May Recap

The past few weeks have been super crazy busy. I honestly can’t remember all that’s happened. I thought June was going to be a blur but apparently May has been a blur so far as well.

At the beginning of the month, our “new” tractor arrived. It’s such a blessing, although it’s going to take a few years to pay off.  But we put it to work immediately. The first weekend in May, Mike got both tractors going and hooked up the manure spreader. We had four years worth of manure in the drylot. We’d been pushing it into a gigantic pile because there’s been no time to get it out into the field. I put the mares in their stalls and the ponies in a temporary pen. And then moved the big herd to the small pen. I forget how much ten horses can drink. They had the 100 gallon tank drained by the end of the day.  Mike had the  majority of the manure out but still had more to go by the end of the day. Unfortunately, we only had one day to get it all done that first weekend in May.

During the week, we were scrambling to get other things done and the weekend we had plans outside of the Sanctuary. So no “Waste Management” for us the second weekend in May. Actually, I ended up taking Chaos on a trail ride to “represent” the Sanctuary. He did alright for having not really been ridden in a few months.

During the middle of last week I was able to deworm the horses. It’s been awhile.  I hate to admit that I don’t remember the last time I dewormed the horses. It’s not a good practice for me to get into and not a good practice for the Sanctuary. I’m irritated at myself and that lead to my extreme irritation at myself on Friday morning.

But let me rewind to Thursday. I was running late Thursday evening and needed to get to drill team practice. When I went out to catch Rain, I saw something black out in the mare’s summer/fall pasture. Then I noticed it. Chaos. He’d somehow managed to get out of the drylot and was running all around the other pasture. He was blowing a little so I don’t know if it was from the running or a reaction to the grass. He’s had a bad reaction to grass before, where he breaths hard for a while. So I finally caught him and decided he would stay in the barn until I could figure out where he got out. I promptly caught Rain, saddled him up, loaded him into the trailer, and slammed the door. The initial impact of the door hitting reverberated through my entire body. The trailer door on the stock trailer finally broke. It was now hanging by one hinge and had dropped a good three inches. I couldn’t lift the door so had to get Mike. I figured I had Rain, so I could still go to practice but would have to unsaddle and lead him through the escape door. Any other horse except Zeke wouldn’t have gone through. Luckily Rain is very trusting and he went willingly out of the trailer when we got to practice. As I was pulling out of the yard to get to practice, I drove over some netwrap. I knew I shouldn’t have but was too lazy to move it and couldn’t drive around it. (Mike had pulled it out while hauling manure. That’ll teach me not to do a better job of picking up twine and netwrap). So I was late and hauling butt to get to practice and look out my side window. I saw something flapping and thought maybe it was the rope we have on the back of the trailer door. I looked out the other window and didn’t see anything. I slowed down and didn’t see anything either but then I saw it flap in the wind. Netwrap. I swear, netwrap is like toilet paper. I had no idea if it was caught up in the wheels or axel or what. I knew I was in trouble. During the winter, we had gotten netwrap caught up in the driveshaft of the plowtruck and bent the drive shaft. So I had no idea what to expect when I got to practice. When we reached practice and I hopped out, I noticed that the netwrap had gotten caught on the safety chains and nothing else. I had to laugh. Netwrap went from the back of the truck, the length of the horse trailer, with an additional six feet of netwrap dragging behind the trailer. It made me think of toilet paper stuck to a shoe. I laughed pretty good. And the weird look I got from someone that drove passed me makes sense now. I unloaded Rain through the escape door and got to practice just a little late. But I had to load him again through the escape door. Luckily he loaded and unloaded like a champ. He really is a good horse. I lucked out.

I went out to do chores Friday morning quick and discovered that Mayhem was sick. I gave her a dose of banamine, threw a blanket on her (it was super chilly that morning and she’d gotten chilled for being down), and walked her for a half an hour. She’d farted and pooped a couple of times. I put her into a pen to keep her calm. I went against my better judgment  and went to work. Let’s just say I was very displeased with my paying job for making me put my priorities in the wrong order. I was not happy and I’m still not happy. When I got home, Mayhem was down. By the time Mike got home and I called the vet, our normal vet was gone with no option for on-call duty. They suggested that we take her somewhere to get looked at. So we called Dakota Large Vet Clinic and they told us to get her to the vet right away. One problem. I put Mayhem on the back burner from the time we got her three and a half years ago. I really haven’t done anything with her except halter train her and teach her to stand tied. Otherwise, I’ve done nothing, which is a HUGE injustice. By the time we’d called the vet, it was getting late. So I ran out , caught Mayhem and figured it was worth a shot to see if she would load. Wouldn’t you know. She loaded quicker than some people’s normal riding horses! I’m so proud of her. She was leery of the trailer but loaded within five minutes of asking her to. Unfortunately, we had our son in tow and it meant that we had to swap out carseats or swap out vehicles. We opted for swapping vehicles. So we had to unhook the trailer, keep Mayhem calm, and then get the other vehicle hooked up. From the time we called the vet, to the time we were on the road, a half an hour had already passed. Had I gone with my gut instinct, I would have hauled Mayhem to our normal vet during the day. Although I’m not sure that I would have been able to get the trailer door closed. It was still broken so Mike had to lift it up to get it closed after Mayhem loaded. We were on the road by a quarter after 7pm. We couldn’t go very fast because Mayhem would get upset. But she was a real trooper the entire way down to the vet. The vet was waiting for us when we got there. He got to work right away. He did a general exam on her and noted that she had a fever. And to my surprise, Mayhem has a heart murmur. But that explains why she’s still on the small side. She’s fairly tall and her head is the normal QH size (although petite), but the rest of her seems still fairly small. The vet said that was due to the heart murmur. It wasn’t too bad but it’ll cause problems in the future. The cards are definitely stacked against Mayhem. I guess it’s a good thing she’s at the Sanctuary. Her heart murmur just adds to the list of oddities at the Sanctuary that we deal with on a daily basis.  The vet said that she isn’t colicing but that she has colitis. And that’s all my fault (he didn’t say that though). He said with the wormer that I used, I probably killed off too many. I wanted to user a different kind but didn’t have any on hand and wanted it done. So I used something different and shouldn’t have. That’ll teach me. But the vet gave us some antibiotics, told us to keep her tied so she doesn’t lie down any more (don’t want a twisted gut), and sent us home. He offered to keep her overnight but I figured I could do the same night checks as him and not have to pay for the constant checks on her. So we loaded her back in the trailer. And YES, she did load, with very little hesitation. She’s SUCH A GOOD GIRL!! I am SO impressed with her. We hauled her home, got her settled in the barn, left Chaos in the barn to keep her company, did chores, went in the house, set my alarm, and promptly fell asleep.  I got up again at 1pm (it took a half an hour of snooze to actually get up). She was down but didn’t seem to be in pain so I left her down. I was going to check her again at 3am but a half an hour of snooze made me realize that I couldn’t move. So I went out at 5 am and she was down again but got up the minute I walked in. She ate, drank, and seemed perky. So I left her for another couple of hours.

Saturday was the last day we would be able to get into any fields around us. We had to use a different farmer’s field and they were going to disk and plant on Sunday. So I pulled Mayhem out of the barn and put her in a pen and then pulled Rabbit and put her with Mayhem. They were both happy to be together. The ponies went into a temporary pen and the horses went into the small pen. There was a lot of bucking and farting and then even more when I let Chaos out to join them.

Then Mike got to work hauling manure. The old tractor has something wrong with it and couldn’t handle too much work so Mike babied it as much as possible. He spent all day hauling manure. He got the majority of it out and the rest we need a skidsteer. Unfortunately, it’ll have to wait until this fall. Any other manure that we want to haul out will have to go down to the bottom of the hill.

By the end of the day, we all crashed. Sunday I spent the majority of the day cleaning stalls and picking up twine. I am frantically working on the barn to get it cleaned up and organized. It turned into a pigpen during the winter and I have all kinds of junk scattered everywhere.  I want to have everything organized so I can find everything I’m looking for immediately instead of spending half a day looking for one little item. I’ve lost more stuff than I can count. Unfortunately I didn’t get the barn completely cleaned out. When we had the polar vortex this past winter, I ran horses into the barn. In the mornings I didn’t have time to clean stalls and in the evening everything was frozen down. Now that I have time and the weather is warm, I’m faced with a huge mess. But it’s nice to finally tackle it. I know it’s not the right method and again, it’s one of those things I’m doing wrong and know it. But I had to quit after a little while. My body couldn’t keep up with the demand of getting it all cleaned out in one day. While I tackled the barn, Mike worked on the trailer so we won’t have to load horses through the escape door or have to pick up the heavy back door. It’s fixed along with the lawn mower.

I had high hopes of pulling out the corral panels so that I could get fencing up and get the horses out on the lawn. With our son, I can’t string one or two strands of electric on the lawn and call it good. He’ll either touch the electric or go running in with the horses while they graze (and buck and fart, and run). So I have to put up corral panels to keep the horses in and my son out. I normally have the horses out on the lawn by now but it’s been so cold and we needed the lawn to maneuver the manure spreader. Driving on the lawn really mashed the grass down so it’s not grown as quickly  (although the thistles are growing like crazy…damn you thistles.)  I normally put the horses out to pasture over Memorial Weekend but that’s not going to happen this year. I’ll be lucky to get them out on pasture by the first full week in June. That means a few more extra bales to use and I was hoping to hold back a few for safe keeping during the summer months. Keeping a few extra bales would help ease the pain of buying additional hay during the winter months.

So this weekend I’ll be putting up corral panels, cleaning stalls, and spraying thistles. There’s still a ton of other stuff to get done but that’s what’s been going on in a nutshell for the past few days.  I’m sure there’s other stuff but life has been such a blur it’s hard to remember everything else.

I still need to do the horse of the month. Hopefully later this week I can get something posted. Poor Brego is always shafted.  Here’s to a quiet rest of the week.