I haven’t written much about the horses lately. Quite frankly, there have been days that I didn’t even go down and look at the horses, much less do anything with them.
I love my farrier (usually). She is good at getting me to get my butt in gear and do something with the beasts. After she finished trimming him, she played around with Al Bin and a bareback pad. He was a bit spooky about it, but all in all, not bad at all. Then we took a buggy whip with a plastic bag tied to it and desensitized him. He wasn’t overly concerned about that either.
After we finished with Al Bin, I went down to catch Merlin. I haven’t been leaving a halter on him and the first time I tried to catch him, he spooked away from me so I brought Al Bin up first for trimming. The second time I went down, he spooked again, but I practiced my joining up exercises and within minutes, I was able to walk up to his right side (which is his bad side) and slip the rope around his neck. Whoo Hoo!!!! That was a huge accomplishment. When I first bought Merlin, catching was extremely difficult. He’d turn his butt to me whenever I tried. I did some round pen work work with him and that seems to have made a huge difference. It’s nice to see accomplishments
I believe I’m getting into these larger animals (horses and cows) for a reason. You can’t man-handle a cow or a horse into doing what you want; well, maybe you can, but you are apt to get hurt in the process. You need to figure out a way to ask, in their language. Back when I was taking Gel to ASCA shows to get his WTCH, cattle gave me a horrible time. I simply didn’t understand them. I still don’t, but I’m learning.
When milking Gwen this morning, I noticed she had teeth marks on her rear nipples. I decided to go ahead and separate Spot from her then and there to prevent injury. That’s all Gwen needs is sore nipples. The mistake was letting Gwen into the pasture before pulling Spot out. As soon as I opened up the goat shelter to let Spot and the goat kids out, Spot bee-lined to the milk bar. I tried to use Gel to separate them, but got protective of Spot. Interesting. I’ll need to get Spot out of the goat pasture and into the poultry pasture when Gwen is otherwise occupied.
I need to take the time to take pictures of the hanging stall that we made for Gwen. It’s actually quite ingenious and seems to work very well.
Pictures, it would be nice to take pictures of the puppies … They are growing like weeds and doing well. Where to keep them at night has become a problem. Split never really cleaned up after them and now six puppies in a swimming pool lined with newspapers = a HUGE MESS in the morning. I can’t use shavings or straw in the house. Until some of the puppies leave for their new homes, I might put them down in the hay house at night and use straw in the pool. This will be the last litter I produce.
Until later …