Alys is quite a character.

She was the one who was on BBC1’s Vet 24/7 with the prolapse.

OK now but retired from the breeding list because of the likelihood of recurrence when pregnant. Shame because she is a good mum and desperate to have her own cria – when we take them over to the field Bankside, she snorts and gallops up hill as fast as she can to prance around where the boys can see her.

It obviously got too much at one point with the new cria arriving in the summer and one night she was chasing and biting one of them and not just a friendly nibble. Thought I might have to separate her off from all of the cria but thankfully she soon settled again. Something to watch for though.

She does do the friendly nibble of me – usually when she feels I am being slow getting food into a bucket she can access.

Yesterday was a first – when filling the water trough in the field, I was pouring the water in from a 20 litre container but steadily so it did not splash everywhere. She likes fresh water anyway but was fascinated by the water stream and kept sticking her nose in it and trying to drink from it as it was pouring in. She kept coming back time after time so it was clearly not accidental.