Caz counts it down

hiddenshadow

:eek: That hoof! I bet he feels much better now that it's taken care of.

Also :eek: and on the shoeing prices - wow! I used to pay $80-100 just for regular trim/shoe of 4 feet.

What does linseed do? Shiny coat?

cazmanian_minx

Robbie very kindly charges me mates' rates - I am forever trying to press more money on him! Yes, micronised linseed for coat and skin, it's a good source of oil that they can digest easily, so it helps Merlin hold his weight in winter too - he gets a 150ml scoop, Finn gets a heaped serving spoon. They also have a little bit of soaked copra (coconut kernel - seems a really odd thing to feed horses, but they do better on it than unmolassed beet) and a forage balancer, that's all. It does make them very cheap to feed - a 20kg sack of linseed is £20 and will last 6 months, a sack of copra is about £17 and lasts about 5 months, and the forage balancer is 19p per day per horse. So my annual hard feed bill for the two of them is about £220 and my hay bill this year is £300.

People always say I must be rich to have horses, but I reckon they're far cheaper to run than two children!!

hiddenshadow

Nice. I always had TBs who lost weight just standing around, let alone being ridden.

cazmanian_minx

Just finished work for the day - this is why I don't often volunteer for the files coming in at 6pm due back at 6am, but Mr Minx is away and I thought I'd pick up some extra work. To be fair, I'd have got started on it earlier if I hadn't been doing something for Mr RPC and I took breaks for my regular Monday night call with Mum and for cooking.

Talking of Mr RPC, remember I was an idiot and turned down his offer of a phone? Well, I'm starting to need to make more and more calls for him and it would be useful if the office number on the bottom of my email signature for him could be diverted to a mobile instead of going straight to voicemail and then emailing me the voicemail, so I raised it again today and since he's about to get an upgrade, I'm probably going to have his old phone and he'll get a SIM on the office package for it It's O2, so I should be able to use TuGo through my broadband, which I understand is vastly more reliable than Orange Signal Boost (which only connects when it feels like it and usually takes two or three reboots to get working).

Right, bed time.

Verbatim

Busy indeed Caz. Hope you slept well.

cazmanian_minx

Verbatim wrote: »

Busy indeed Caz. Hope you slept well.

Ish, thank you. It took me about half an hour of reading to wind down and then I woke up an hour before the alarm went off, although that might have been because the dog was slowly but steadily pushing me out of bed :rotfl: (She's only a 14.5kg cocker spaniel, but it's amazing how much space she can take up when she stretches out!!)

So, as you can see, I'm finishing work relatively early tonight It's been another busy day and after a quick tot up, I'm thrilled to find that I've done £160-worth of work in 2 days and that's not counting any eBay money.

brizzledfw

All sounding good. Great to hear

cazmanian_minx

Finished at a sensible time this evening, as Mr Minx got back from his trip away at about 6. On the downside, not as much dosh earned.

I really MUST go through my accounts tomorrow and figure out how I'm going to pay the tax bill Mr Minx and I were talking about money in the car on Saturday and agreed we're going to go through all our outgoings and maybe juggle things around, because at the moment I'm paying interest on the money I borrowed to buy the crofts without having the income from them to cover it (there's a payment of about £3,600 a year which will get transferred to me) and I'm stretched as a result. Given the fee on his 1-2-3 account has gone up, it may make sense to shift all the qualifying direct debits to his account from mine.

cazmanian_minx

Another 4.5 hours for Mr RPC today, work is really picking up there and I'm enjoying it

I had a PM from MSE Badger late last night, apparently yesterday I hit 10 years on MSE and so I have a shiny new badge this morning. Can't believe it's been a decade!!

Storm Gertrude is due to hit in the small hours and the wind is forecast to be over 70mph by the morning, so if I disappear for a day or two it's because the power's gone off

cazmanian_minx

Gertrude did her best, but all animals and buildings are in one piece and the power and the broadband stayed on. One of my grandmothers was a Gertrude, it must be an omen

I'm not doing Friday scores today, because (a) I've only just finished work after starting at about 7.15 this morning and (b) I'm going to be working through the weekend, so I'll do them as at Sunday.

The tax bill has been paid. It nearly wasn't - I put the transfer through from the mortgage offset only to find that their Faster Payments is next banking day rather than same banking day and it probably wasn't going to hit the current account until Monday. I thought I was going to have to pay the extra whatever percent HMRC charges you for using a credit card until I remembered that it was Mr Minx's pay day - he's very kindly lent me the cash until Monday

I also spoke to the Crofting Commission today and found out that their backlog for registrations is currently about three months, so I may not get the keys for down the road until the end of April. Slightly inconvenient when I have a roofer ready to get started in March. The very lovely lady I spoke to said she'd see what she could do, so fingers crossed.