A Leopard With No Name

When last we spoke, I was sitting up all night with Jetta, waiting for her to foal. That was on May 6th, she finally foaled that next morning at 9:30, after keeping me up all night.

We turned her out of the foaling stall that morning, so I had to go outside and around the barn to see her. I had just checked her at 9:00 and nothing seemed to be happening, so I went back into the house. For some reason I felt that I should check her again five minutes later.

When I went out she was down, her water had broken and she was in hard labor. I came back in the house, called my DH at work and told him how worried I was that she might have twins and if she didn't have twins, it was going to be a really big foal. He said that he would come home. So, I hung up and grabbed my foaling kit.

I had been watching her the whole time that I was on the phone and she didn't seem to be making any progress. There was no white sack visible and that made me more nervous. When I got into the pen with her, I looked inside and saw the white sack, so I was somewhat relieved.

Finally a leg appeared but just one, not just a foot but a leg. I was relieved once more because it was a huge leg and I knew that it wasn't going to be twins. Jetta kept getting up and trying to reposition things but it wasn't working.

I tried pushing the leg back in but couldn't get it done, so I went in and found the other foot. I pulled on it and it pull back, I pulled again and it resisted, just like a horse! Finally, I just kept pressure on it without pulling hard and with Jetta's next contraction, it popped out.

At this point, I had both legs and the nose had presented itself, so I started pulling. This was a big foal and Jetta was going to have to have help. She did great! She didn't quit pushing and I didn't quit pulling. Finally, his shoulders slid out and his hips followed. If you have never delivered a foal or seen one born, then you might think that is a funny statement. Normally the hips do follow the shoulders but sometimes a foal will get stuck at the hips and that is no fun.

I pulled open the sack and removed it from his head, then towel dried his face and went to find a place to sit down to wait for my Husband to get home to finish the job. I was exhausted but not as exhausted as Jetta, she didn't even look at the baby or talk to him. She just lay there and rested, totally dazed.

When my DH got home, he got the big boy up and rubbed him all over with towels and put iodine on his navel. Jetta came out of her stupor and
started talking to the boy. I knew he was a colt without looking. Fillies just have a more delicate look about them and they aren't as obnoxious.

I still have not named him, he was born on one of my Granddaughter's sixth birthday, so he will be named for her on his registration papers but I don't know what to call him yet.

Here are pictures of Sissy and Jetta before they foaled, this is why I feared Jetta would have twins.

 

Here is Jetta's Leopard Colt. Name suggestions would be appreciated!

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.

Update On Garnet

After the crisis seemed to be over for Garnet and he was on the road to recovery, something new cropped up. He had three large whelps the size of hot dogs come up on the back of his right hind leg above the hock. They finally busted open and produced a lot of yellow pus. He had been on Penicillin at the time this happened, so I switched him to SMZ Tablets.

I am grinding the tablets with the bute and putting the powder in pancake syrup then syringing it into his mouth. He is still taking his medicine very well and is still tolerating the fly spray but he doesn't like it when I treat his sores. He did let me treat him this morning without any problems because I caught him when he was lying down and he didn't want to bother with getting up. I treated the sores on his body then lifted each leg and treated them on both sides. I just couldn't get to the other side of his body, so it will have to wait until later.

Nerve Damage?

As you may have noticed, I have not been faithful to my everyday blog lately. We have had some extra stress in our lives lately that I haven't written about here because it was just too sad and painful.

Garnet, one of our weanlings came down with either some kind of sickness or an injury, we are not sure what happened. We suspect some kind of nerve damage. It started out with him just not being able to stay with the foals. He is the oldest and had always been their leader and led them in running and playing. He would nicker at them but was reluctant to move and when he did move he took baby steps and acted as if every one was painful.

He had swelling on both sides of his neck like hard ridges, and one shoulder blade was much lower then the other. He acted as if all four feet were sore. We put him in a stall and started him on Banamine every four hours. He would not lay down, he didn't lay down for several days.

After awhile the ridges on his neck finally disappeared and his shoulder blades started looking normal again. He was able to flex his neck and lay down. Then his hind ankles started swelling, then it moved from his ankles to his right hind hock and his left hind thigh. His left hind thigh became so swollen that we were afraid that the skin would bust open.

He continued to eat grain well but he was losing a lot of weight. He was lying down most of the time and we couldn't get him up but he would occasionally get up on his own after he had banamine. His left hind leg, under the swelling was as cold as ice to touch and he drag that leg when he walked.

I talked to our Vet, who said to switch him to Bute because it is cheaper and might help more with the swelling. We switched and did see some improvement with the swelling. He also told me to start him on antibiotics, so we went from sticking him with a needle several times a day to just once. I crush his bute tablets and put them in applesauce, then syringe them into his mouth, he tolerates it and doesn't spit it out, so I guess it doesn't taste too bad.

He was really having a struggle getting to his feet and he was beating himself all up trying to get up in the stall, so we moved him back out to the pasture. The Vet had told me that there was hope as long as he could still get to his feet with the help of painkillers. But he said that if he got to the point that he could no longer get up, we would probably need to put him down.

This went on for a week and a half and on Wednesday morning, he couldn't get up. My DH was working that day and it was suppose to be sunny and hot. I had made up my mind to put him down that evening if he didn't get up that day. I continued his bute, carrying him water, applying fly spray and blue lotion on his many sores. He is covered in sores from both banging into things trying to get up and from just lying around so much.

But he did finally get up and walked a little bit, so we waited. He has been getting better ever since. He is well on the road to recovery now, he is still walking slow but he is staying with the others and is getting a little ornery about taking his medicine which is a good thing. I can, however, spray him with fly spray and blue medicine anywhere, anytime and he likes being brushed and having his throat scratched. So this horrible experience has been a benefit to a colt who would not let you touch him before he got sick.

Wasps

Monday was weaning day because we always try to wean in the sign. The goat kids were permanently separated from Calico on Monday. This meant that I had to start milking her twice per day just like Cinder, her Mother.

We also weaned Garnet, our Walkaloosa colt. The way we weaned him was to load his mother up and take her to a friend's place. That left him with the other foals and their mothers. He hardly even missed her until this morning.

My poor Husband had gotten stung by a bumble bee the other day while pulling up a fence post that had a nest in it. He was fortunate that he was only stung once. He had a reaction to a red wasp sting many years ago after getting stung several times by bumble bees, so I am always a little nervous when he gets stung by anything.

On Monday while we were hooking up the horse trailer to take Garnet's mother away, I cranked the trailer up and gave direction, while he backed the truck up. As soon as he was in position, I left to do something else and he hooked the trailer up.

He soon found out that there was a wasp nest in the trailer hitch and barely escaped an attack. I gave him some wasp spray and went into the trailer to make sure that there were no nests inside. I looked very carefully and cautiously. I then proclaimed it to be safe and again walked away to do something else.

The next thing I know, he is unlatching the slant gate inside the trailer and he comes dancing out, complaining about getting stung. I believe he also mentioned something about making me an appointment with the eye doctor, he has brought this up several times lately. He thinks that I need new glasses.

I went inside, grabbed a penny and slapped it on the sting site on his arm. I had gained this priceless piece of first-aid information from a forwarded e-mail, so it had to work, right? He kept the penny in place for awhile then we put a baking soda and water paste on it and wrapped it up, so that he could keep working. I took that extra precaution of making him take an antihistamine.

While loading the two horses that we were taking to the friend's house, he discovered yet another large wasp nest inside the trailer that had to be dealt with. Somehow no one got stung that time. I don't think that he will ever trust me again.

This morning I went out to bring the goats up to the barn/house to be milked. I was trying to open the gates without all of the goats escaping, which is no small task, when I noticed that Calico's kids who were in a large dog kennel right behind me were trying their level best to escape too.

They were crying and jumping against the gate of the kennel and all of the sudden there was just this swarm of red wasps that came out of the kennel framework. They were stinging those poor kids and they were everywhere. The kids were running all around trying to get away from them but there was no place to go.

I dropped what I was doing and dove for the gate. Somehow I got it open and was out of there and back to the barn/house in a flash. I only looked back long enough to see the kids tear out of that gate and though the other gates, back to their mother. So, now they are unweaned.

We did get Zinc delivered to his new home today. We had promised to deliver him as soon as he was weaned. So he got to spend most of his last day here with his mother and got his belly full of milk for the road trip.

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

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.

Indian Shuffler

This is my horse Ranger, he is registered with the ApHC or Appaloosa Horse Club, he has a 90+% foundation designation and is eligible for registration with the Colorado Ranger Horse Association or CRHA. Ranger is a gaited appaloosa called an Indian Shuffler, he does the Indian Shuffle, this is a very smooth gait but I have still not been able to ride him, maybe someday.

He is a palomino few spot although the Appaloosa Horse Club registered him as a red roan, we argued this point with them on his full brother who was a palomino leopard, he had large palomino spots and they wouldn't take our word for it because they are so much smarter than the rest of us. After many phone calls and extra pictures we finally got them to change him to a palomino, the only reason that we bothered was because he was so obviously a palomino that his papers just didn't match him saying that he was a red roan.

When Ranger came along and we sent his paperwork in, we marked his color as a palomino and again those superior, intelligent people at the ApHC sent his papers back as a red roan. Since Ranger is mostly white and we were planning on keeping him anyway, we didn't bother to argue.

This past year we had a chestnut leopard filly born, her spots are dark chestnut with no white hair in them, she is out of a chestnut AQHA mare. The ApHC sent her papers back as red roan, we called and argued, they let us know how color blind we are. They have never seen this filly but it is us who do not understand horse colors. Even our Vet agreed that she was a chestnut with no roaning in her spots.

We had a similar problem with the AQHA or American Quarter Horse Association two years ago with a line backed, red dun colt. They sent his papers back to us as a chestnut because it was impossible for a chestnut stallion and a gray mare to produce a red dun foal. We called and talked to the man who takes care of this sort of thing and he looked at the pictures and the bloodlines and said that those bloodlines did produce red duns, so he changed his papers to match the colt. This colt's dam was born a grulla and turned gray as a two year old, so to say that a grullo and a chestnut could not produce a red dun was ridiculous. The AQHA treated us with respect and was reasonable.

You would think that since Ranger's dam has produced many palominos and our leopard filly is out of a chestnut mare that the ApHC would be reasonable too. But the end result is that we have two registered ApHC horses whose papers do not match them.

Surprise

We keep some of our horses at a friend's house because she has more grass than her horses can handle. She also keeps a large pony for another friend of hers. We stopped by there yesterday to trim one of our yearling's hooves. Our friend was mowing her yard, she and my husband were discussing changing oil on her lawn tractor.

I was listening and looking across the field occasionally at the horses who were at the back of the property. Something seemed strange about what I was seeing, so I tried harder to focus but at that distance and with my elderly eyesight, I couldn't make a certain object out. So, I finally said, "What is that?". My husband and our friend turned around to look. My husband said that it looked like a foal. I asked where our friend's German Shepherd was and my husband said that it's legs looked too long to be a dog, as he sprinted across the yard to the gate.

By the time that we arrived on the scene the "foal" had found it's mother and was nursing. My DH yelled to me that it belonged the pony. When it took it's head out from under it's mother and peeked around at us, we both started laughing and my husband announced that it was a mule.

The man who owns this pony had bought her at an auction last summer and had no idea that she was pregnant. We had been there about a week ago and I had made the comment that she looked pregnant but ponies tend to look that way, so we didn't investigate further.

It took awhile before our friend who owns the property got back to where we were. We didn't say anything about it being a mule to her and she was talking about how surprised her other friend was going to be. When she was finally close enough to see it she had the strangest look on her face. She said something about it having long ears before she realized what it was. I wish that I had had my camera with me, it was so funny!

It is just the cutest thing you ever saw. My husband finally caught it and we all got to pet it. It is a dark bay boy with a dorsal stripe, a curly mane and tail, very long ears and a light tan nose. You can't look at it without laughing. It's mother is a large bay pony with two blue eyes, she is real pretty and seeing her with this ugly little duckling is so sweet. She loves him no matter what he looks like.

New Names

Having lots of babies from year to year for many years has made it difficult to come up with new names for everyone. So I have decided to go with a theme again this year. I have done this in the past and used a Car/Truck theme, our babies that year were: Rio, Ranger, El Camino (Ellie), Breeze, Trooper, Nash and Spider.

This year and perhaps next year, since we are not expecting very many babies, we are going to use Jewels, Gems, Precious Stones, Minerals or Metals. So, to get this party started we have decided to call our new sorrel Walkaloosa colt "Garnet", since he is very red.

Foal's First Attempt

This video clip is of our new colt's first attempt at standing on his own four feet, he did very well for a first time.



The sounds that you hear in the background of this video are: One of my hens announcing the arrival of my husband coming home from work. The sound of my husband's vehicle. My Miniature Schnauzer barking at my husband's vehicle. If you listen closely enough you can hear my husband closing his door and walking up to see the baby for the first time. Luckily he didn't say anything until after I stopped recording.

It's a Boy

It is a Walkaloosa sorrel colt with 3 stockings, a sock, a big spot on his forehead and a blanket, born at 4:50 PM. So, see there, mares do foal during the daylight hours, proof positive that mares do not only foal at night. Many of our mares have foaled during the day throughout the years, but the majority still choose to foal in the very early morning hours.

We went for many years without one foal being born with four socks or stockings, now we have had one born each year for the last three years. This colt has three nice stockings and his right front foot has a sock that comes up over the ankle but it is dirty in these pictures and hard to see.

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.