OUR Yorkshire Farm star Amanda Owen has revealed her husband’s secret hatred for a family member he calls “demonic”.
While the shepherdess already has her hands full with husband Clive, 66, their nine children, and numerous live stock, it’s a pony that causes them the most problems.
Amanda, 46, who is star of the Channel 5 show Our Yorkshire Farm, admitted that there is one member of the animal family that is tricky to get on with.
She revealed that her husband has a particular hatred for one of their Shetland ponies, Little Joe, in her book The Yorkshire Shepherdess.
While the beloved family member has helped all her children learn how to ride and be comfortable in the saddle, she joked he could be “stubborn”.
Amanda recalled a particular time when little Joe was “refusing” to get into his trailer and causing a fuss with her husband Clive.
“There is not a bad bone in his body. He doesn’t bite or kick, is never sick or sorry, but has a tendency to be stubborn and an ability to escape from anywhere at a given time,” Amanda wrote.
“Clive hates him. Or rather, he says he hates him, calls him a demon and blames him for every gap that appears in the drystone walls.”
The mother-of-nine said Little Joe also had “supersonic” hearing, being able to hear food coming from “a thousand paces” away.
This meant that the small horse would run to wherever food was being given to other animals and demand a meal, much to the frustration of Clive.
“Many times, Clive would return to the yard, red in the face, and announce that Little Joe’s days were numbered,” Amanda joked.
“And if he got colic from eating all the sheep food, then he absolutely deserved it and there’d be no vet coming to save him.”
Unfortunately, Little Joe has aged a lot in recent years and cannot run around annoying Clive as much as he used to in his youth.
The mother-of-nine said: “He gets extra rations, a cost stable every night and recently I have even seen Clive throw an extra armful of meadow hay over his stable door before bedtime.”
Amanda shared images of the horse to social media earlier this year, revealing that the “senior” cob was “nearly 40 years old”.
“We think the secret to his longevity is that he is a bit spoilt. Maybe that he keeps young company too,” she wrote to Twitter.
“Anyway, as he is long in the tooth it goes without saying that he sometimes needs some dentistry work,” she added.
Little Joe is one of two small horses the family have on the farm, also owning Tony the pony, who is looked after by Amanda’s young daughter Clemmie.
“Clem loves Tony. She’s got all sorts of ideas on what she wants to do with him and all the rest of it,” Amanda once said on the show.
“The only thing that slightly worries me about that relationship is she thinks that Tony is going to grow big as she grows bigger.
“She thinks he’s going to be a big horse. I don’t see any reason to change that thought. In a kind of way, he has expanded but only sideways rather than upwards.”
Our Yorkshire Farm is available to watch on My5.
