Rested

I slept through the night for the first time in ages. I feel much better this morning. Although my back didn't like it much. I found that my back doesn't hurt as badly when I get up several times during the night. Just like my back doesn't like to sit in a chair for more than 10 minutes or stand on my feet for more than 5 minutes. I guess maybe I should set my alarm and continue to get up during the night.

I want to thank all of my friends who called, left comments here on my blog and sent me e-mails of encouragement through the last two weeks.

I have had people ask, why we just didn't put her down in the first place. Well, if we could have seen the future and had known that her kidneys were defective, we would have. But we have pulled high risk foals back from the brink before and so we couldn't let her go without exhausting every avenue of treatment. As long as there is hope, I find it hard to give up on them.

We had a foal years ago that was born to a mother with no milk, she was a fescue baby. This was back before the fescue problem had even been identified. We had just bought the mare and didn't know she was bred. The baby got no colostrum, it was also back before any of our local stores carried mare milk replacer, I don't even know if there was such a thing at that time anyway. I am really telling my age here. But anyway, we put her on Carnation calf milk replacer.

We didn't have the internet then and we didn't know anything about raising a foal on a bottle but we did know how to raise calves that way, so that is how we raised Bambi. She was just a little, half pony, half horse, sorrel filly.

She got septic, navel ill and her all of her joints swelled up. All of this happened during the coldest part of winter. I remember crawling to the barn on the ice to give her bottles. She got to the point that she couldn't stand or get to her feet.

She got scours, got dehydrated and even got pneumonia at one point. We just pumped her full of antibiotics and somehow pulled her through it all. Looking back on it now, I cannot believe that she survived but she did and went on to become a riding horse and the people that bought her from us even raised foals with her. She lived to be an old horse but did get arthritis when she got older.

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.

Life's Not Fair

When I taught school the kids all loved to say, "That's not fair!", to which I would reply, "Life's not fair, so get over it!". Life certainly is proving me right at the moment. Our old bachelor neighbor was here this afternoon and he told me that he was getting really tired of this cold weather for some reason and I told him that usually happens in February. He asked me if he would get over it in March and I told him that he would, especially towards the end of March.

He also told my husband that he sounded just like his calves that he is doctoring for pneumonia. This is true, my husband seems to get pneumonia if he catches a cold. I am not complaining, well, maybe I am a little bit but I feel so bad when he is so sick and he still has to go out in the below 20º weather to feed and water. I try to help as much as I can but I am not much help.

Add to this that we have a psycho horse that has to have her back leg re-bandaged everyday and I am feeling like life isn't fair. For one thing she is without question the hardest horse that we have to handle and the injury is on a hind foot and it is difficult to wrap. She also has to have a shot everyday. She has to be kept up in a stall, so that means a stall that needs cleaning everyday. I can shovel a little manure but my back prevents me from doing much of it and there is no way that I can wrap her leg, for one thing she wouldn't let me and for another I couldn't stand in that position. So, with my husband being so sick, this is something that we didn't need right now.

The weather is another thing that we don't need right now. It is 6º at the moment and the wind chills are awful. We are suppose to get sleet and snow for the next few days and that may stop me from being able to help out at all. I hurt myself the last time that we had ice. I just feel guilty when I can't do my share of the work.

Enough whining around, Spring will be here before we know it, this cold weather can't last forever. The March winds will dry up all of the mud, the grass will start growing and the horses won't have to be fed as much. Morning's leg will start healing, the dressing won't have to be changed as often and the shots won't have to be given after Feb. 28th.

I just ran out and watched the Lunar Eclipse, I almost missed it because I didn't know it was happening tonight and since this is tomorrow's blog that I am writing now, if you didn't hear about it, you missed it too.

Think Spring!!