Weekend Productivity

We had a productive weekend! Finally getting something done around the Sanctuary. The lawn "pasture" was pretty well eaten down by the big herd and I usually release the herd to the big pasture over Memorial Weekend, except this time around Memorial Weekend snuck up on me.

On Saturday morning, I was finally able to hook up with the farrier and get a bunch of the herd taken care of. I'm behind on trims so it was nice to get almost everyone on the list done. We started with the Tommy and Skippy and then progressed to King. The farrier was in rare form so he was ready to tackle some more of the herd. I went for Zeke but he wouldn't let me catch him (so he's one that needs to be taken care of yet). So I pulled out Dude and the farrier trimmed his fronts only. Left front he was ok but showed some discomfort but the right front he showed a lot of discomfort. Luckily the farrier works quickly. I should have buted Dude before we started. He's 18 years old but I'm not sure he's going to see 25 because of those hips. I pulled Junior out but the farrier said his feet look pretty good so no need to do any trimming. I was also able to get Rabbit's fronts done. She's been off for a while so hopefully the trim will fix that. I still need to work on Mayhem and Maverick. Both refuse to pick up their feet and at this point, I'm not in a position to work with picking up their feet. I can barely bend down to put shoes on, let alone work with a 1000lb horse to convince them they need to pick up their feet. But Saturday was a productive morning for getting things taken care of. Unfortunately, the morning wiped me out and I didn't get anything else accomplished Saturday.

On Sunday Mike volunteered to put in some temporary fencing in the big pasture so that we could divide it and hopefully rotate the pasture instead of letting it be a free for all. I have no idea what to expect this summer for grass. So I'm going to rotate and see how that works out.

Mike got everything set up and ready to let the horses out.  In the morning, I pulled Junior, Mayhem, and Rabbit out onto the lawn pasture so they could start adjusting to grass. I think everyone was pretty happy. That freed up their pen so I pulled Ivan and Brego because I was planning on hauling them to their "summer retreat" location in Madison in the afternoon.

I went out in the afternoon after Mike finished with the fencing and lets just say Dude was the typical jerk that he is when it comes to thinking he's in charge. Fencing in the drylot isn't perfect. We used all of our corral panels because the original fencing and the fencing we put in a year ago were destroyed (by you guessed it... Dude).

But earlier the horses had popped the big gate off the hinge and it was hanging by one hinge. At the time I didn't want the herd out on the pasture so we put a corral panel sort of in the way and tied the gate shut. Now that we are using the pasture, that gate HAS to be fixed. But I digress.

While I was moving the corral panel so that I could move the gate, Dude took that as his sign to blow past me and rush in to the little itty bitty spot between the corral panels and the old fencing. Little did he know that it was all weeks and NOT the pasture. I have no idea what he was thinking other than he was being a jerk. I proceeded to untie and unhook the big gate and lock the SOB in to his little "domain" while the rest of the herd rushed out. Some of the herd was confused because Dude wasn't in the lead but they all decided to head to the pasture after a few minutes of confusion.

Once all the horses were out, I had to close the gate (very gingerly so that the gate wouldn't fall off the remaining hinge. I also had to make sure Dude didn't try and rush the gate while I was closing it. Least to say there were curse words involved. Once Dude flew passed be, I reopened the gate so that he could get into the pasture (keep in mind, it's only on one hinge). I stepped out of the way knowing that he'd be coming full bore down through the gate and passed me.

Yeah, so that didn't happen. Dude misjudged his speed and the location of the gate. He slammed right into the gate and tipped it over. Luckily it stayed on the hinge. He hit it so hard, that he flew backwards and tipped over. I think he was in more shock than I was. I was able to get the gate back up and reopened before he could shake it off. But once he did, he flew out to the pasture, which got Brego and Ivan all riled up because they couldn't go out to the pasture. I'm sure Dude was a hurting guy the next day and is probably still stiff and sore today after ramming the gate and falling over. But he didn't seem to let that bother him when I let him out onto the pasture. I'm sure glad I got his feet done on Saturday instead of Sunday (or Monday).

I did get a few pictures of the herd while they were out enjoying the grass. I ended up catching Garrett's cold so I haven't gotten anything accomplished.

After the big herd settled down, we hooked up the trailer, loaded Ivan and Brego and headed to Madison. It was a flying trip (although we still have to take the detour which adds 15 minutes). I'm sure most wouldn't complain about those 15 minutes but it makes a one hour round trip into a 1.5 hour round trip. But we scored supper out of the deal so I won't complain. :-) We let Ivan and Brego out and they wandered around their pen. They grabbed bites of grass and wandered around scoping out their new digs. We'll keep them in Madison for a month and then pick them up around the first of July so that we can possibly take them back up to Madison mid August (if the pasture holds).

I'm hoping that having Ivan and Brego alone, that Ivan will settle down and stop being such a jerk. I like to keep the best friends combos but I was sorely torn about who to take. I wanted Brego because he needs to put on a little bit of weight. I want to keep Junior and Bo near the Sanctuary so I can grain them. But I did think about taking Dude and Ivan just because they are the problem children at the Sanctuary. But I didn't want to break up any friendships so I guess we'll just have to keep it this way for a little bit. If Dude continues to be a jerk, he may go into timeout (although I dont' have a timeout spot for him yet).

When we were getting ready to leave, I was walking to the truck and Brego let out a whinny. He sure does know how to warm my heart. He understands that there's something different about me. I'm not sure if he was whinnying for me, or if he was asking for another horse but it was a definite whinny in my general direction. He's unrideable due to a back issue but he is definitely a joy to have in the herd.

The rest of the week is going to be fairly quiet for Sanctuary stuff. I managed to catch Garrett's cold and it's a mighty fast moving cold. In less than 12 hours, I have a full blown head cold that makes me want to crawl into bed and sleep for four days. So we'll see what more gets done. Mike is talking about buying a new bale spear for the tractor. The one we have is perfect for big squares, which we will always have some. But with the new baby, we'll be moving over to rounds. And the current bale spear shreds the twine or netting to pieces and then the bale unrolls before we can get it into the drylot, let alone the hay ring or a net over it. So we may be making a mad dash to buy a bale spear that works before our winter supply of hay comes. Oh don't get me wrong, we aren't looking at getting hay any time soon (just trying to get a few things done ahead of time...you know, pre-baby). We still have to come up with the money for last year's hay. So that's my goal right now. A bit hard when we aren't doing any fundraising but I guess I'll continue to scrape two pennies together and see what happens.