Foaling Anxiety

I am going to try to answer your questions here, Rae. I don't know what is up with all of the problems trying to leave comments, but I wish they would try to get it fixed.

One thing that you said in your comment was: "So who knows???" and that is a great summery. We have been foaling mares for many, many years and I still get nervous and anxious with each one. I lose many hours of sleep and when I do sleep it is so light that the lest noise startles me. Our foaling stall is right outside our living room door, so that makes it very convenient.

My DH just goes to bed and says, "Wake me up when you see feet." He figures I worry enough for both of us. But if he doesn't have to work the next day he does occasionally set his alarm and checks the mare throughout the night to let me get some rest.

We have had mares foal at all hours, day and night. All mares are totally different but I do take notes on each mare and they usually follow the same pattern year after year. We have one mare who stands and eats hay, stops, yawns, then yawns again, then lies down and pops the baby out. She shows no signs of foaling other than yawning.

We have had mares who just turn and look at their bellies on one side, then turn and look at their bellies on the other side, then lay down and foal. We had one mare who would try to destroy the stall. One of our mares was an embryo transplant mare for many years for a popular show stallion and she thinks that it takes a whole crew of people for her to foal. She will definitely let you know when her time has come, she wants you to hold her hoof and tell her to breathe.

People do not understand why we watch our horses so closely and won't leave home if we have one close to foaling but we have had so many times that if we hadn't been there we would have lost both the mare and the foal, we take it seriously because they are our responsibility.

Another sign that you can look for but probably not with Georgia is by opening the vulva. Mares will normally be pink inside but will become very red during or right before labor. Their udder can look tight without being tight also, the only way that you can tell that the udder is strutted to the max is by touching it, again this is probably not possible with your mare.

I would just about bet you that your mare has the same bloodlines as mine. Our mare is a registered TW and she is beautiful but totally nuts, we took her in on trade from someone who rescued her, they thought that she had been mistreated and would come around but she never did and she ended up kicking the lady. From what I have been told about the bloodline they are the smoothest of the smooth but are crazy and very high strung. The good news is that we have had two foals by her and she has not passed this trait down to her foals when bred to a level headed stallion.

We have thirty something horses at the moment and we have had tons of abscesses, we have even had two get abscesses in two feet at once. They are very painful and disturbing to see but they eventually blow out the top of the hoof and all the pain is relieved. You can have a Vet or Farrier open them up but we only did that once because it really didn't help that much.

As for the bute, we don't use it. We do use banamine and it has it's problems too. I have even been told by a Vet that she doesn't recommend the injectable because it can cause a rotting hole at the injection site. We have given a lot of shots and have never had a problem with it but I guess the paste is safer.

Animal Cruelty

The warm weather is over for us. I brought Bootstrap back to the barn and put him in a cage with lots of straw. He just was not strong enough to deal with the cruelty of the rest of the chickens. I put him back in the goat/chicken shed and they ran him out, got him down and were trying to kill him when I rescued him. It wasn't only the roosters that attacked him but also the hens.

If you listen to those who say that humans are the only animal that kills for sport or that humans are more cruel than any other species, you can pretty well bet that they have not had much animal experience.

Dogs, Coyotes, Wolves and big Cats with go into a pen with animals that have no way of escape and kill everything there and not eat anything. The excuse that they are given is that they are teaching their young to kill, but that doesn't hold true when it is just one dog, coyote or wolf.

I have heard of a pen full of pigs being killed by a pack of adult dogs with nothing being eaten. The same thing happened to several Alpacas that I read about and I know of goats being attacked and severely injured by well fed neighborhood dogs.

Chickens have no compassion, they simply eliminate the weakest among them. A hen will peck another hen's chicks to death for no good reason.

Goats will injure each other with or without horns. Many does miscarry after being butted hard by another doe. A doe with newborn kids can be horribly vicious to another doe's newborn kids even injuring or killing them.

Horses are brutal to each other. We had a mare who was close to foaling kick another mare's newborn foal as hard as she could, the poor little guy went rolling head over heels but somehow was not injured. I even saw a friend's mare kick her own young foal after biting it several times, she kicked her so hard that it was a miracle that she didn't have broken bones, just because she tried to eat some grain with her mother.

If you are still not convinced that animals can be cruel, just watch your kitty cat with a mouse, bird, chipmunk, baby rabbit or squirrel. They love to torture before the kill.

While The Cat's Away

My DH took yesterday off to get the new horse and Zircon gelded plus have the Vet sleeve two mares. The geldings went well and the sleevings went really well. When the Vet announced that both mares were empty, we breathed a sigh of relief. He thought that was funny because usually when he tells people that their mares aren't bred, they are disappointed.

These two mares are 3 and 4 yr. old riding horses and not broodmares. Jazz, our stallion, got out with them on Christmas day while we were away and they both looked bred. We hadn't seen them come into heat since then either. So, we were expecting Thanksgiving babies.

My dear Husband put the new horse in my goat lot after his traumatic event, he was moving slowly and he is a quiet horse anyway so we didn't think it would be a problem. We went to town for several hours and when we returned home, the fillies in the main pasture had broken a strand of the goat lot fencing trying to get to the new horse (haven't named him yet).

The strand that they broke was holding my gates, so all of my goats got out. Which was fine because they get out all of the time anyway. The problem was that Cooter had somehow gotten loose from his stake-out. So when we got home there was all of the goats together as one happy family. One of the does was breathing very hard and I assume that it was from running from Cooter.

I had planned on putting Cooter back in with the two does in December, so that they would kid in warmer weather. I wasn't going to breed my milking doe until Spring, so that we could have milk all winter. Now all I can do is write down the date that he got loose with them and hope for the best. My milk doe was clean, so I don't think that he got to her but the other two acted pretty receptive.

This type of thing always happens when you are away from home. I know that I shouldn't be this way but I would just prefer to stay home all of the time. I am fairly sure that Jazz planned his Christmas day surprise well before Christmas Eve, he knew that we would be gone all day.

This is the first time Cooter has gotten loose, I thought at first that he must have gotten his halter off but he didn't. Somehow he had released the bull snap, that takes some skill if you don't have fingers, but desperate times call for desperate action.

Tracfone

I had to get my DH a cell phone so that I would always be able to reach him when he is away from home and I have some emergency. Like mares foaling or stallions escaping their pens and getting in with each other. That is always a good way to get your heart rate up. I can deal with mares foaling but when the two studs get together, I feel a little overwhelmed.

The problem that I have is that he never seems to have it with him. He does faithfully take it to work with him but he leaves it lying here by the computer most of the rest of the time.

We can't afford a cell phone plan. I can't justify it with our measly income, so we have used a Tracfone for the last 3 or 4 years. I can usually get a good coupon code, so that it doesn't cost us that much.

I do get a little upset that at both places of employment where my DH works, they have his Tracfone number and call him, burning up my hard earned minutes. I believe that if they need to get in touch with him then they should pay for his minutes or supply him with a phone.

I purchased minutes for the phone last night on the Tracfone website. I bought the one year card with 400 minutes, then used the coupon code 52057 to get 200 bonus minutes. I had previously purchased double minutes for the life of the phone, so that doubled the 400 minutes. This was added to units and time that I had left, so that took me to January of 2010 with 1026 minutes for $100. This coupon code expires sometime in August.

I told him this morning that just because I got a good deal and he has a lot of minutes doesn't mean that he can use them to gab for long periods of time with anyone but me. I will be watching.

Disappointed

I stayed up all night, well, I did lay down at 4:30 this morning, then got back up at 5:30, then laid back down until 7:00, still no baby. Quizzy got turned out of the foaling stall, she is back out in her muddy, grassless lot. The DH said that she was waxed heavy this morning when he turned her out.

I will be running between the neighbor's house and animals to our house and animals all day. If Quizzy doesn't foal during the day today, I will be up all night again unless she foals early tonight, that would be nice.

The neighbor's rain guage says that we got another two inches of rain overnight. The storms passed through quickly and weren't too bad. However, after this rain, I am not looking forward to going into the goat lot, but I don't have any choice. It's a dangerous job but someone has to do it...

Rain, Mud and Wind

My husband talked to a neighbor last night while hunting for my dog. Angel had disappeared, which is not like her at all. She never gets too far away from her goats. But when it was time to feed yesterday evening, she was no where to be found and didn't come when called.

The neighbor raises bottle calves and has an abundance of them, people just keep bringing him more all of the time. He has suffered many losses this year due to the weather.

He has very nice huts set up for them with lots of straw but he says that the huts have to have a door and he just can't keep all of this rain out. Then he brought to my husband's attention that with every rain that we are getting, it is being followed by lots of wind. This does dry the ground up somewhat but having a strong wind after a cold rain is very hard on young animals. His bottle calves are getting pneumonia and even with antibiotics, vitamins and minerals, he isn't having too much luck saving them.

Not having a dry place to bed down is hard on any animal but especially the young and with the weather that we are having there just isn't any such thing as a dry spot. Which brings me back to Angel, we had called and called for her and she didn't show up. I did think that I had heard her rabies tag tinkling a couple of times inside our barn/house. I looked around but didn't see her. My husband was very upset because he doesn't want a dog that runs the neighborhood. I just couldn't believe that she would leave the goats like that.

Finally later in the evening I detected some movement in the corner of our barn/house, back behind our lawn tractor. She was hiding in a nice dry spot, she knows that she isn't allowed in this barn. My husband had mercy on her because as he pointed out, she is just wanting someplace dry to sleep to get ready for her night watch.

Our goat/chicken shed is continually wet this spring, we clean it out and put fresh straw down but with the goats and dog tracking in and out in the wet and mud, it doesn't stay dry for very long. Goats are also very indiscriminate about where they use the bathroom, they just go wherever the urge hits them. So, with the lot being nothing but a mud pit and the shed not being much better, Angel sought and found a warm, dry spot for a much needed rest.

Another dilemma that we are facing is that we don't have anyplace to put the new foal and his mother to make room for the other two mares that are overdue to foal. Under normal circumstances we turn the mares with their new foals out on pasture as soon as the mares have had a few days to recoup. But this weather makes it impossible to do that.

My DH keeps saying that we are never having March babies again but I keep telling him that this is the first year that we have had these kind of troubles. Our neighbor with the calves has never had these problems before either. It rained here all night again last night and the wind is suppose to be strong today with the temperature dropping all day down to 30º tonight.

Additional thought: I posted on the first day of March that it came in like a Lamb, yesterday was the last day of March and it certainly went out like a Lion!

Waiting Still

I am currently waiting for daylight, so that I can go out to check on my goat that is about to kid. My DH tells me that when he was out there earlier, she sounded congested. The weather has taken it's toll on us and our animals. When it is cold and windy one day, warm and sunny the next then monsoons of cold rains hit for days at a time, goats have a hard time coping and so do I.

We have two mares that are very, very close to foaling and our foaling stall has three inches of water in it. The rest of the barn is flooded too. Even my living room has rain water coming through the wall again.

We are going to have to try to get the foaling stall dried out today and with the continuing rain and my DH working, I don't know how we are going to get that done.

I am going to have to figure out if my doe has pneumonia and how to treat her since she is so close to kidding. She is going to have to be moved into the barn, if I can find a dry spot for her.

The Question

I don't understand people who like to golf, I don't understand people who like to rock climb, bungee jump, or sky dive. I don't understand people who like to fly, and I really don't understand people who like to shop, I just cannot relate.

So I guess that I should not find it odd that there are people who cannot relate to what my Husband and I do. But I must admit that I get a little testy with people who ask me "the question" that makes my blood boil.

We like living on a farm, we like raising animals, we like feeding animals, we like caring for animals, we like shoveling our hard earned money out onto our manure piles without ever turning a profit. That is what we do and enjoy.

Get over trying to understand it, it will never make anymore sense to you than continually buying shoes and clothes, wearing them a couple of times and giving them away, does to me. It will never make anymore sense to you than paying ridiculously high prices to play a game of golf or trying to kill yourself with some dangerous sport or hobby, does to me.

We love our animals and enjoy them and part of that love and enjoyment includes a commitment, a commitment and responsibility to feed and care for that animal while it is under our ownership. Just because the weather is horrible outside doesn't give an animal owner the right to skip a feeding, just because money is tight doesn't give an animal owner a right to quit supplying food or expect those animals to fend for themselves.

We had a situation come up today, a friend who recently had surgery, went to check on a mare that was due to foal. When she arrived the foal's nose was out but no feet were showing and the mare had stopped laboring.

She called the Vet, then called me. I told her what I would do in the same situation, which was push the baby back in and find the feet. She called me back a short time later to tell me that she had done what I had told her but that she couldn't get the legs to straighten out, so she just pulled her out by her knees.

Everything went well and the baby and mare were both fine but the baby's legs are very crooked from being in that position for so long and she couldn't walk or even stand to nurse. My friend just milked the mare and gave the baby a bottle then asked if we would come down to try to get the baby up to nurse it's mother, since she couldn't do that because of her surgery.

We went to the place where she keeps her horses and my DH got the pretty, dun, blanketed, appy filly on her feet and held her head up and steadied her to nurse. This filly will be fine, her legs will straighten out with time and she is completely healthy. But without human intervention both the mare and filly would have died. Without someone spending a couple of days helping this foal to nurse she will not survive.

While we were there someone else who has horses in the same barn, asked us if we had seen another horse that is at this barn. We said that we had, it kind of stuck out like a very sore thumb. She has been feeding this poor, young, skinny horse her own hay just so it will survive. She has talked to the owners about giving it away but they won't because they love it too much. They did say that they would sell it, but they want a good tidy sum for it. My feelings about this is that if you are eating, then your animals should be eating. If you are not doing without meals, then your animals should not be doing without meals.

If you have the money to have cell phones, cable T.V., an internet connection, go to places of entertainment, or go out to eat, then there is no excuse for not taking care of your responsibility to your animals.

I will climb down from my soapbox now and get back to my original point. I am spending many sleepless nights right now because of my pregnant mares and does. It will get worse as time goes by and they get closer to kidding and foaling. It is my duty to take care of them, since we are responsible for them being bred in the first place.

I know many people who own animals and take very good care of them but when it comes to birthing, they will not lose any sleep over it, to me this is just like not feeding your animals, because you are eating out all of the time. Which gets me to "the question" that I hate. The question that people will ask is, "Why do you have to watch them so closely, don't you think that they can have babies without your help?"

The answer to this question is this, "Were you home alone when you gave birth or was your wife home alone when she gave birth?" Yes, animals have been giving birth unassisted for many, many years. But what makes them any different than people? Women have been giving birth for many, many years as well. It isn't that I think animals are as important as people, but I have an investment in these animals and there is just as much chance of something going wrong for them as there is for humans.

The investment that I have in these animals may not necessarily be a big financial investment but with horses it is eleven months of care and waiting for a foal. With my goats it is five months of care and waiting. Do you really think that I don't want to be there when they give birth.

If you have raised animals for any length of time, you know the simple things that can go wrong during a delivery. Things that can easily be fixed if you are present but if you are snoring in bed those simple things can kill both the mother and baby or babies. Sometimes it is just a knee that gets stuck or the sharp little hooves that try to perforate into the mother's colon or a breach. With twins, triplets or quads in goats, it can be a tangling of legs or two competitors racing to be the first one out. These are things that can be corrected without an injury or death.

Last year one of our foals was just huge, she got stuck at the chest, we had never had this happen before. Her head and shoulders were already out and it took all of the strength that my Husband had, with his feet braced, to pull that baby out. He was sliding the mare backwards and we were praying when she finally popped out. It happened in the middle of the night. If we had been asleep we would have awaken to a dead mare and foal in the stall and it would have been very difficult to have gotten them out of that stall. My poor Husband was extremely sore the next day.

A friend of ours had a foal get stuck at the hips, the mare was panicking with the baby mostly dangling out and flopping around. Our friend was not strong enough to help, but luckily the Schwans delivery man arrived just in time to put some muscle into the pull and they got the colt out.

I am not saying that I am present at every birth but I miss very few. If I do miss one it isn't because I wasn't doing constant checks. There are times when you think that you can safely slip away for a couple of hours without anything happening, only to find out that that two hours was all that it took and they are either in the middle of giving birth or have just gotten done when you return home.

More Waiting

Still no babies, they just love torturing me. I usually check on everyone at about 2:00 a.m., if everyone is settled down and sleeping quietly then I go to bed for good unless I just happen to wake up, which I do occasionally. I wake up in a total panic thinking that I have missed something.

I am confident in the mares not being quite ready to foal yet because I have a lot of horse experience but the goats have me tied in knots. They are so big and seem so miserable and I hear tales of does kidding without their udders being strutted and with no signs of labor whatsoever, so since I don't know their exact due dates, I am a little edgy.

We rewrapped Morning's leg this evening and it looked very good, when we changed the dressing two days ago it didn't look so good, so I was concerned about it. My DH got to hose it thoroughly the last time, so I think that really helped.

Morning doesn't do much for my ego. I went out with my hair down today, she nearly tore the side of the barn down and almost jumped the gate. She hates me with my hair down, she thinks that I am an alien from a horse devouring planet or perhaps an unidentified blood sucking earth creature.

Finding Time

It is getting increasing hard to find the time to blog right now. I am up all during the night checking on my due and overdue mares and does. I have to switch the goats around during the day because at this point the buck cannot be with the girls who are getting ready to kid. So I turn the girls out in the warm sunshine during the day and put Cooter in the horse trailer, he hates it!

It is also Spring which makes it really hard for me to stay in the house, plus springtime brings lots of orders for the horse and goat rope halters that I tie. I can usually keep up with my rope halter orders but right before Christmas and in the Spring, I get so many orders that I fall way behind.

We are suppose to have rain for the next few days, so that might help me to find some more time to blog. I know that we need the rain for the grass to grow but I hate to see the mud again. The ground is just getting to the place that I can walk on it without the fear of falling. More mud also means muddy footprints on my clothes, for some reason Angel, Paris and Collette cannot keep their feet off of me.

The Wait

The wait has begun, both Giselle and Cinder are making nice milk bags. Giselle looks like she could go at anytime. Morning still is not bagging up and doesn't look as heavy in foal as she should, so we may have her due date wrong. She was our stallion's pasture mate, so it is possible that she was bred later. Dandee is already making a milk bag, she always bags up early and gives gallons of milk. We always get extra colostrum from her to freeze in case of future emergencies.

Here is the schedule of events:

Morning (the injured Black Tennessee Walker mare) Due - March 12th (Walkaloosa Foal)
Giselle and Cinder (Does) Due - sometime around March 19th
Sissy (Chestnut AQHA Mare) Due - March 28th (AQHA Foal)
Dandee (Bay AQHA Mare) Due - April 1st (Appaloosa Foal)
Collette, Paris and Calico (Does) Due - sometime after May 11th (if they are bred)
Quizzy (Sorrel AQHA Mare) Due - June 17th (Appaloosa Foal)

Sleepless nights, flashlights, batteries, alarm clocks, homebound, nervous, anxious, impatient, cell phone, kidding kit, foaling kit, towels, iodine, enemas, tetanus shots, tail wrappings, shovel, straw, manure fork, lounge chair, blankets, long underwear, heavy socks, face mask, gloves, carhartts, I LOVE SPRING!!

Horse Treat Recipe

We have a dear friend who owns several acres that she keeps mowed like a golf course. She only has three horses and each Spring they tend to founder on the plentiful, weedless, rich grass. We help her out each year by taking our broodmares with the new foals to her place to help eat down the grass.

This is a great solution for all of us, her horses don't get as much grass and don't have to be locked up in her corral as much. Our mares get good grass, the babies get their first experience of being loaded and hauled in a horse trailer. They also get hand fed treats and get lots of handling and attention (she loves the babies). The extra bonus is that we just pick the mares up in the fall and bring them home to wean the foals. Usually we bring the weanlings home before bad weather sets in but this year we only had two babies left that didn't sell and Diana kept them all winter. So, both Biscuit and Diva got some extra spoiling.

We put Diana's hay up for her each year and try to help with other problems that crop up at her place from time to time, like downed fences, trees or injured horses. We have one lame mare that she always winters for us also.

Diana buys carrots in bulk from Sam's Club as treats and also has a nice apple tree in her yard that supplies treats in the fall but she was buying expensive horse treats as well. So to help out, I found a recipe online that looked good to me and started making treats for her to feed during the winter months. I don't like baking during warm weather, so I only make them when it is cold outside. All of her horses and our horses love them, my goats do double back flips for them too, my dogs even like them.

Diana's Favorite Horse Treats and My Favorite Goat and Dog Treats.

Recipe:
1 cup of quick oats
1 cup flour
1 cup shredded carrots
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
2 tablespoons corn or vegetable oil
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup real molasses (real molasses is a good source of iron) or you can substitute pancake syrup or corn syrup

Mix all ingredients into a large bowl. Make small balls and place on a greased cookie sheet. Bake at 350º for 15 minutes. Shut off the oven and leave them in the oven for several days to harden. I always double or triple the batch, I cool them on a cooling rack while the others are still baking, then pile them all back on the cookie sheet for the hardening stage in the oven. Letting them set out in the open for a few weeks takes any softness out of them, making them crunchy and more desirable for the horses and goats. They also store better if they have no moisture in them.

Spring Fever

I can't wait until Saturday, not wishing my life away but Saturday will be March 1st and February will officially be over! February is always the hardest month on us, it is usually in February that we get tired of feeding and our hay supply starts getting short and we think that we will never see green grass again. March gives us hope. The new babies start arriving in March, the weather starts warming up and the winds start drying up the mud.

We have a logistics problem this year. Two mares and two goats are due in March and we have an injured horse stuck in our foaling/kidding stall. We didn't breed back many of our mares last year because of the horse crisis that is going on in this country. Fortunately, the one that is injured is the first one due to foal, so she gets priority in the stall, we can't turn her out anyway. She does present a problem for our two does that are due to kid in March.

Our first kids should be due around March 19th. We have decided to move our dog kennel inside the barn for one of the does and the other one will probably have to kid in the horse trailer.

Our other mare is not due until the end of March, so hopefully the injured mare will be well enough to be turned out with her new baby by then.

Today is the last day that we have to give Morning a penicillin shot, she has had one everyday since she was injured, she hates them. She still has to be twitched to wrap her leg. We give her an opportunity to go without the twitch each time we start, but she refuses to let us take the wrapping off untwitched. Twitches are sometimes necessary things, ours is just a soft rope and not a chain, but she is totally submissive with it on.

On another subject, just to wrap up loose ends. Maude did pass away last week, she had stopped eating and I knew that it was just a matter of time. It is true that broiler or cornish chickens rarely live to see their 1st birthday. I guess that is where the term "not a spring chicken anymore" comes from, because in the fall of your spring chicken's life they start going down hill rapidly.

My Bad Day

It all started out warm and comfy, snuggled under the blankets, sleeping like a baby, then the door burst open and my out-of-breath husband says, "You are going to have to come and help me, we have a severely injured horse." Well this isn't unusual because I get awakened by this tone of voice regularly but it is usually announcing that we have a foal on the way or horses out.

It was still dark when I stumbled out of bed and went to the junk room where bandages, vet wrap and other medical supplies are kept, however the room had been recently rearranged by our youngest son trying to run an extension cord. So, it took me awhile to move a few boxes in order to find the things that were needed.

I usually get up slowly and in stages in the morning because of my back, I drag myself out of bed and make it to my computer chair and take a few pills to deaden the pain, then I sit there until I can stand upright and can actually walk. There was no time for that this morning, so I wasn't standing or walking upright.

Somehow, as it turns out the electric fence had been unplugged and something had broken a fence wire and drug it into the broodmare lot where the pregnant mares are awaiting their due dates. It could have been a deer, they tend to tear down most of our electric fences. The mares have to be kept in a dry lot or as it is now, a muddy lot, so that they have no access to fescue grass or hay. Fescue causes all kinds of foaling problems and since fescue is everywhere, the only answer is to put them in a lot with no grass and feed them only grain and hay without any fescue in it.

Morning is my beautiful black registered Tennessee Walker mare and she was the one who got the wire wrapped around her hind ankle. It is a very nasty injury, we brought her into the barn to look it over and she was unable to flex her foot forward, so we knew she had a damaged tendon, the cut was to the bone and all the way across the front of the leg and partially around the side and down. We wrapped a disposable diaper around the leg and then wrapped it tightly with vet wrap.

Morning is due to foal on March 12th, so we called the Vet and had him come down at his convenience, since we knew that he would not be able to do much with it. We have been through these types of injuries before. But we still wanted his opinion.

My husband had left for work and I was waiting for the Vet, when I heard our Stallion talking to the remaining three pregnant mares, who are just across the fence from him. There was a bit of squealing, so I went to check and he was in the lot with them. In the darkness my husband had thought that the wire had come from the other side of the pen, since fence was down on that side, but it was also down on the stallion side. So, I had to walk out there on the frozen, uneven mud to make sure there was not anymore wire in that lot and to see if anyone else had gotten injured.

I wrapped up the downed wire as best I could and made sure that the mares could not get out on either side and left the Stallion in with them because there was also wire on the ground on his side of the fence that I didn't want to deal with because I had a splitting headache.

In the mean time, my little Angel (the dog), had seen her chance to slip in the barn and grab some good stuff to chew on, so I had to chase her down and scold her. Then I fed the goats, chickens, dogs and cat and watered everything.

I finally made it back into the house to make me some coffee but then I heard the Vet coming down our driveway, so I bundled back up. Did I mention that it was 19º with a wind chill of -40º? Well, that is what it felt like!

Morning is a very nervous horse, who only likes my husband even though she is technically mine, her heart belongs to him. She does not like strangers at all and she really thought the Vet was stranger than most. The Vet said that anytime a tendon is damaged like her's is, it makes them panicky because they no longer have control of the foot or leg. But I told him that she was born panicky and this was just typical "Morning" behavior.

She had stood fairly quiet while my husband had wrapped her leg but she just knew that this man with the knife in his hand was going to amputate. He finally got the wrap off, but only because he is very good at what he does and has had a lot of practice with stupid horses.

Then he did horrible things to her poor leg, like rub the bone and pull the extensor tendon out to show me that it had been completely severed. He also said that she had grooved the bone in two places. He said that she would probably heal back alright, and that the injury was high up enough that she wasn't in much danger of getting infection in the ankle joint.

We have had these types of injuries before and they seem to heal up with just scarring to remind you that it ever even happened. It is the cuts on the back of the legs that usually make a horse lame for life.

So, then the Vet and I discussed and solved all of the world's problems before he attempted to rewrap her leg, we were doing pretty well with her until the horse-eating chickens came into the barn, then we had to regroup and try again, we finally got it wrapped. Then he gave me my instructions of changing the wrap daily and penicillin for 10 days, we had already given her a tetanus anti-toxin before he came.

After the Vet left I went back into the house to make me some coffee, but before I did, I looked out the window and seen that one of my goats was out of her pen. So, I bundled up again and made several failed attempts at getting her back into the pen. I won't go into how I finally accomplished it but I was ready for a rest when I was done.

I had just gotten back in the house and had taken off my several layers of warm clothing, when I started hearing a strange sound. I couldn't quite figure out what it was and then I thought that I had better go outside to check it out. As soon as I opened the door I knew I was in trouble because I had heard that sound before. I ran back in the house and bundled up as fast as I could and ran for my husband's persuader stick.

The two stallions had gotten together, there was still an electric fence between them but I was beginning to suspect that it wasn't on since they were both leaning on it to get at each other, but even if it was on, they wouldn't have cared at this point.

I have had this happen to me once before with two stallions when I was home alone, it was impossible for me to separate them by myself and they both ended up a bloody mess and one had a broken jaw before help arrived. We did get them separated but they never did decide who was King.

With that earlier incident in my mind, I just could not let them get through that fence now. I tried to catch the older stud that had been in with the pregnant mares earlier but he would not have it, all I could do was run them from one corner to the other corner and back again, over and over.

Finally, the older stud stopped and came to me and let me halter him and lead him back to the gate that held the mares. I looked at the fence that he had come through and it was still up, so he had to of just walked carefully through it because it wasn't on.

By this time, I was exhausted and so was he, he waited patiently while I tried to get the stupid gate open but the snaps that held the gate closed were frozen. I fumbled with them and banged on them for a long time, then tried to think of another way to get him back where he needed to be. Finally one of the snaps broke loose and I got the gate open.

By this time the sun had just barely thawed the top of the mud, so that it was still frozen hard but slippery. I was so thankful that he is such a good boy and so easy to handle because it took me a long time to walk him across that treacherous lot and back to his pen. After I made it through yet another gate, I walked him along his fence line fixing the wire as we went.

When we made it to his water trough, it was frozen and he started licking around on it, I started pushing on the ice to see if I could find a weak place that I might be able to break it, then just as easy as can be, he put a front foot through the ice and started drinking. I guess he didn't need my help after all.

I went back to the house to make me some coffee, then I thought that I had better take him some hay, so I grabbed a flake and went through the little gate that goes into the broodmare lot, I walked once more across that uneven, frozen and slippery broodmare lot to his fence and threw the hay over.

When I turned around, I saw that one of the mares who could barely walk on the frozen ground had made it to the little open gate and was now free as a bird. Boy, was I mad this time, she knew better than that! All horses can smell an open gate, I think that I need to get a grant and study this phenomenon. I spent the next 20 minutes trying to get her back in the lot. After she was safely back in place and the gate was securely fastened, I went to the house to make me some coffee.

That was when I noticed that the same goat that had gotten out earlier was out again, reminding me to go check to see why the fence didn't seem to be working. After using the same technique that I had used earlier to get the goat put back up. I walked up the hill to the fence charger and sure enough, it was not plugged in. No one knows how the charger got unplugged but it sure caused a lot of problems.

Everything seemed fine at this point and I thought that it might be safe to go inside, take off most of my layers of clothing and fix me some coffee and that is what I did, all except the coffee part, instead I just laid down on the bed and went to sleep. I did make some coffee when I woke up at about 2:00 in the afternoon.

Our First Casualty of 2008

We have only 5 mares bred this year and the first one due to foal was Jetta, our black ApHC mare. She was due to foal at the end of February or the first of March. Yesterday was January 19th and we certainly were not expecting any mares to foal on the coldest night of 2008 so far. I think it got down to 4°F here.

My husband went out to find a dead black leopard colt this morning, it was out of the sack and was clean, we don't know for sure what happened but assume that it was just premature and not viable. It was small and the mare had just started making an udder. By the look of it's feet, it never got up.

This may be the result of the quality of hay that we are feeding, a result of the drought this past summer, normally we would have had the mares separated and on good alfalfa before now but we just didn't have enough good hay to put them up as early as usual.

We are very disappointed because we have never gotten a black leopard from any of our own mares before. This mare has always had bays in the past.

So Glad It's Over

Well Christmas has come and gone, so I can resume my normal life. I didn't get much for Christmas but I wasn't expecting much. All I asked for was 3 Barred Rock Hens but I think that I might be getting more than that, along with some Rhode Island Reds. We haven't gone to pick them up yet, so I am not sure how many there are.

Chickens are handy to have around for more reasons than just eggs, they keep the insect population down. I bought nine young hens and a rooster this summer and all but two of the hens ended up being roosters. I considered butchering them myself because I thought it might be something that I needed to be able to do, but after going online, reading the "How to's" and seeing the pictures, I decided that I wasn't ready to take that step yet. So all of the roosters ended up going to the local Sale Barn and I at least got my initial investment back.

Our biggest Christmas surprise was discovered Christmas morning after the bright full moon of Christmas Eve. Our Stallion had gotten what he had wished for from Santa Claus, he had made it into the big pasture with all of the other horses. We don't know how he did it, he had to have gone through two fences but no fences were damaged. I guess Santa just picked him up with his sleigh and carried him over. It was a Christmas nightmare for all of the geldings in the big pasture, who have missing hair, gashes and cuts. But I guess it pleased all of the unbred mares, the bred mares didn't care either way.