Hospital Ward

Last night we rearranged pens again. Hopefully this arrangement will work. We put Bo back in with the big herd Saturday but he seemed like he was off more Sunday and Monday. But on Tuesday when I looked, he didn’t seem as bad. But I don’t want to risk him getting hurt again or being off still. I don’t  know what’s wrong but my theory is that if he stays off concrete, doesn’t get pushed around, and stands on fairly soft ground (soft for it being almost December), then maybe he’ll come out of whatever it was. Maybe it was something neurological, maybe it was a severe pinched nerve. Who knows?

So last night after everyone had their grain, Mike and I hauled corral panels in to Babe’s pen. We divided the pen into two smaller ones. I have nowhere else to put Bo otherwise. I don’t want him in with the mares and ponies. I don’t think that’ll give him any relief. And right now there’s no round bale in front of them so not as ideal for gaining weight quickly before winter sets in. 

The dilemma is water.  We have the 100 gallon tank with heater in the pen but dividing it means that someone won’t get the warm water. We opted for Babe to have the big tank even though she won’t drink that much. We need to encourage her to drink so that’s who gets the big tank. Mike is working on a new game plan for Bo so that he can have warm water all the time too. We divided the pen so that Bo would have 24/7 access to the round bale. When we push in a new round bale in another week or so, we’ll rearrange the pen a little bit different to give Babe a bit more space.

 Babe was very upset last night when we brought Bo over. She didn’t realize that she was in a pen by herself because she could still hear Bo. I know she was depressed being alone and now maybe this setup will work better. Bo can’t push Babe around and maybe will simply keep his head in the hay bale until he’s fat (which is hard to do).

Where Babe and Bo are currently used to be the pony pen, and then it turned into the naughty timeout pen. Now it’s the hospital ward. Babe is recovering from her head wound and Bo is recovering from his leg injury or whatever is wrong. So the pen is not so lovingly dubbed the hospital ward until further notice.

This arrangement will work out well for me. It’ll make graining Babe and Bo easier. Last night I fed Bo in the barn and had Zeke, Jim, and Rain in too. Rain snuck under the chain dividing him from Bo and stole some of Bo’s grain. I gave Rain an earful when I found out he was snitching. Ivan wants to be in the barn at all times too. He loves his grain.

The weather is supposed to be fairly nice this weekend. Hopefully I can pull out the temporary fence in the mare pasture before the ground freezes. So not looking forward to winter. We have just a few more little projects to do outside before winter sets in. It’s nice to be able to tick off a few of the projects on our list. I can pass on the snow but we do need precip soon. We are still in a drought and if we don’t get anything soon, we are going to be in a world of hurt soon. We need rain and at some point, I’d even be fine with snow (just not yet).  If we go into another year of drought I’m afraid of what’s going to happen to the horse market even more. But I guess that’s a topic for another discussion.

I can’t believe that it’s almost December. I’ve always been at least one or two months behind. I lost half my summer and all of the fall with the G-Bear’s arrival (but it was worth it). Now it’s time to buckle down and get a few more projects done before the end of the year. I’m looking forward to 2013 and all the adventures we’ll be having.