Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Oh, Animals!

Animals....sometimes I seriously wonder why I have them.

Max has suddenly been drinking water like crazy. Usually I fill his 20 gallon bucket every other day or so, but he's been draining the whole thing in about 12 hours. No leaks that I can see either.  Since he was due for shots anyways, I called the vet. She seemed concerned, but not enough to come out so soon. She will be out a week from Friday to do vaccines, teeth and a blood draw. Her immediate thoughts were Cushings or something with his kidneys.  Of course, this morning he drank a normal amount for the first time in days, so who knows. Otherwise, pony is normal.

Also this morning, I was getting ready to leave for work and noticed one of our chickens running around. We currently have 3 chicken tractors set up.  Everyone else looked fine until I looked at the farthest one and noticed there were not chickens....anywhere.  This is odd because if they get out, they usually stick close to the other tractors. They freak out because they suddenly don't have access to grain, but can't figure out how to get back in.

So where did these 5 other chickens go?  There was one body found out near the road. The others had completely disappeared. Not the M.O. of racoons or opossums in my experience. So D and I are disposing of the body in the back area, come back up to the front to find a fox sniffing around looking for his kill.  I'm guessing he took the other 4 and hid them somewhere. Poor chickens.  I'm hoping he doesn't try to go after the other coops today. We will be doing some reinforcing this evening and get the hotwire back up.

Not so funny side story, or lab mix was in the front yard the entire time.  Did he bark, or otherwise try to scare the fox off?  Nope.  He'll bark and chase after deer and loves to kill small animals (squirrels, small birds), but I guess a fox is too much effort.  Useless animal. Max is more of a guard animal than the dog is.

I did ride Max last week, but need to get some photos and video off the phone before I post. It was a highly amusing session. Love the pony!

Monday, October 5, 2015

Waiting....

It's been a little while since my last post. Mostly that's because nothing much has been going on. I haven't been riding and Max has only been moved between pasture and paddock. Even that's ending soon since the leaves are changing and they can't be out while the cherry trees are dropping. For me, I mostly come home from work with the intention of laying down for a few minutes to relax my back and end up falling asleep for a couple of hours. Such is life right now and Max certainly doesn't mind.

You give me more hay now??




His fuzz is also getting thick already. It's so soft and wonderful, but I hate what it means (winter is coming). Pretty soon he will be a blond yak.
No? What if I'm cute? What if I try to eat the faucet?

Last week the farrier came.  It was one of those crisp fall type days with the wind blowing that really sets off the horses and she ended up being late because of crazy horses before me. Max was no exception. He was a spooky impatient thing.

However, while I was waiting, I got a chore done that I'd been meaning to do...rinse off my saddles. They're going in the garage for winter since I won't be riding and we've been having mice problems.

This is why I love synthetics. They feed my laziness.