Bone Chillin'

The weather forecast is nice for the next few days. These recent cold nights have been hard to adjust to. I am normally a polar bear. I really like cold weather, it may have something to do with hot flashes. Last winter we really saved on heating expenses but my poor DH nearly froze to death.

I got all of my green tomatoes picked before the freeze and I had to rush around to get my pool filter unhooked and drained. The wind was so strong and cold one day that my hot cup of coffee was just lukewarm by the time I got to the fire that my Husband had built to burn some stumps.

There I sat on a chunk of wood by the fire drinking a slightly warm cup of coffee. It just kind of ruined the whole affect. That wind not only ruined my coffee but it kept changing the direction of the sparks and smoke. My DH ended up having to set up two chunks of wood, one on each side of the fire for me to sit on and I kept having to get up and run to the other side. A very relaxing evening.

Some of my hens have stopped laying, I am only getting five eggs a day now. I also lost one of my Rhode Island Reds, we found her dead on the nest.

We sold Collette to a friend with good fence, so I will get to see her babies and still get to see her occasionally. My DH and I both sighed a big sigh of relief after we delivered her to her new home. Paris is still getting out once in awhile out of habit but I think that she will eventually stop.

Calico is still not liking her new living quarters inside the barn, she cries day and night. Her cries are sorrowful, mournful and loud, they are actually more of a wail than a cry. I thought that she would get over it eventually but I don't think she is going to. I tie Cooter up outside the goat lot and put her in with Paris when the weather is nice during the day, so it isn't like she is totally without companionship.

Naylor's eye still looks bad, the cloudiness is still there and he is still keeping it slightly closed but it isn't watering anymore. We have tapered off putting the medicines in it to once a day. He is still being such a good boy, most horses wouldn't let you get near them after what we have put him through. He always comes right to us and sometimes we don't even have to halter him.

Ouch!

I had to go to the Doctor on Monday and that is like one of my least favorite things to do in the world. It ranks right up there with shopping or having to leave the farm for any reason.

I must have had some kind of mental lapse while I was there because I asked for a Tetanus shot. We give our horses tetanus shots every time they injure themselves and since I am always working on rusty barbwire and poking myself with the barbs, I thought that it might be a good idea. I think that I may have made a mistake.

While I am typing this, pain is shooting down my left arm in spasms. The nurse started to give me the shot in my right arm because I am left-handed and she said my arm would be sore for a few days. But being the deep thinker that I am, I told her that I wanted it in my left arm because my right arm is my mouse arm. I only do a few things with my left arm anyway and they are mostly unimportant things like writing and eating.

The shot itself didn't hurt but my arm keeps hurting worse each day. Now I did not ask for a Diphtheria vaccination but they slipped that one in on me. It wasn't until I read the little direction sheet that they gave me that I learned that I had been given both shots in one. I have had the symptoms of Diphtheria ever since because I am very impressionable. I have been having a hard time breathing, I am coughing and clearing my throat constantly.

Today is Wednesday and the muscle in my upper arm is hot, hard and swollen. It isn't red but that will probably happen tomorrow. She told me at the time that she gave me the shot that I should rub it vigorously all day and I did, so imagine how bad this would be if I hadn't.

Another thing that I have done that might have been foolish is stop taking all of my pain medicine. I really didn't think that it was helping my back that much and I was tired of the expense. I haven't taken any for a couple of weeks and I have been having trouble coping with the pain. I guess that it was helping me more than I thought. I don't feel like doing all of the things that I have been doing and I have to sit down and rest my back more often. If I am sitting a lot I have to get up and move around more often also.

I asked the Doctor about getting one of those tables that hang you upside down and he didn't actually recommend it but he told me that he has one himself. He also told me that if I do get one, to limit the time that I spend on it but since I do have perfect blood pressure he wouldn't say that I shouldn't use one. My problem is that I don't have room for one, but if there is a chance that it might help my pain, I will make room for it.

Morning Workout

I do need to lose weight and had my DH mow me a path around the lower pasture, so that I can walk everyday. I have walked it twice since he mowed it several days ago. I have good intentions though.

This morning I got more workout than I bargained for. I was still in bed when I heard the sound of horse hooves running around the barn/house, with a groan I got up and got dressed. This only happens when my DH is at work. When I finally got outside there were five horses out, Seville, Buddy, Cougar, Naylor and Darth. They weren't too hard to put up but then I had to find the hole in the fence and fix it.

The fence was down in the upper pasture at the farthest end. I got all of the fence back up and then followed the electric wire all the way back around the top field. I figured that there would be a break in it and there was. So I fixed the break and started back to the house.

When I came past the goat lot, I decided to lower one corner of the wire. I had been working on electric fence all morning, so I didn't think about it being hot. I had unhooked the gate at the top of the hill so that fence would not be hot, but now I was in the valley and I just wasn't thinking. I grabbed the t-post and started trying to unhook the insulator, my memory was completely restored when the jolt came. I hate it when that happens, I feel so stupid.

I also gave in to convenience today. Right in the middle of the horses all running around in the yard, I noticed that Paris, my yearling doe had gone through two electric fences in order to get to Cooter. She was trying her best to scale his woven wire fence. A goat friend of mine kept asking me if I was afraid that Cooter would get loose and go to the does if they came in heat. I told her that I was more afraid that the does would go to him and I was right.

I gave it some thought, then made a quick decision that it would just be easier to put Cooter in the goat lot with Paris and Colette and put Calico in the barn stall. It would make milking so much easier for me and make feeding so much easier for me. But right now I am wondering if I made the right decision because Calico is right outside my living room door and she is screaming her head off. She doesn't want to be alone.

I tried putting Angel in with her and that helped but I can't leave Angel in there all of the time, she would go nuts. Hopefully Calico will adjust or lose her voice before long. This all means that my two does will be kidding in the middle of March while it is still cold and snowy. That should make some interesting blogs.

My Quiet Day

This day started out normally with me waking up while still in bed. From there things went a little haywire, which is somewhat normal also. I am not upset or disturbed because for the most part I have enjoyed most of the day.

My morning was marred by my goats being out, I chased them around for a little while before finally catching them and putting the two yearling does in a dog kennel where they couldn't get out. Then turned around to the sound of a stallion screaming and kicks being administered. One of the broodmares and a two year old filly had knocked a gate off of it's hinges to get in with Badger our Grullo Stallion.

He was just trying to be friendly, after all they had come into his pen. They were kicking the daylights out of him. I managed to get him out of his pen and into the mare and foal pasture, then managed to get the mare, 3 weanlings and pony out of their pasture and into the dry holding lot. I left the offending mare and filly in Badger's pen. Then tied up the gate as well as I could. I felt like we were playing musical chairs.

I was scheduled to watch my three Granddaughters in the afternoon and as is always the case when they are here, my phone rings off the hook. The girls are very young and needy, they are especially needy when you are on an important call. There were a few times that I felt like jerking the phone line out of the wall and pitching the phone out the door, when the calls weren't important. It is odd to me that the older girls can be calling for my assistance over and over, the baby can be crying loud enough to wake the dead and the person on the other end of an unimportant call cannot tell that I am busy and don't have time to talk.

Two calls were important, one was letting me know that they had decided to buy a nice little AQHA Palomino gelding named Midas from us. They came to look at him yesterday.

The other important call was from a man who bought a horse from us several weeks ago. He has been riding his legs off, his daughter and Grandkids have been riding him as well. But after loading him in his trailer many, many times and even taking him away on a camping trip, the horse has decided not to get into the trailer anymore, not even for food. I gave him my suggestion, it involved pressure and a stick.

I chose today to try out a new recipe, since I didn't already have enough to do. My new recipe turned out well, but not worth the time invested. Somehow I managed to get my goat milked and my buck put up before dark, after the kids left. The DH and I even stole a couple of minutes to sit down outside and talk after he got all of the horses put back where they belong and got the gate repaired.

Skinny Horses

When I seen the Vet the other day, I asked him about the number of skinny horses that he was seeing. He had told us earlier that he thought that it would really get bad this year because of the hay situation. But he said that he hadn't seen any that were real bad and that things hadn't gotten as bad as he had thought that they would. Hardly any calls for neglect or abuse and the ones that he checked out were just a little on the thin side but not starved nor neglected. But then he said that he hardly ever sees real skinny horses until March and April.

So, I explained from experience why this happens. Starting in March and carrying on into April our own horses start losing weight. The reason that they do this is because the new grass starts coming on and they get a taste of it, then nothing else satisfies. You can continue to feed hay or have free choice hay out for them but they won't eat it because the grass is just so much better and they are bored with hay by this time anyway. The new grass doesn't have much nutrition and is sparse, so they start to fall off in weight.

The Police start getting a lot of calls for horses and cattle being out, because they start pushing on their fences to reach that grass that is growing thick and untouched on the other side, it is greener too, by the way.

Bobcat Tracks?

Update on Maude the fat hen: She is still with us and seems to be doing well. She has now survived both an Opossum and Bobcat attack.

Here are the pictures of the tracks that I found in the mud the next morning, I had walked all around in the pen the night before, trying to catch the chickens, so both the chickens and myself ruined most of the tracks and there were some tracks that had chicken prints on top of them. It was very sloppy and muddy that night, but it did freeze later on after I emptied the pen.

Several clawless toe tracks


Heal at the top and toes at the bottom, only 4 toes are actually visible here.

Other reasons that we feel this was a Bobcat is because of the speed at which it got into the dog kennel and out of it. I was in the house, my dog started barking, I heard the chain link rattle, then the chickens started screaming and I was out there very quickly without even taking the time to put on a coat. We really don't feel that a coon or coyote could have scaled that fence that quickly.

Also the size of the puncture wounds and the damage that was done to the hen in that span of time and the reaction of our horses, who were very spooked, they see coyotes, foxes and possums all the time.