Tuesday 11 October 2016

My favourite type of animal. #Blogtober16

I am taking part in Blogtober16 and will be writing posts with various themes/prompts throughout October....Today's prompt is my favourite type of animal.....

This is a really hard post to write....I don't actually have a favourite animal.....I am not an animal person now. We don't have any pets and there is no animals which I really love so I am going to write about the animals which I had as a child....
When I was younger I was a big animal lover. I used to live on the farm and there were plenty of animals to care about.....Horses, cows, sheep, cats, chickens and dogs.

Not long after moving onto the farm my dad decided to buy some calves to rear and breed (just like the one pictured)... When we got them they were only young so we had to feed them with milk to start off....It had to be timed right my dad, brother, my grandad and I went in with buckets so they all got fed at once or there would be a stampede....

They were all named after characters in The Flintstones apart from....Panda the bull who had black marks round his eyes and Red dot and Blue dot who were a bit poorly when we got them and needed medicine the only way to tell them apart from the others was to mark them.....Marker pens did the trick! 

We had lots of horses and ponies over the years.....Scampi, Chips, Toska, Nero, Beano, Chester, Spartan, Pie, Sasha, Mantus, Garrick, Carmen, Jake, Storm and many more...

My first pony was Scampi which I got when I was about 3. He was a tiny Shetland pony just like this one pictured. He knew I was too young to stop and control him so whenever I rode him myself he would head for the trees.....Branches low enough for him to get under but not me.....Little devil! 

Chips was my second pony.....My dad rescued her from being slaughtered.....The person who owned her wanted rid as he was short on money.....He said to my dad if you get a trailer to get her you can have her for £30....It was a mad dash but we saved her after the drama of finding our trailer with a puncture and having to borrow one.....She was beautiful to look at but imagine a horse with PMS. That was her.....She bit, kicked, galloped off with me on her back, threw me off but I did love her.....We bought a stallion and she fell pregnant.....She had a foal called Beano....After she had him she chilled out a lot and he was such a character....She was sold on to my dads friend as she was too small for me and had another foal....She may have been evil to humans but she was a great mother.....

We of course had dogs on the farm......Mouse the guard dog....Who used to be the guard dog at my dads yard where he kept his skip hire wagons....Mouse got the sack....He was a rubbish guard dog hence the name.....There was Millie the Border Collie who wasn't a trained sheep dog but thought she was and Judy the Springer Spaniel who my brother and I found tied to a fence up the lane....We rescued/adopted her.

We had Smokey the fat cat.....He rarely left the house. When he did he would try to terrorize the other animals on the farm....Cows included. He thought he was a tiger. Then there was Mufty....The runt of the litter....She was tiny and never grew much more then kitten size.....She did have her own kitten.....My mother was sorting out the washing one day and Mufty was snuggled down in it....My mam felt something wet and threw it on the floor.....It turned out the be a kitten! She only had the one.....He was called Gizmog....

Do you have a favourite animal?


4 comments :

  1. You had so many animals! I used to ride ponies at a slaughter yard. They were all saved by the daughter and we rode them. They were all characters and many liked to try to throw us off but I held on tight! #Blogtober16

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  2. What a lovely story, you could have written My Family and Other Animals :) I always wondered what it would be like to live on a farm, at least you have that experience.

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  3. Oh wow lots of animal stories there! I always wished I'd grown up on a farm. Exciting stuff! #Blogtober16

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  4. what a lovely way to grow up surrounded by all those animals! Scampi is so cute! #Blogtober16

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