You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink.

OK, I can tell you where to find my blog, but you’ll only read it if it interests you.

It’s flogging a dead horse.

Or a waste of effort which doesn’t really belong in the menagerie…but then shouldn’t the dead horse have gone to the fellmonger?

Don’t put the cart before the horse.
It’s much easier for a horse to pull a load than to push it or perhaps you just have to do things in the right order.

Hold your horses.
Obviously this comes from holding the reins to prevent the horse-drawn carriage from setting off too soon, but now it means, “Wait!”

I could eat a horse. I’m as hungry as a horse.
I’ve heard both expressions. Whichever one you use, a horse is a big animal!

You wolfed that down.
With all those nature programmes showing feeding frenzies, I think this gives a graphic message about table manners.

A wolf in sheep’s clothing.
This is my first quotation from the Bible (NIV). Matthew Chapter 7 verse 15 Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly they are ferocious wolves.

I might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb.
When it was a hanging offence to steal a sheep, you might as well take the risk for a big one. Now it is used figuratively in situations which might seem rashly ambitious.

Mutton dressed as lamb.
Perhaps this should be on the table rather than on the farm. I’ve heard it mainly in the context of an older woman dressing in clothes more suitable for a trendy youngster.

What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

Another culinary saying, this time about equal rights, perhaps.

They sent me on a wild goose chase.

I’ve never hunted wild geese, but I did try chasing pigeons around an outdoor café as a child. Either way, it’s a lot of effort for no reward!
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The early bird catches the worm.

Another saying with alternatives. First come first served.

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush

Something which the bird didn’t know in the French poem “Le renard et le corbeau”  or is it the other way round?  The greedy crow opened its beak and dropped the morsel it already had!

Your chickens will come home to roost.

This is about consequences. A corresponding Biblical quotation (NIV) is Hosea 8 v 7 They sow the wind and reap the whirlwind.

Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched.

Credit cards are all very well, but you need to be able to pay at the end of the accounting period.

Birds of a feather flock together.

And so do people with similar interests and enthusiasms.

Nice weather for ducks.

We’ve had plenty of rain this summer.

Like a duck to water.

Have you ever seen ducklings on an early excursion? You would think they had done it before: some people have the good fortune to take to new activities in a similar manner.

Don’t act the goat.

Are goats really stupid? Silly sheep is a corruption of blessed sheep!

There isn’t room to swing a cat.

This is not an animal at all. It refers to a cat’o’nine tails- an instrument of punishment.

That put the cat among the pigeons.

It caused a disturbance. Someone probably predicted that feathers would fly.