Neighbor's Pasture and a HUGE Thank You

Hallelujah! We received rain last night. Of course it wasn't all that much but a little is better than nothing! I wanted to dance in the rain until I big raindrop hit me square in the eye. I took it as a sign to go in and enjoy the sounds of rain instead.

The pastures are done and even with the rain, it won't come back. I noticed today that even some of the trees are starting to dry up. Luckily the neighbor's pasture is still ok, although it's drying up too. The canary grass is about waist high and in normal years it would be over my head (ok, so I'm short but it would still be taller than me).

Mom and Dad are camping near our place this weekend so I asked if they would come over and help before the heat really set in. I first want to thank everyone who offered to come out and help with the fencing and moving the horses. When we move the horses again, I may take you up on your offer or when I find the energy to move the mares to a different pasture.

We decided to leave Dude and King home and will haul them to Madison sometime this week. I want to keep Dude close to home so that we can doctor his shoulder wound. King is also really fat so we all thought maybe it would be a good idea to keep King with Dude and then Mom and Dad can regulate how much they eat at their place. Dude was not impressed by being left out of all the action.

We loaded Ivan, Brego, Chaos, and Rain into the stock trailer and hauled them over to the neighbor's. We made them walk the fenceline so that at least this group of horses would know where the fence was. We also started flagging the fenceline, which is what I should have done in the first place. It's a good thing that we walked the fenceline. Sometime between yesterday and today a deer ran through the fence and pulled it down in one spot. I guess I'll have to walk the fenceline every morning and evening to make sure it's not down. I'm not happy with leaving only one strand of electric up when they are so close to the road. I'm hoping that they'll eat it down and then I can run a second strand just to be on the safe side.

Ivan and Brego settled down right away and went to town eating. Chaos and Rain didn't take much longer to follow suite. Ivan and Brego really turned into easy keepers when it comes to moving them around in pastures. When we ran out of flags, we went back home to catch two more horses to bring over. Bo freaks out in a trailer so I knew he would need the entire front portion of the trailer all to himself. But we decided to take Maverick and Jim over first. Maverick is a bit of an instigator but he seemed to do ok. Dad lead him down the fenceline to where we started flagging and then let him go. He settled down right away but when I let Jim go they started trotting around. Luckily it didn't take long for them to settle back down.

While Mom and Dad flagged the bottom portion of the fenceline, Mike and I went back for Zeke and Bo. That's when the herd decided that they would get spooky and start running around everywhere. Maverick was the culprit. Everyone (even Jim and Ivan) were on a steady lope around the bottom portion of the pasture, much to my dismay.

Dad and I had to hang on to Zeke and Bo for a good five minutes while Maverick got all the _ _ _ _ and vinegar out of himself. I think the herd was too hungry to really care for very long that other horses were in with them.It's not like Zeke and Bo weren't with them a half an hour ago. Silly horses.

I let Bo go and he went trotting off towards the herd. Luckily no one seemed overly concerned, although there was a bit more wandering than eating and then dad let Zeke go. Same thing happened. Not much drama after letting them go.

We stood around for awhile to make sure that no one would blow through a fence. Thank goodness for the ties. Otherwise, I'm sure they wouldn't have seen them and we would have had loose horses. My only concern is that of all the horses over at the neighbor's, all but one are either dark sorrels, bays, or blacks. Zeke is the only white horse in the group. It's going to make trying to check on them in the dark a little tricky.

The pictures are hard to show off the neighbor's pasture. The brown at the bottom of the photo is actually the mares' pasture. As you can tell, its' all brown and dried up. The mare pasture drops down into the CRP, which we aren't yet allowed to use (and probably wont' use because the fences are bad). The green between the brown mare pasture and the road is the CRP. Then it's the neighbor's pasture. It's hard to tell from this distance. I was too lazy to walk farther out into the mare pasture to try and get a better picture of the herd. I didn't realize that the horses would look like dots.

 Mike thinks the horses are in about five acres of pasture. We'll see how long it lasts. We hauled over water and a water tote so we wouldn't have to fill the 100 gallon take every day. With the temps the way they are, it'll be interesting to see how long the tank and tote last with eight horses.

 I'll try to get better pictures either tonight or tomorrow and post them. But I wanted to give you a quick glance at what we were doing this morning instead of joining the fun at the Colton Jubilee Days. I want to apologize for not making it out today. I was really looking forward to chatting with everyone about the sanctuary. I know I don't advertise on the classifieds so many don't really know anything about us or what we do. But if you have any questions, I'd be more than happy to talk your ear off about the sanctuary and the horses.

With the money raised from the donations today (btw...thank you SO MUCH!), we are planning on buying safe choice grain and beet pulp for Queen, Thor, and Babe. If there's anything left over, we'll pick up a bag or two of sweet feet for Bo and Rabbit (it's how I hide Bo and Rabbit's supplements...Bo is on a muscle builder and Rabbit is on an antihistamine for her heaves). I want to personally thank everyone that donated and for those that helped collect the donations. Words don't do justice to my gratitude and appreciation. Your thoughtfulness and kindness humble me.

Thank you