

I constantly told Dreki what a good little boy he was. as well as lots of encouragement plus little bits of carrot that happened about my person.

Et voilà!  Mission accomplished with minimum fuss and Dreki never said no once.  What a good boy!

After his food, we did the statutory in-hand training.

On both reins.

It is all about listening, trust and body-language – his and mine.

And then I walked Dreki up the ramp just to make sure he knew what he was learning.  He didn’t even remember that he didn’t do this.

Meanwhile, the other two were working on their self-expression.

We encourage this.  Efstur likes to eat his bucket (thought his Uncle Kappi’s talent is to throw his empty bucket over the gate!).

After all these efforts, I took the old man out for a little potter.

Now, we are a team – over 20 years together.

These two, ‘Ster and Puzzah, have made friends and it has turned into a lovely bromance.

When ‘Ster dared to go into the hill for a brief sojourn,  upon his return, Puzzah rammed the crap out of him.  I think that is the only way to say it.  He was furious with his friend and they had a huge argument about “What time do you call this?  You just left me and might as well have vanished.  You didn’t even bother telling me you were going.  Is this all I mean to you?”

They have mock battles now, which is, I think, playing and not half as violent as the beating up ‘Ster got when he came home.  Puzzah likes to nuzzle ‘Ster and then bite his horns, which is very odd behaviour and I have no idea why he does it.  It is not something I have ever seen before.  ‘Ster doesn’t seem to mind, either but he has always been a bit odd.

But they love each other so that’s all that really matters.

A fine bromance.