Reader's story

A princess who ‘stole our hearts’

We couldn’t believe our luck last summer when we got what we had ordered! Castlings Diamanté Diamond Princess took us totally by surprise, writes Rebecca Block.

She was born in the middle of a hot July day to her young maiden dam Beatrice (Castlings Beatrice Bourbon Bonbon Baby), a warm chocolate coloured fancy with a white dusting of icing sugar around her face and ballerina points at her feet. I know you aren’t supposed to have favourites, but there’s always one or two that steal your heart and Beatrice is one of those. She is sassy, quirky and super friendly and has a unique squeaky language all of her own. Being a slim framed maiden I had worried about her first pregnancy, but she just got on with it in her own indomitable way. Quietly and without fuss, while we were busy in the next paddock she gave birth to a stunning grey female sired by champion Essex Stirling. She was striking from the moment she was born with a soft pewter-grey fleece that glistened and flowed like molten silver in the sun. She very quickly became nicknamed Princess – petite, pretty and (Princess) Beatrice’s daughter – it was such an obvious fit.

We knew she was special from the start. Princess was just like a mini-Beatrice – little miss independence, skipping off after our two young cats, nibbling moss by the gate, nonchalantly chewing a piece of clover or hay in the corner of her upturned mouth, like she was puffing on a favourite cigar.

She was so very pretty and boy did she know it, always with her head held high, ears pricked, smiling at the camera. She was cheeky, funny and smart and she stole our hearts. She was the only one that could squeak like Beatrice! Everyone who came to our farm over the summer was drawn to her and I knew we were on to a winner.

Something there…

It was the week before Christmas and it felt as though it hadn’t stopped raining for over a month. I had half noticed out of the corner of my eye that Princess looked a little fluffier on one side of her face and thought maybe it had been flattened by lying on the wet grass. We still couldn’t get her eating hard feed at that stage so she hadn’t been using the cria pen, preferring to hang out under the hay trough in her favourite spot in the shelter and it took me a couple of days to catch up with her properly and have a good look at my suspicion.

There was something there, a hard lump on the right side just under her jaw line, about the size and shape of a small egg. She seemed completely unperturbed by it, there was no sign of discomfort or ill thrift. The most likely cause was an abscess and we assumed it might have contributed to her continued refusal to eat any hard feed.

Christmas Eve was busy; the vet came and we had worming and AD and E paste to administer as well. It was not as straight forward as we had hoped and the prognosis was an enlarged lymph node, possibly caused by a blocked lymph duct or infection.

She was given anti inflammatory pain relief and an antibiotic which we were to continue. After Christmas we had a breakthrough with feeding. Having led her into the cria pen to try to resume hand feeding now that we knew it was not an abscess, she suddenly turned and walked straight to the trough and starting guzzling with the others as if she had always been there. She was so hungry and so excited by this new experience that I thought she might burst! I tried to encourage her to gently acclimatise her stomach to the new feed that the other cria had been enjoying for some time, but that was easier said than done. She continued to feed with great gusto and we rejoiced in her putting on weight over those days, but to me, she felt fragile. • To be continued in the next issue.