Zircon Memories

It was a lovely day today, warm, sunny, a nice breeze. The horses and goats are all shedding, so there was hair in the air. I let my two does out in the yard for some green, tender munching and some exercise this evening. They kept their noses to the ground, so I worried that they would get too much of a good thing.

When my DH got home from his job, he worked with a new 2 year old filly that we just got in, she really needs some work! The only lesson she has been getting so far is how to be caught without tearing down fences.

Then he brought Zircon to the barn to trim his feet. With 30-something horses, hoof trimming is going to go on and on for awhile. He managed to get Zircon, a 2 year old and Sky, our only yearling done this evening.

I took some new pictures of Zircon, he is such a good boy. I remembered back two years ago this June when I helped bring him into the world. You can read that story here.

Zircon has gone from being an ugly duckling to a beautiful swan. I knew he would!

When the horses were trimmed, I casually said something about trimming Rancid's feet. My wonderful husband whose back and legs were already hurting from the work involved in trimming two horses, one of which was an inexperienced yearling, told me to go get him. Well, I jumped at the chance to get my doe's hooves trimmed and brought out Collette instead. When he finished with Collette, I put her up and brought out Calico. He is an absolute perfect Husband. Rancid will have to wait, I didn't want to push my luck too far.

The last few days have been such perfect weather that I hate for it to end but from the look of the weather map and the forecasts, we are in for some stormy weather. There may be some severe storms tomorrow. I haven't had to shut my computer down because of lightening for months, unfortunately with the Spring weather comes the Spring thunderstorms.

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.

Replacement

We can't seem to get ahead for falling behind. We sold our last AQHA Palomino gelding and delivered him yesterday. He got a good home where he will be spoiled to death. This brought our number of horses down to around 32, when you have this many horses, you never know for sure how many you have at any given time.

On our way home with the horse trailer, my DH suggested that we run by a friend's place who had a 3 yr. old, Black Tennessee Walker Stallion for sale. I should have screamed and cried and refused to go, but I didn't. I also forgot to make him wear his light green sweatshirt that reads, "I do not need another horse" three times on it. Needless to say, we brought the horse home with us.

We are going to have Zircon, our leopard colt, gelded on Friday, so we are going to have this new guy gelded as well. He is a tall black horse without any white on him. He is green broke and very well behaved. You would never know that he was a stallion.

We don't know where he came from originally but he looks like he should probably be registered, he looks and carries himself like a full-blooded TWHBEA. With the value of horses being what it is right now, many people just aren't going to the extra expense of putting papers on their low valued younglings. This is a real shame for this horse, if that is what happened with him. Because he is nice looking, calm and well behaved.

We put him in the stall right outside our bedroom last night and he didn't make a sound all night. He has only nickered once since we loaded him. The man that we bought him from had never ridden a gaited horse before and said that he really enjoyed riding him. I am assuming that someone probably gave this colt to him, he had him broke, put some weight on him, then started trying to sell him.

We will have him gelded, try to put some more weight on him, give him some more training and try to find him a good home. I will post some pictures of him as soon as I get some taken.

Changing Colors

Sapphire, our little black twin filly that survived, changed from black to brown and is now changing to blue roan. So, her name will fit her now.

Garnet, our sorrel blanketed colt is changing to either blue roan or gray, so his name will not fit him anymore.

Zircon, our little crooked legged sorrel leopard isn't changing colors but he is growing and his legs look much better, he also thinks that he is king of the world.

Zircon Update

For those who are concerned, Zirc is doing fine, his legs will straighten up within a few days. We have never had one with legs quite like this before but we have had foals that were "over in the knees" and one who just flat had crooked legs due to a thyroid problem, who went on to become a winning show horse. So crooked legs in new foals aren't a great concern to us.

Zirc is doing a lot of sleeping and we are keeping him stalled and confined until those legs gain strength. I know that there are horse experts out there who would say that he needs exercise and room to run for his legs to straighten up but that has not been our experience, foals "over in the knees" need exercise and room to run but this guy needs to stay off of his feet as much as possible. I have argued this point with a know-it-all elitist horse expert before and the owner of the foal listened to the other person and ruined the foal's legs.

I don't know why horse people are always horse experts with nothing more to learn but they do tend to be that way. Goat owners aren't like that at all, there aren't many Goat Snobs out there but there seems to be a whole lot of Horse Snobs.

To those who think that he is ugly and that includes me. I can assure you that he will be a beautiful animal in no time. His dam has never produced an ugly baby, no matter what we have bred her to. To those who think that he is beautiful or cute, thank you for your love of horses. We have taken horses in before who were just plain ugly but with the right personality they are gorgeous horses no matter what they look like. We have also taken in beautiful horses who have attitudes that can completely overwhelm their good looks.

Zircon

I took care of things at the neighbors this morning, then went home to find Quizzy just walking to the back of the dry lot that she was in. I thought that might be a good sign. So I went into the house and did a few things, then came out to see what she was up to, she was just laying down. I went back into the house, called my Husband's cell phone and told him that things were in progress. I grabbed some towels and headed for the back of the lot.

By the time that I got to her I could see two perfectly positioned front feet with a nose resting on them, so far, so good. She gave a push and more of the legs and nose presented themselves. Then she got up, turned around and laid back down with her tail end right against the electric fence, I don't understand why mares always do this.

She had another contraction but made no more progress, then she rolled half way over and I decided to give her a hand. So I squeezed in between her and the fence that was turned off and grabbed the legs as high up as I could get and pulled with her next contraction. We gained a few inches and I grabbed up above the foals knees and pulled again, this time the foal's head popped out and I stopped pulling. She went ahead without me to push out the foal's shoulders and then quickly pushed out the hips, while I tore open the sack, so the foal could get his first breath.

There were a lot of fluids pooled under his head, so I just spread the towels down under him so that he wouldn't inhale any liquid. It was hot and breezy enough that he didn't need to be dried off anyway. With his legs still inside, and after checking under his tail, I left them to go call my DH with the news. Her first colt, she has always given us fillies before. We always like to leave the feet in as long as possible to keep the mare from getting up too soon. This way she will rest and not be as prone to colic. We also like to leave them alone during this time.

The problem was that he was under the fence, so I knew I had to be there when he started to seriously try to get to his feet. When Quizzy finally got up and the umbilical cord broke, he bled more than what I am used to and when the blood finally stopped dripping, I dipped his navel in iodine.

For around the next three hours I tried to teach him to stand on his own four feet. Once he started trying to get up I realized that he was nearly walking on his hind fetlocks and actually does at times. This made it very hard for him to stand and walk on his own. Finally he mastered it by leaning and bracing himself on me. After he was walking, then my next concern was getting some colostrum in him and that was not going to happen. He just couldn't balance himself enough to get in the right position to nurse.

He got very tired after falling so often and having to regain his feet, the sun was also too hot for the work that he was doing. So I had to get him into the barn stall. That was lots of fun for me by myself but I managed to get it done with only some nasty bruises on my lower legs. We even tumbled down a little embankment together once. When we finally made it, we both crashed in the straw for a rest.

After we both somewhat recovered, I went to fill his mother's water bucket and he searched for milk. I was thrilled when he finally found it. That was one less thing to worry about. Next he passed his meconium and I felt that I could go milk my poor goat who was long overdue for milking.

Well he isn't the most beautiful thing that you have ever seen but he is here and his name is Zircon.