a baby is born

Friday March 23 my mini mare Lily had the cutest little foal.  I wasn’t absolutely sure Lily was pg.  I thought she looked fat but then again she seemed to get fat every winter.  I thought she was getting a “bag” several days before but Steve just laughed when I told him that because he has heard it before.  The last 2 winters I thought she was pregnant and I was wrong.

Thursday evening I was watching her graze and I thought she sure looked like her udder was swollen but I kept my mouth shut.   So I wasn’t totally surprised when I went out Friday morning and she didn’t show up to eat.  I went looking and found her by the pond with the little long legged cutie.  It had rained a little overnight but he looked quite dry and was already frisky.

We had Chance with her all last year but he is the little stud that is about 6 inches shorter than her and has crippled hind legs.  We were told that before we got him he had been with several mini mares and larger mares for 4 years with no babies.    Well love finds a way.  He was with her when the foal was born but she didn’t want him near and we moved him to the pond pasture and put her and the baby in the pasture with the run in barn, which is close to the house.

 Lucky’s legs look fine, he has a black mane and tail, reddish body color with lighter muzzle and legs.  He may be a dun, or maybe a bay, color is hard to determine this young.  He is hard to catch already, I want to handle him each day so he is fairly tame but he really knows how to get around.    My legs are so bad right now it’s hard for me to catch him.  I am going to sit in the pasture tonight when I bring Lily her feed and hope he comes up to me.

 I feel bad now that I had Lily on such an austere diet all winter of 1st cutting grass hay and carrots or apples.  She had foundered last year on alfalfa mix hay.  I gave her no grain all winter.  I ran out and got some sweet feed for her and started giving her a small amount and she is very happy.  I’ll get some mare and foal supplement soon.   She looks thinner of course now that baby long legs is out but she doesn’t look too thin.  Grass is starting to get good so she will be able to eat to her hearts content and I won’t have to pen her up to keep her from foundering on it this spring.

It’s amazing that Lucky is already tasting the hay and grass and getting in the water bucket.  He runs circles around mom then ducks under her belly and comes out the other side.  Lily is still a little protective; when the horses across the street come over close to the road she takes Lucky in the barn or way out in the pasture.

 Chance has been hanging out on the other side of the fence gazing wistfully at them.  He isn’t being too bad now about trying to get through but I wonder what will happen when Lily comes into foal heat.  That usually happens 10 days after they give birth and they will re-breed if you let them and supposedly are very fertile then.  I don’t want her to re-breed at the beginning of April because the next foal would be born in early March and our weather might not be as nice next year.

 I should have Chance gelded.  All last summer I kept saying that and because of what happened with Charlie I put it off. (Charlie was Lily’s son who died after gelding.) He wasn’t too obnoxious with us - probably because she got pg in April last year.  I know they can still have sperm for a while after gelding too.   But maybe he would get along with Lucky better. 

 Because Lucky is a boy he will have to be sold.  If he was a filly I would have kept him with Lily and gave Chance away.  But after the Charlie experience I will sell this guy off as a yearling, if we can get him and Chance to be friendly that long.  People tell me studs can be left with foals they fathered, along with the mares, for a year or so, but I am a little leery.  But our fences aren’t the kind that will keep a stud away from a mare in heat and horses don’t like to be alone.  So the next month looks a little bumpy for us.

 This is the first time we have had a foal born here.  When we bought Lily Charlie was about 6 weeks old and I thought he was small.  I did not do a good job training Charlie, he was spoiled so I hope I do better with this one.  I had been seriously thinking of selling the horses, they are expensive little buggers and a lot of work.  I just have this thing about having all this “pasture” and nothing eating it.  Then winter comes and you have to buy hay and haul water.  And there is fixing fences and catching loose horses and getting burrs out of manes and all that good stuff. 

 But then there is watching a little cutie racing around the pasture and mom lovingly nuzzling him  and watching sleek, healthy horses eating green grass and well…..

Its so spring its scary

It’s a beautiful St. Patrick’s Day in Michigan; we may actually get to 80 degrees and we have already broken the record of 72 at 76 degrees at 2 pm.  All week the weather has been very warm. We had some serious storms a few nights ago, with a tornado touch down or two just south and west of us.   But for the most part it has just been beautiful.  We opened the big pasture up to the horses and they have been trying to find those itsy green blades which are sprouting up.  The chickens are out scratching and they must be finding something because their feed consumption has gone way down.

 The frogs are singing like crazy, robins, red wing blackbirds and turkey vultures are back.  Mosquitoes and bees are out.  The crocus are in full bloom and some things are leafing out.  The buddleia, the honeysuckle, the roses by the back door, all are getting leaves, it’s just amazing.   In 2009 and 2010 we had an early spring but not this early.  Our windows are open and I have the ceiling fan on here in my office.  I worked outside cleaning a flower bed this morning and got so warm I quit.

 The warm weather is forecast to go all through the next week, with storms here and there.  It is nice but also scary because the fruit trees will bud and then probably we will lose the crop to a frost or freeze.  That’s what the fruit experts are predicting.  Maple syrup season has been a bust.   There may be considerable damage to perennials and trees that leaf out early too.  But there is nothing we can do about it.

We had another batch of sizzle chicks hatch yesterday.  I think just 3 lived though it looked like a couple more hatched.  There was a huge cache of eggs under the hen and I think the other hen was continuing to lay there so who knows what will happen.  I will probably wait until tomorrow and then clean the whole nest out.  The bigger chicks are still in there and don’t seem to bother the little ones except by stepping on them, which the tiny ones are fast learning to avoid.

 The guineas, which we call the terrorists, have taken to roaming the yard.  They are so noisy that I am seriously thinking about getting rid of them.  They are mean to the other birds too, they even chase the turkeys.  Steve said I should clip their wings like I did the turkeys and ducks so they can’t get in the yard.  But I decided t wait until I get ready to put the garden in, maybe in their wandering a few will just disappear.  And when they are out of the chicken pasture the other birds have some relief from them.

 

My stupid dogs which could be outside in the nice weather seem to want to stay inside.  Even when we were both outside this morning, working where they could have seen us from the yard they stayed inside.  Maybe its too warm for them, there isn’t much shade in the yard right now.  And unlike us, they don’t feel like they have to get out and enjoy it because it might not last.

 Hopefully I will get to my woods this weekend and look for surfaced bottles and other junk.  There is an old farm dump out there and I like to look through it in the spring when there is no undergrowth or bugs.  I have found some interesting bottles and things.   I used to look for old things as a kid around some old farm buildings I could walk to.  I wish I still had some of the stuff I found there.  There’s money in that old junk.

Yes the weather is nice but it's a bit scary.  It's like waiting for the other shoe to drop or acepting a trade off- we get warm weather but a bunch of tornadoes.  Or we get warm weather now and winter in April.  But there's nothing we can do.