New guys! PICS!

You probably thought that I had retired my camera... but no! The weather hasn't been the greatest and I haven't had a ton of time to take pictures. So yesterday evening, I took out the camera... no... I didn't take pictures of the horses, but I should've. Although no horse has had significant changes, they all look exactly the same! ;P

We managed to take out the horses twice this weekend for about 1.5 hours everytime. Peg only got out once, remained sound without shoes, but she sweated a lake.. she is not in good shape, since she is only used occasionnally, she never gets much exercise. At her age, she rarely runs around anymore and enjoys her days basking in the sun or in the shade if it's too hot... I've actually found them using the shelter!!! :D I have decided to not put shoes back on Peg. She is rarely used and is sound in the pasture... I will treat her thrush like all the others and keep her hooves trimmed in a natural way. I plan on selling the shoes that I didn't use, they would make excellent shoes for someone who is into gaming and wants their horse to enjoy a more natural way of living. The shoes can be glued on or nailed on.

One of Misty's overgrown hooves broke off to a normal lenght. I can pick up her front feet, she hasn't had much work this weekend except for putting on her halter twice, leading a bit and picking up her feet, but I'm in no rush. She can still be touched pretty much all over except for her underbelly, but we'll work on that in the weeks to come. The next steps are to trim her feet, at least the front (I will take before and after shots), then probably start sacking her out, maybe putting a circingle on her and a bit in her mouth, just to get her used to it. I don't want to skip steps and I want to have confidence when I put my foot in that stirrup. She is a sweety, but I don't know how she will react to a saddle and rider yet... I'm thinking that either she'll just stands there, frozen or shoot forward in a panic, but I will probably video tape that first ride and some of her training. She has seen me getting on Dandy and riding, she is curious about the saddle and there isn't much that spooks her. I was bathing the horses yesterday and she was getting too close, so I sprayed her neck with water... but she didn't move... Nothing makes her nervous. There was a deer in the pasture with the horses on Friday evening and she kept looking at it, then got closer... then realized it was just another "horse" and got back to grazing.

On Sunday morning, we added a new addition to the cattle herd... Here he is:

He is a 16 month old Blonde D'Aquitaine bull. That's Nabisco behind him. He was introduced to the herd on Sunday morning. We'll only see what he can produce next year, in March-April 2011. Nabisco seems to be close to her heat cycle, he is sticking with her away from the herd, so I am expecting her to be bred this week, I will note the appropriate dates. The Blonde D'Aquitaine is a great breed that gives calves that aren't too big at birth but that have significant weight gain in their first weeks of life. I am not fond of this bull's conformation, but he is in his dangly yearling stage and should even out with time. I also find him a bit thin. He should build more muscles in the year to come.

I have also taken pictures of the herd:

Above: These are two of our Gilbvieh X Angus cows. The one in the middle of the pic has not yet calved and the one behind her is the latest one to have calved.

BELOW: This is the next one to calve. She is a first calf heifer, so we'll be keeping an eye on her. She should calve in the week to come.

Below: These are the youngsters. Our two calves and first calf heifer. The calf laying down is the latest calf. He is a steer from our biggest Gilbvieh X Angus cow and from a Charolais bull. The calf in the middle is our white heifer from end of April. She is now a few days short of 2 months old, while the little guy is 20 days old, he was born on June 1st.

We've called the little heifer Biscuits... because her mom is Nabisco... we stayed in the cooking theme! Biscuits will be staying with us. The little guy didn't get a name, I am trying not to get too attached since he will be sold, probably for meat... It's hard to keep away from such a cute little face. He is curious and wants to walk up to people to smell them, but he doesn't know that we wont hurt him yet.

As for the bull, he is just getting used to people. He ran for the woods a few times but once with the cows, we were able to get close to him. Our cows are very friendly and I found myself having to back up to take some pictures since they were standing way too close to me!

This weekend will be our annual rodeo, I will try to take some pictures of that, weather permits... I am participating in the opening parade, I might have pictures, if someone takes some. This is also my last week at work before a week of vacation. I am going up to the cottage for the whole week next week so I will have no Internet access, no phone, no TV... Everything I need for complete PEACE! My mom is also on vacation and we are planning to go pedalboating quite a bit, she just got her pedalboat on Friday! I'm more of a canoer, but I'll adapt. Since the cottage isn't all that far from the farm, I'll be able to go every day to check on the cows and horses and probably will be going for a few rides... by myself but that's ok. I will probably have more time to take pictures.

New Crew

What a weekend! I am exhausted! The weather around here has been nasty (to say the least) for the past week! It has been either snowing or raining (or a mix of both) the entire time!!!!!!! Needeless to say that there is water and drenched snow EVERYWHERE!

Poor horses have a water hole as big as the barn that somewhat "prevents" them from going into the shelter.... I'm saying """prevent""" because Dandy will walk right into water of any depth to cross and go wherever she wants... but the old girls will not put a hoof in it! They are determined to not cross water of any kind and spend most of their time going around the water hole to get food and a drink. At least they get more exercise than before! LOL!

I HATE Spring, I can't stand it. I'm so miserable comes Spring that I could just sit and cry all the time! Everything is muddy or wet, the manure is starting to come out from under the snow and every square inch is full of it! Of course, I would clean it, but considering the amount of mud underneath, it would ruin a good part of our pasture... at least good pasture for late summer.

So besides from that, we've spent all day Saturday to a cattle auction. We are looking to expand our herd (since we only have one lonely cow) and we came home with 4 more cows, all in calf exept for one... I wasn't too thrilled about that, she was sold as "in calf" but there was a mix up in the pen and turns out she wasn't... I was POed and finaly dealt a better price on the open cow. We will have her bred as soon as we can. So here are the results of our spending spree!

This is the cow that is not bred and is also the cow that has the most flaws, see how her back isn't straight (OK, one flaw!). We wouldn't have bought her, but the cattle were sold in pairs usually a not so stunning animal with a stunning one. She did calve before, so there shouldn't be any problems.

Next one from the back is our First calf Heifer. She is 3 months in her pregnancy, we call her Speedy because she is so agile and quick! The one closest to me is the cow we bought with the one that is not pregnant, she is a gorgeous example of the breed. They are all Red Angus and Gilbvieh (spelling??) mix and are bred to Charolais.

And... last but not least... This is for sure one of the biggest cows I have ever seen! She is so thick that her belly is less than a foot off of the ground she is very calm and kept making faces every time I took a picture... hence the tongue! She is missing a bit of her tail and she is obviously the leader of the group. She is a bit darker in colour than her friends. I don't have their names, but they must be registered somewhere... I will look it up!

The new cows have not been out in the pasture yet, they are in quarantine inside until we know they are calm enough to romp with the crew, they are all vaccinated, dewormed and vet checked. They've all met Dandy and seem ok with her. The old mares didn't bother to make it over to meet them and will probably chase them a bit.

Sadly, I am thinking about giving those two away. As much as I love them, they do not get along with anything else but themselves, no cows, no Dandy. Dandy is pretty much always on her own and she is not allowed access to food until they are both done eating. I am not pleased with that... poor Dandy is so harmless that she is not even getting mad at them... she is the kind to try and still be part of their group. Even when we had 8 horses in the field, the two Standards never made friends with any of them. I would hate to have to part with them, but I am thinking about it. Makes my eyes water. :'( I love those two with all my heart, but they can really grind my gears sometimes! We might reconfigure the pens to have the horses together and the cows together, not mixed up, although they are still doing ok. I am really sad at the thought and it is going to be one heck of a hard decision to make.

News

Ok, don't hate me because I haven't been posting lately. I have hardly been in the house at all and I have taken a few days off at work. Dandy has been sick. She has an upper respiratory infection and I've been working on clearing it out with antibiotic shots every 12 hours for 5 days. It was quite a task, the days are much shorter now and we barely get 11 hours of light, so the shots I gave Dandy were given mostly during dark hours. I completed the treatment yesterday and Dandy and I were glad too! She is such a sport, she was making her way to meet me in the pasture even if she knew I was going to stick her with a needle. She seems to have taken a turn for the better, her eyes have cleared up (they were quite cloudy), her runny nose is almost dry, her fever is gone, she did not cough, except for yesterday (were she was REALLY playing around with the foal), she coughed 3 times in a row and stopped.

I will keep her quiet for another week or two and will be reevaluating her in 7 to 10 days. Too bad because I was giving riding lessons to my mom every weekend with Dandy... it was coming along good and my mom was up to start trotting when Dandy became sick. My mom has suffered a severe breast cancer and is now on her 3rd year of remission, she is doing well but she will have to take medication for the rest of her life. The medication she was taking was giving her ackes in her legs and knees and she had to skip a few courses because of it. Her medication was changed last week and I think we will be able to start again as soon as Dandy is back to her old self. I am in no rush, these courses are just for fun. I got the idea because my mom used to ride Dandy every now and then, but this fall, we were going to go for a ride in the bush to see the leaves, I had brought Pearl for me to ride and we were all set to go. When mom sat on Dandy, she got nervous and cancelled our ride. She hadn't ridden in about 8 months, maybe more. I was very disapointed, Dandy is not one to get anxious if a nervous rider is sitting on her back, so I tryed to convince my mom that it would be ok, but she got scared and got off. The next weekend, I had made a plan for lessons and we were on our first lesson. She only had to learn to brush, saddle and bridle Dandy, then mount correctly and sit on Dandy until she got relaxed (not Dandy, my mom!). It worked great! Dandy stood patiently until everything was over.

We got to week 3 and then Dandy got sick... I'm thinking of doing our next course as a recap of everything that we've seen so far, just to get her back in the groove. She did take Dandy for a walk with her halter, I was very proud of her!

Anyways, I've had a busy weekend, between the sick horse, the other horses, a friend's birthday party, Xmas shopping and the auction sale, I didn't get much sleep, not to mention that I got big allergy reactions to something unknown 3 mornings out of 5, that prevented sleep for a few hours!

The Auction Sale was a herd dispersal auction (cattle). We bought one cow, we are planning to build a little herd of cattle. She is a Blonde D'Aquitaine cow (pure breed) and she is bred to a Charolais bull for a spring calf. She is very gentle and easy-going, she still has horns, but we are planning to remove them next weekend. Right now, she is in isolation in the barn. She is vaccinated and vet checked, but just to be sure. The horses will have time to get used to her smell. We would've gotten some more but they weren't going cheap... matter of fact, we paid more for the cow than any of our horses! I would've rather been at a horse auction and buy one of them instead of cattle, but that's the way it is!

I'm sorry I didn't post sooner, I was SO busy... I nearly don't have time to do my personal things, like pay bills and eat!! Work is just the same, I am beyond busy and it really hits home... I can't rest and will probably die of exhaustion (kidding!)!! Can't wait to get a little break, I've been getting up at 5:30 in the morning EVERY day (weekends especially included!) for the past month, maybe more (I know for the past month for sure)... I don't go to bed too late (about 10 or 11:00 pm) but I think fatigue is starting to accumulate.

I hope you all had a great weekend!