Joe and His Grain

Silly and sweet Joe. Joe and Thor have not yet been at Borderlands for a week and Joe has already figured out the grain routine. At the very beginning, he was at the end of the pasture and I had to lure him in. Over the last couple of days, Joe has been fairly close but still out in the middle of the pasture.

Last night Joe was up at the fence patiently waiting for me. I went to pick up the feed dishes and he whinnied at me. That was the best sound I'd heard all day! I sometimes wonder if I made the right decision; maybe someone else could take care of them better, maybe someone else could pamper him more; maybe I'm not the best caretaker. But that whinny, that whinny summed it up. It doesn't matter if I'm not the best, in Joe's eyes, I'm the crazy grain lady and that's all that matters.

There is definately something wrong with his right hip. He favors it greatly when he comes up for grain. Of coures everything is so mushy that it's hard to really see how well he walks. I just hope that Joe is actually putting on weight instead of dropping weight. From one angle it looks like he's maintaining the weight and from a different angle it looks like he's dropping weight.

Of course it's only been four full days so of course Joe can't pack on the pounds in four days. I think I need to increase his grain ration but I want to work him up to it slowly as I can't monitor him as well as I'd like.

I'm thinking of starting Joe on beet pulp but I'm not sure if he'll go for it or not. He devours the grain but everyone else did the same and always turned up their nose at the beet pulp. So I might try two dishes; one with just soaked senior and a second dish with beet pulp and soaked senior.

I also started Joe on probiotics to see if that would help him too. I've bought the powder probiotic before at Tractor Supply but I happened to be at Walmart and they were clearancing out a bunch of jars. So I snatched up a few and we'll see if they do any good for poor ol' Joe.

I just hope I can get some weight on him. The cream I put on his scars/wounds on his back seems to be doing the trick. The flies are staying off of it. If I can't keep the flies off Joe, I'll invest in a good flysheet although I'm not sure that will work until I put him out with the rest of the herd. His current pasture has a lot of trees.

I'm not sure if I'll get to do too much with the horses tonight. We have a bunch of trees we bought at the Minnehaha County Conservation Office and we need to get them planted. I tried to prep everything yesterday and looked at some of the trees we planted awhile ago from the same place. Last night was all about yard work, stuff I've put off since before the wedding and had to wait on because of the weather.

We are to get nice weather today and then starting tomorrow more rain. The weatherman is calling for more bad weather with big storms rolling in next week. So it looks like still no riding time for me. I'd really like to go for a ride one of these days! Oh well. At least it's horsework instead of housework!