4-H Lesson, Equine Dentistry

E managed to drag herself down to the 4-H meeting Sunday after staying out all night for the prom.  I had one of our local equine vets come and talk on dentistry and demo teeth floating.  Dr. B is also a board certified vet anesthesiologist, chiropractic and acupuncturist.  

 My original idea was for her to work on Hank.  She had told me before that she had done Hank's teeth for a previous owner and his were usually bad.   But when she checked his teeth Sunday, she said they were fine.  So I thought I would try Otoelene since she should be shedding caps.   Dr. B said she did have some sharp points and would be a good idea to float her teeth.

 She did one side then let the kids feel the difference between the side she floated and the non floated side.  Otoelene is sedated by the way.

 E very reluctantly checked out Otoelene's mouth.  She said she just doesn't like touching gross things.  I guess she has a different definition of gross than I do.

 And this little girl was so cute.

She looked so pleased to have been able to put her hand in a horse's mouth.

After Otoelene, I had her check Brother who wasn't too bad.  Maybe I'll have her come later to do him but I didn't want her using all of her Sunday afternoon doing horse teeth.  Then E caught Pep for her to be checked.  She said her teeth weren't too bad either but she had a malalignment of her TMJ.  If you pressed on the jaw ligaments on the left side of her face she was fine but she tossed her head and jerked away when the right side was pressed.  Dr B opened Pep's mouth and pulled the jaw back into place.  It sounded like someone cracking all of their knuckles at once.  But the relief on Pep was instant.  I guess it is one of those things where you don't realize there is a problem until it's better.  I'll have to keep a check on Pep's jaw to see if it is a reoccurring problem.

I think everyone learned a lot including the parents and grandparents that came.

Junior Prom

E's Prom was Saturday.  There is much more preparation that goes into getting ready for it than there was back in my day.  Or maybe I was out of it back then too and didn't know all of the stuff you were suppose to do.  That actually seems more likely now that I think about it. 

 Anyway, E was beautiful.  She got ready and put her dress on so I could take pictures of her but she was going to dinner first just dressed casual.

 I even got a picture of her with her horse.

 There hairdresser commented on the shear volume of hair that she has.

Then she changed back and left with her date.  Haven't found out yet how the dancing worked out with that size difference.  And bonus Kit Kat checking out the truck.  They went to Tokyo for dinner then to RR to change and pictures with his mom (I'm suppose to be getting some of those emailed)  then prom in Marion, then after prom back at RR, then home at 3:30 AM.  She said after prom was more fun than prom.

Just Kit Sunday #47

Just Kit Kat.

Bad Horse For Sale Pictures #17

Stands quietly tied.  

That's just what I want, a horse that pulls and paws.

Good Fences #5

J worked on the water gaps this week.  

 There's really a fence there, can you see it?

 Maybe you can see it a little better after J has untangled the two strands of barb wire.

 We had a total of 3 water gaps to work on before J could turn the cattle out onto some new pasture.

 This is the deepest one he has to deal with.  But it's been so dry this spring that the water level is down 6-8 inches from where it usually is this time of year.

 The cows were watching from the bluff and knew exactly what we were up to.

 They came running as soon as J swooked them.

 They barely made it out of the creek before their heads went down and they stated eating.   A few of the calves came across with their mom's to start with.

But a bunch stayed behind running all over the place.  J left the gate open so the cows could go back once they got full and remembered about their calves and collect them.   This was the first wave of cows to calve so they are all pretty settled.  J will move other groups as they calve.
For more Good Fences CLICK HERE.

Failed

Our first calf heifers aren't calving in a very tight window of time.  In fact, several look like they may not calve until summer, and we had several that were open when we hauled them back last fall. 

  So J decided to have a breeding soundness exam done on that bull and a new yearling bull he bought.

 There are several steps to the exam which I won't go into here.

But he did find the problem.  Abnormal heads on over 60% of the bull's sperm.  J has been really impressed with the small size of his calves and was looking forward to using him on the heifers again because of his calving ease but it looks like he will be taking a trip to the market instead.

Easter Ride

Brother had another big day Sunday when V went trail riding with me and J.  E went to the beach with Grandma, a friend and one aunt and an uncle and V was home from Tech for Easter.  When she made the suggestion to go trail riding I was all over it.  

It was a beautiful sunny day without gale force winds, perfect for a trail ride on Horse Heaven.  

J rode Jessica, her first ride in awhile.  And V took Hank.  

 Jessica started out well but got pretty antsy on the way back.  J had to do quite a lot of training to keep her at a steady pace.  

On one part of the trail we could see a section that had burned out of control last November.

We saw more smoke on the mountain last Friday.  We found out later that this was a planned burn.

 Brother was very interested in the burned areas.  He would periodically try to veer off the trail to walk through it.

He didn't even seem to mind when he took the lead through the burned sections.  

V said Hank did perfect and she had a good ride with him pretty much just letting him walk along doing his own thing.  

The forest service had done a lot of work on the trails and they were super highways as far as horse trails around here are concerned.   I love how V's hair is the same color as Hank.  We rode for about 2 1/2 hours.  Brother got a day off on Monday after his 2 big days. 

Kid count - 60 (more or less) 

Brother's Second Show

I finally made it to another show with Brother.  It was just me and J so I decided to only take one horse.  Plus, the classes that I was able to show in were all back to back to back, so I thought it might get tricky trying to switch around on young horses so fast.   Anyway, Brother did fabulous.  He was so quite and calm that it is hard to believe he just turned three.  

 His walk,

 jog,

and lope were great.  Being western pleasure I guess there is always room to go slower, but I was pleased with his consistency and quietness in his transitions.   His attention did wander at times which caused his head to come up some but still, I'm not complaining.  The judge said she was very impressed with how he was doing and thought he could really go places.  

I will confess there weren't many western horses there, 2 to 5 in all of my classes, but who cares, we got some pretty cool ribbons including division champion in Adult Western Pleasure.

Just Kit Sunday #46

Trying to get a good picture of a cat can be a challenge.  Getting a picture of baby goats not so much. But getting a picture of Kit with baby goats, next to impossible.

I said next to but not impossible.
Hope you enjoy your Easter.

More Goats

Some of the baby goats are big enough now to be jumping up on the water tank in their field.  We have had trouble in the past with them falling in and drowning.  We have stacked cinder blocks in the bottom thinking that if they fell in they could get a foot hold and jump out but that didn't work either.  I have seen some that fall in and immediately fight to get out and make it.   I've seen others fall in and just go limp.  

 We tried this with the pallets last year and it seemed to work.  The problem is we can only do this in the field they are currently in.  When we start letting them out to the rest of the farm we can't block off the top of all the tanks because the cattle will rub on the pallets and break something.

 Right now they are using it as a play ground.

 Have you seen anything so adorable?

Maybe we can teach Bumble to rescue the little ones if they fall in.
Kid count - 44 maybe.

Good Fences #4

It's time to start working the different groups of cattle and begin moving them out to their Spring pastures.  

 E was our help for the day.

 Hank cast a long shadow the morning we got the yearlings up to work.

 J counted to make sure they were all in.  Nothing worse than thinking you're done then seeing one up on the hill that wasn't with the rest of them.

 J acts like he might need some glasses to read the scale on the deworming gun.

 And E manned her position with the ear tags and vaccines.

It wasn't long before we got 23 replacement heifers worked and hauled to their new home for the next few months.
For more Good Fences click HERE.

Kid count - 42 ish.

In Bloom and Bees

Things are really blooming around here now.  

 The grape hyacinths have stated randomly coming up in the yard.

The regular hyacinths have really multiplied from the original six that I planted. 

 J was told in his bee class that if the bees make it until the dandelions bloom then they will have plenty to eat.  I guess ours have made it.

 A friend of J's from the bee class came out to check on our bees.

 Looks like we had a few wax moths under the inner cover.  Not really a problem.

But the frames in the hive were rotten and he couldn't lift them out to check on the bees.  He thought we had lots of bees and they might be getting ready to swarm.  He said we could get another hive body and he had an excluder that we could put on top of this one.  The bees would go up into the new hive then couldn't get back down.  Once they had all moved then we could take that off and put new frames in the old body.  Sounds complicated.  Looks like I'm going to have to put in a big order to Brushy Mountain Bee Farm for supplies.