Here Horsey, Horsey

School is just around the corner! We have been busy collecting and organizing.

Journee will complete another year (her senior year) as a dual enrollment student at the community college. In fact she will be on campus this year for her classes. She has a full load and so it will keep her very busy.

In the meantime, she is working a job. Actually she is working for me by giving her younger sisters riding lessons. I pay her by the hour.

Athena has had an easy summer of grazing and an occasional ride. It's good to see her worked and it's good for her.  Here Willow is learning the fine art of turning a horse around.

Indiana has become skilled in grooming and getting Athena saddled up and ready. You really could not ask for a better, more patient horse.

Mary has decided every single day now that she prefers to stay outside the fencing. Her wool is so thick that the electric shock just doesn't affect her. She doesn't wander but rather grazes and rests near the fence. Crazy ewe!

The outside farm chores seem to be adding up! The rain this summer has really been a *damper* as far as keeping stalls and areas dry enough for animals. The chicken coop has suffered the greatest.
This past week we collected about 10 roosters and found homes for them. They were simply eating up my food and pestering my hens. We then placed the hens into my pasture meat bird pens. I am monitoring their food intake and trying to determine which birds are laying.

In a few weeks we hope that we can build a small egg-mobile in which to run them through out the entire property. I am also hoping the coop area will dry out some. I plan to bed the ground down thick with hay.

This week I hope to de-clutter a bit and get some things organized. It's going to be a busy fall!

October 4th we are hosting a public screening of the new documentary American Meat. It features Joel Salatin and explores the failing farming food system in the US. If you are local, come on out! It will be on the outdoor screen so bring a snack, a chair and a friend! I hope for lots of folks to see this wonderful film! Go check out the trailer!

Have a fabulously wonderful and productive week!!

Belle and Daisy the Family Cows

It has been a week! In fact last night I made dinner for the kids and then proceeded to lay on my bed for a quick 15 minute nap so that I would have the energy to milk the cows.

It's been THAT kind of week. Chores, chores, laundry, housekeeping, laundry, cows, sheep, bees....you name it!

It must be spring! :-) The pollen count here has been into the THOUSANDS, and so everything is a yellowish-green color.  This would include all of my furniture and floors in my house since I have been keeping the windows open all day and night.

Now to the nitty-gritty:

The new cows are here! I bought a mama cow and her heifer calf. This here is Belle. Actually her name is Lucy Belle, but I cannot have 2 Lucys...so we are calling her Belle.

 

She and Lucy have become instant friends, as Jersey cows usually are the best of mates.

 

Belle is more of a hand milking type family cow. She actually hadn't been "milked" since she calved in November so we are getting her used to being milked and getting into a stanchion for grain, etc. She's not super kicky, but if she gets startled or if she runs out of food she will panic and kick. Journee has some fine bruises on her own leg as proof!

 

I expect that after about a week she will be more adjusted and familiar with the routine around here. We have been very spoiled with Lucy's calm demeanor as an older cow. Belle is still a spirited soon to be only 4 years old cow.

 

 

We also bought Belle's heifer calf and named her Daisy. She is a very cute little girl and last night was the first night she did not bellow for her mama. We have Daisy out with the steer and ram until she is fully weaned. This made for several nights of listening to Belle and Daisy bellow back and forth all night long. It was quiet last night so I think everyone is adjusting some.

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We've had a couple of nights of heavy, heavy rain here It makes for very wet and muddy paddocks but it also has made the grass green up quite quickly. I think after we get through a little cold snap tonight (Dogwood Winter:-)) we will be well on our way to warm days and nights. The garden is tilled and my vegetable plants are slowly hardening off.

I can honestly admit that I sometimes think I might be wishing for punishment with all of these activities going on but I also know that I feel like this EVERY spring! It will all get done eventually and I will have some days to sit by the pool and relax...eventually:-)

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The sheep will arrive at the end of this month! We re-strung the electric fenced area and made 5 paddocks that are a bit smaller. We will rotate grazing each week in order to force better grazing and to help keep pests like worms (sheep) down. I plan to run my pasture chickens through these paddocks as as well to clean up and scratch in manure. This is a huge benefit of having electric fencing that can be moved around and adjusted. This will allow us to see how this new grazing system will work, and we can change it a bit if needed. So far the cows have done a much better job thoroughly grazing an area.

Athena got a good scrub down and bath this week too. Journee spent an hour scrubbing and brushing her to get the rest of her winter coat gone. She then spent a good while riding her around and working with her.
We did discover that our "bomb proof" horse has at some point been shocked by the electric cow fence and is now scared to be on that side of the property. Oops!
Journee will have the pleasure of working on that fear with Athena. Good thing Journee can hang on well:-)

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My plans this weekend include finishing a knitting project and maybe getting the pollen cleaned off my front porch! It might also be a great weekend to fire up the grill for dinner.

If anyone local is up for a rodeo, feel free to stop by at milking time:-)

Have a fabulous weekend!!!

Dog Drama

I want to catch ya'll up on what happened last week to one of the dogs. I warn you now that there will be a picture that is quite gruesome. If you have a squeamish stomach you might want to just skip todays' post and come back Wednesday:-)

We have three large dogs. Two are American Bulldogs and the other is a Weimaraner. 

These dogs stay inside and outside. At night I like to keep them on the front porch with a dog bed so that they can keep coyotes off the property. They will often spend their nights running off the porch in a mad dash to chase critters away.

They are all great dogs with children and we love them very much.

Thursday I woke up and upon entering the garage from the kitchen I found what seemed to be a crime scene from CSI. There was blood soaked into my rug and there was blood all over the garage floor. No animals were in site but the children and I quickly ran around trying to account for all of our pets.

The cats were all fine, the cocker spaniel was fine, the bulldogs were fine. The Weim, Arwen, was not fine. We opened the front door to find her standing on the porch wanting inside. She looked like this.

She looked terrible but she was walking fine. She also had a huge slice on her left side.

Journee and I immediately loaded her up and rushed her to the vet. Once we arrived they took her back and within 15 minutes had a plan to send her immediately to surgery. The owner of the vet practice does all of the complicated cases and he was ready to get started.

We have no idea what happened. Here is what the vet can almost 100% rule out.  He does NOT think it was a car or a train (we live right next to a RR track). It was NOT a dog attack or a barbed wire fence. He said it looked more like a knife or large blade type of damage. He also said she had fractured a bony process on one of her vertebrae.
He came to the conclusion that she was sliced with a bush hog mower or some other type of large mower. Of course this happened sometime between 6am-8am and the property right next to us had not bush hogged. I may never know what happened.

After two days of vet stay we brought her home.

She looked so much better! The vet did a great job. He did have to remove a large section of skin and fat so she will always have a little bit of deformity as far as the way her back looks.

She has over 100 stitches and about 8 drains. She is eating well and is taking two pain killers and two antibiotics. I am giving the dog 6 pills twice a day. Thank goodness for sliced cheese:-)

I am keeping her confined in a dog crate in the living room, but we take her out several times a day to go outside and drink water. Most of her drains are drying up with the exception of one in the back that drips like crazy. I hope that it will dry up in a day or so.

It's amazing how well she gets around and wags her tail. Dogs are tough and she was super happy to be home.

The bulldogs were happy to see her, and Duke sleeps in the living room near her crate. He has not wanted to spend much time out at night and I will not force him.

Both bulldogs still hang out on the porch during the day though.

I still lay in bed at night and scratch my head trying to figure out what happened to the sweet dog. It makes me nervous tpo let them outside but I guess that will get beter with time.

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Athena is getting better each time she rides. She's slowly fattening up and her rain rot is still getting better. Journee is trying to ride her every day.

Athena is such a well tempered horse. Yesterday Journee had her near the front steps so Fletcher could pet her.

I am not sure what they were discussing in this picture, but the baby was very serious:-)

Here's to a week of NO drama! :-)

I hope your week is drama free too!

Here Horsey, Horsey

Ok, so we now have a mare. A beautiful mare.

A skinny mare.....

The previous owners had many horses and thankfully decided to part with some because feeding them all was too much to handle. Theses animals do eat non-stop!

Add to that she was competeing for a food trough with several more aggressive mares and well...you get a skinny and starved horse.

Everyone came to greet and welcome Athena. She is a very friendly horse about 6 years old and doesn't seem to spook easily at all. We think she will make a great family horse once she gets up to her proper weight, of course. We rode her briefly before we got her and she was solid.

Once she arrived we wormed her, scraped bot fly eggs off her, groomed her, started treating a small patch of rain rot on her belly, and started her on some fattening up supplements and probiotics.

Zeb really was impressed with the sweet horse, but sometimes hunting for a cool rock is more fun! Our property is covered with fossilized crinoids. The kids love to collect them.

She has lots to eat now and we are showering her with lots of brushing and petting. Journee is working with her to establish and perfect some ground work.

Here's to the newest member of the farm. In two weeks we gets.......PIGS!!!!

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Wednesday I will be here with a Handmade Holiday installment.....yes, the holidays are right around the corner. It's time to get started!

Hope your day was great!