Hank

I've been working with Hank a lot lately and am really impressed by his easy going attitude and hunter potential. I had the hunter saddle on him Sunday to see how he would look. E even got on him voluntarily with the hunter saddle. This was a big deal considering she only rides Pep- period.

I think the hunter tack suited him and he did wonderful. He never budged while E struggled to get on. Hank is at least 5 inches taller than Pep plus the hunter stirrups are shorter.
He looked great at the trot and canter.
E was posting with no problem. She even shockingly made the comment she wouldn't mind showing Hank hunter.
Hank even tolerated E's mistakes well. I think I have a diamond in the rough. I can't wait to get him to a show. I am even hopeful he might be able to jump.

More Twins

We have had our 4th set of twins this year. The cow calved Friday but J didn't see the 2nd calf until this morning. It had gotten into a completely different field from the cows calving.

We put her in a sack and drove her to the cow which wasn't one bit interested in taking her.
So we then carried her to the barn.
Looks like we have another bottle calf to feed.

Show Season 2010

The girls went to their first horse show of the season today. There hasn't been a lot of riding to prepare for the show (at least not as much as I would have like to see), but the horses for the most part did ok.

Pep was very consistent in her classes, she picked up her leads and was very quiet.
E really likes her new professional looking show shirt. Now she says the only thing that she needs is a saddle with more silver. I'm drawing the line at that. The judging of the western classes was chaotic at best. Most of the good horses started scratching after about 3 classes. In E's Western go as you please class a saddlebred won, and in the western pleasure walk/jog, the horse that most resembled a saddlebred won. There was an adult western pleasure class where a Tennessee Walking horse beat a professional looking QH. E ended up with a 3rd, 4th and 5th (in my unbiased opinion it should have been 2nd, 2nd, and 1st.)
I think V has only ridden Jessica maybe 3 times this year. So predictably she was unpredictable.
She placed 3rd out of 14 in her first class then proceeded to buck and take off in the next 2 classes. The judge told V that her horse had a pinched nerve in her back and needed to see a chiropractor. I think the pinched nerve was in the judges brain.
I was very proud of V for braiding Jessica's mane by herself. I think she had been fooling me the last two years telling me she didn't know how.
It does look like a rats nest when the braids are undone.

Keep/Cull

When we were on the college livestock judging team there was a class called keep/cull. We were presented with 8 heifers and had to pick 4 to keep for replacement heifers and then cull the other 4. Points were awarded based on how close to the official judge you were.

It is a little more difficult in real life. Instead of points you have income. Sometimes wrong choices can lead to calving problems, poor milk production, or poor growth. All that adds up to lost income.
The profit margin in farming is slim so a lot of thought is put into the process. J's problem was that he liked most of the heifers that we had kept from sending to feedlot last fall.
We picked 20 to keep.
And had 17 to cull.
After one more sweep through the cull lot, J decided to keep one more. We then gave the pre breeding shots and dewormed them all. The bull will get turned into the heifers we are keeping in about 2 weeks.

Founder

J's Dad's horse Lady has foundered several times. I'm sure she had foundered before he got her 2 years ago then again 1 1/2 years ago before he brought her to our house.

She is always overweight with a large crest. She has been getting sore again over the last month despite having a grazing muzzle and being confined to a 1/2 acre lot.
In order to come up with a treatment and prognosis, I borrowed a portable x-ray unit to radiograph her feet.
She has about 20 degrees of rotation on her front feet and about 5 degrees on 1 hind foot. The other hind foot is fine. I'm considering trying the barefoot technique of lowering the heal and backing up the toe then filing the feet twice a week. There is a lot of conflicting ideas surrounding the treatment for founder but this one seems to make the most sense.

Day 5

We spent day 5 sight seeing in Western Nebraska and South Dakota.

After dropping M off at the airport in Chadron, and worrying about his safety leaving out on such a small plane, we stopped at Fort Robinson. It was raining and the buildings were closed except for the Museum which we enjoyed. The Fort has served as the Red Cloud Indian Agency, a cavalry remount station, K-9 dog-training center, POW camp and a beef research station.
Where are we now? Unfortunately, this was the view we had at Mt. Rushmore. I'm told there are some giant heads carved into the mountain, but you couldn't prove it by me.
We did get to see the Bad Lands. Absolutely fascinating!

Words and pictures can't do it justice.

Our last 2 days were spent racing back east. 3500 miles in 7 days.

Day 4

We started looking at ranches on day 4. We had 2 lined up to look at.

Ranch 1 was 5515 acres with a small house and older barns. The ranch was cross fenced into about 16 fields with sizes varying from 20 acres to 1020 acres.
There was a small pond/lake on the property along with a large sub-irrigated hay meadow.

Windmills abound on all the ranches.
Ranch 2 was 3778 acres with another section of 7541 acres that could be purchased or rented. There were 2 houses, a hired help house and a large brick house, also several barns (2 new) and outbuildings.
This ranch had a huge sub-irrigated hay meadow.
It also had a lake that was being drained through a canal system and pump.

You can see this would all be a drastic change from where we are.
Of course if you are in Merriman stop at the Sand Cafe. The salad bar is excellent.