Lauren Shannon’s eventing blog: chicken wars on our new yard
It’s been a busy week here on the Shannon Eventing yard, gearing up for heading back out to events again! It feels like ages since we were at a competition — yet when I look in the diary it is only 2 weeks.
We are off to Milton Keynes this weekend with the young horses, so this week has been filled with trips out showjumping and cross-country schooling. We are so lucky to have Field Farm Cross Country Course on our door step — in fact we share a drive — so it is very easy to get out and about from our yard!
I also had jumping lessons on all the more experienced mares this past Monday, with Caroline Moore. They are all jumping brilliantly after a bit of a break, so I can’t wait to get them out and about again. They head to their first advanced in just under a month now — it’s amazing how time flies.
We are all settling in to life on our new yard well, and the “little things” we want to do are slowly getting ticked off the list. I was desperate to get some more chickens once the yard was finished, as we lost a load to the fox last year, and I was determined to have a huge chicken run on the yard.
Remarkably, fellow event rider Francis Whittington must have been reading my mind-as he offered up 2 lovely hens and possibly the most evil cockerel I have ever met — ironically called Batman. We had been discussing chickens at last year’s Badminton (yes, I am that sad) and he mentioned this horrible Batman who kept chasing his son around the chicken coop. I happily offered to rehome him, as Mr Fox could probably do with being put back in his place!
As these things go, I didn’t pick Batman up until a few weeks ago, but I think he’s fab. I’ve had to beat him off once with a walking stick, and once with a slipper, but we seem to have come to a mutual agreement to leave 1 another alone. The only problem I seem to have is that he keeps attacking both of my working pupils — which, while hilarious, could possibly result in an expensive lawsuit relating to work-related chicken injuries.
To be honest though, every yard needs a guard dog— ours just happens to be of the poultry variety.
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Lauren
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Event rider Lauren Shannon blogged on Horseandhound.co.uk from June 2011 until September 2014. Born in Brighton, she lived in America from the age of three to 16, returning to the UK to go to university after she finished school. After university she worked for Mark and Tanya Kyle before setting up her own yard in Leicestershire. Her best result to date was finishing 9th at the Land Rover Burghley Horse Trials with her top horse, Zero Flight.