3rd May 2020

It's meant to be one of Newmarket's biggest weekend's right now with the Guineas meeting taking place in a parallel universe where there is no coronavirus but as it is we are all still stuck at home thinking of what may have been. The loss of the Guineas and the huge Bank Holiday crowds that it brings will be a massive loss to all of the town's businesses and I only hope that they can keep afloat through this crisis as people will be flocking to all the pubs and restaurants once it is safe to do so.

The BHA this week released the programme for the big races in the coming weeks with the plan to start racing again in the middle of May. I think that's a bit optimistic but I really hope we can get some racing on again by the end of this month or early June at the latest.
With that in mind, we took some of the team over to the grass gallops this weekend for a stretch of their legs and we weren't alone and lots of other trainers were doing the same. It was the first time some of the horses had done any serious work in a while so they had a good blow afterwards but that is to be expected and there's plenty of time to get them fully fit.

I've been putting my spare afternoons to good use by constructing a pen for some chickens and this week I picked up six ex-battery hens who have already been laying plenty of eggs and have settled in really well. I made use of an old dog kennel we had which is now their coop and their garden is a nice area that was just full of weeds so it has made use of the space. They seem pretty easy animals to deal with and the dogs haven't bothered about them so hopefully they can have a long and happy life at the yard.