Welcome to my blog - a diary about living with donkeys, notes about care, my training sessions and the absolute pleasure of donkey companionship.


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Friday, October 18, 2013

Fog and mushrooms!

We are well and truly fogged in here!  The forecast says the fog is supposed to lift and give way to sunny  afternoons but no way!  It's a thick enveloping blanket.  Gloomy and damp feeling.

Poor donkeys seem to reflect the mood.  They spend much of the day up in their forest paddock. It's a small climb but the difference in elevation seems to make it it a tad less foggy.  However with the damp Fall comes .... mushrooms!  Eeee gad - they pop out overnight in amazing variation!  I am quite familiar and comfortable gathering chanterelles and oyster mushrooms (yummy!) but do we have those .... No!

Instead we have a melange of unidentified specimens - orange, brown, beige, white and red.  Every morning I crawl around looking for the overnight sprouting of new fungi but there's no way I am able to find them all.  And the donkeys seem to want to EAT them!  Or some of them ...

There has been some diarrhea lately and yesterday I looked out from my studio and noticed that while everyone was grazing, Siog looked positively miserable - head drooping and just ... yucky.  So I grabbed her halter and took her out (that's always the first thing I try and this is a good way of data collecting, in my opinion.)

Once out, she perked up and seemed absolutely fine, even trotting and eating the roadside brush with gusto - phew!  But again today, diarrhea (sorry for the graphic detail!)  I have started to give a small mash with ground flax, a vitamin powder and a day or two a week, I add psyllium.  So hopefully IF they are eating some mushrooms, this will help.

Meanwhile, I have finished the work for my up-coming art exhibition, except for minor details and packing it up.  Next weekend, I am teaching two workshops, then off to the show!

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