Like everyone else, behind our idyllic lifestyle of Shires, chooks, pets and mayhem the reality is that we both work full time to maintain it and it doesn’t take much to end it all. For weeks we have been worried that the company I work for wasn’t going to survive the effects of the financial crisis crunch. Despite skin tight tender submissions, cold canvassing, remote lead follow-ups… it just wasn’t enough and yesterday I was told I didn’t have work next week and technically I have been stood down with termination to follow.

I’m scared, worried and disappointed, how will we survive? Will we lose all that we love? The unemployment lines are longer, the competition beastly and wide eyed fear is driving increasing numbers of desperate people to the wall. Homes, families and sanity may or may not survive and yet it’s a temporary crisis so we are told…. not when all that you treasure is lost. So if you can offer me a job in Toowoomba or the Lockyer Valley I’ll very gladly consider anything and send you my resume.

 
But my employment fears fade when I’m with our beauties and their last 4 weeks has been as eventful as ours. Bewilderment, frustration, knowledge, waste are just some of the words that flood into my mind as I set out transcribing the latest. Our Pearl was successfully inseminated last Tuesday, a fantastic result given the journey leading up to that point and the magnificent UK stallion, Arclid Minshul Monty (see photo), will bring some fresh blood into the country, assuming the pregnancy progresses of course.

So where were we….. the first dose was dead (no way to tell when/how this happened), Pearl and Rebel had been delivered to the second vet as the first vet was off on holiday and couldn’t wait on Pearl to cycle again…. well little did we know that was going to be a wasted trip. After 8 days I received a call advising me Pearl wasn’t cycling (time of year apparently) and that we would need to wean the foal, set up lights and use countless drugs if we wanted to persist with AI….. Politeness wasn’t my first reaction I can tell you.

So we picked them up and were lectured again about lights, cycling, etc… Curtly I advised I didn’t agree with their assessment. We’d already spoken to Southbrook AI centre who were fairly positive Pearl wouldn’t have stopped cycling and it was just a matter of working out where her cycle was at. Trick was we had to get the semen from the vet out to Southbrook, before we delivered Pearl… not as simple as it sounded. Frozen semen needs a dry shipper to transport…. where do you get one? you hire them.

Toowoomba was the closest shipper hire agent to us, so off we went (45mins). From there it was back to Minden to collect the semen (80 mins), then back through Toowoomba and out to Southbrook to deliver (100 mins). Of course we got lost finding the dry shipper pick up point, vet wanted further proof we’d paid the bill before handing over the semen, the dry shipper vented going up the range freaking us out (turns out it’s supposed to vent when canister is not flat) and we got lost again finding the AI centre (I’d downloaded dodgy directions off the net).

It was a relief to safely transfer the semen to the Eqivet tank after such a long day. Robyn (AI vet) was fantastic, despite being flat out she explained thousands of things and answered all of our questions, not sure how many clients she has that are so hands on but she managed us with ease and left us feeling very secure about her skills. We delivered Pearl the following day without Rebel, having decided to wean him off mum by staying home. Pearl wasn’t too stressed and once food was placed in front of her it was a case of foal… what foal? Rebel didn’t seem to have any issues either so it was an easy transition.

Pearl took her time to cycle after all the drugs but when she did everything developed nicely and as stated earlier, was successfully inseminated last Tuesday. Duchess and Rebel have had their feet done, the vet has checked out a little lump on Rebel’s chin (turns out nothing to worry about), we’ve been doing loads of halter/lead training and both are coming along nicely. We received our flights yesterday so I finally get to practise plaiting. Still working on my truck license and with this unexpected stand down maybe I can schedule time for practise in between interviews.