08/15 - NullAchtFuenfzehn

Our supply of UK Dodson & Horrell un-molassed sugar beet pulp horse feed runs out tonight so yesterday had done an emergency search for supplies. Normally Angie drives to a German horse feed manufacturer not too far away, who stock the UK product as there is seemingly no German manufacturer of this product. Because of our Rosie's metabolism problems it is more or less the only product we can use as a "carrier" of the half litre of oil she has to get. The other horses get normal sugar beet pulp which, as ridiculous as it sounds, has been re-sweetened with molasses! None of the horses get any cereals - grass in all forms and sugar beet pulp, that's it (well the odd carrot & apple does slip by).

All this thanks to advice from the EU leading Scottish Edinburgh University Vet School.

Well an internet search revealed it was going to be a problem but managed to track down a home delivery animal feed supplier who had the only other brand I think there is in Europe, SpeediBeet from the Dutch company "Pavo". They said they would deliver this morning at 8:30.

And so it was. Charming lady whose business it is - a one woman, no shop, home delivery of horse, dog, cat, poultry, small animal feed. She actually also represents the manufacturer where we get the UK product but she only had the Dutch one on stock. However as the price is a little better, we may well stick with them! Dodson & Horrell is a GBP 50 million company exporting to 40 countries, so our few sacks a year won't harm them. The Dutch Co sales are over 2 billion and they also manufacture in the UK, so perhaps that's where their product is made, I hate to say, perhaps on the same machines as the Dodson line!

However we still have to test the Dutch stuff - just hope it's not 08/15, which is what the weather was today. The Blip is of a neighbouring riding school run by a German girl and her Dutch partner (I possibly mentioned her a few months ago when we had met at a BBQ).

08/15 is a German everyday description for something that is not good, shoddy, low quality or at best average. Came from the legendary water cooled German Army Machine Gun "MG 08" first made in 1908. It was much too heavy and modifications were required, leading to a new version in 1915, hence the "MG 08/15"

WWI had however changed to trench warfare where portability wasn't quite so important. The Brits in cooperation with the Belgians started producing a version of the US Lewis MG at the Birmingham Small Arms factory in time for WWI and then along came the UK's most legendary Vickers MG which the US army were later to buy and have built at their Colt factory.

Nice subject, killing machines. But maybe we need to get up to date with such matters - could soon be we have all the various pre WWI inter-married, incestuous, European Royal Families getting the peasants to blow each others heads off. I think the Bavarian State is in secret illegal talks with the Walloons and the Greeks - the first King of modern Greece was a Bavarian prince. I hope Prince Philip of Corfu and Windsor Castle knows which side to be on - Brexit & Heathrow.