Drunk Pony

The vet came out last Friday for fall vaccines, teeth and other stuff.

Stuff I learned:
-Drafts are lightweights when it comes to sedation
-Even when heavily sedated, Max was able to stop the float by pressing his cheeks against it, forcing it against his teeth
-You can tell if a llama needs to be dewormed based on the color of the inside of the eyelids
-I'm an idiot:  I've been leaving the hose in Max's water bucket.  Apparently, the hydrant will continue to siphon water back out. I'm not convinced this completely explains the bucket being almost drained every day, but it's a possibility. The bucket wasn't being drained as quickly in the day or two before the vet came and now is being drained even less.  I decided to skip the blood work since everything else seemed to be fine with him. She gave me some other signs to watch for.
-Max snores.  The vet, her student and the tech were all amused when they left and he was snoring away.
-Vet said his weight was perfect and was impressed. Yay! I constantly worry about his weight and think he's either getting a little too thin or too fat.  Guess I'm doing something right.

A very drunk pony

I was glad I had taken the day off. Shortly after this picture was taken, he started to cock his left front leg while keeping his back leg up too. I thought he was going to go down in his stall for a minute.

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!

Vet Visit

The vet came out Wednesday to take off Cinderella's bandage and have a look at her foot.  Good news is that it had healed better than he had expected. Bad news is that it hasn't healed as much as I was hoping, but I'll take it.  She'll have to stay in the stall for a few days and see how she does on the foot without a bandage.  I'm hopeful she will continue to heal.  She might have a limp for the rest of her life, but it shouldn't really cause her issues...not in the same way it would with a horse anyways.

Hack job with her wool. I had to be quick before she started to wake up.

She kept kicking so the vet had to knock her out with some happy juice to get a good feel of the leg. Once he left, I did all her nails and hacked away at her wool. All that was much easier when she's asleep, aside from having to roll her over. Also, she was snoring.  I got some video, but I'm not sure how well you can hear her. I might post it later.

Max was pretty worried about her too.  The vet mentioned that he was much worse when he came out at the beginning of June. He was pacing and pawing at everything.  I think maybe because Cinderella was out and there were only strangers there.  This time, I was there and he just kept watching through the slats.