I trimmed wild mustang hooves this weekend. I'm so glad to see that they remember their lessons earlier. It amazes me how much they actually retain. Even though I get almost no time with them, when I do finally stop to work with them, after the initial attempt to just avoid me, they fall back into their same old selves, just like back when I worked with them over the summer. And they are so good with their hooves. Trimming them is almost easier than the "tame" ones. These guys still think that they do need to listen to what I ask of them. The "tame" ones have learned what little things they can get away with. :) I wish I had pictures, because it was a GORGEOUS November weekend in Wisconsin (highs in the low 70's!). Maybe next weekend.

Chicken dinner

Well, I should have posted this a couple of weeks ago when we had this event. But hopefully you can still enjoy it now...if enjoy is the correct word. Remember those cute fuzzy little chicks I hatched out in May? Well, they have now become chicken dinner! My mom, dad, roommate Jen, and my grandma all had a fun afternoon catching and butchering about 35 chickens. It was quite fun. It was also my roommate's first time with butchering anything, but she really wanted to learn how to do it (she likes to be self reliant and eco-friendly), so she did it! And she did great and surprised herself.

Chicken dinner

See the facebook album for pictures of the event. They shouldn't gross any of you out, but do be prepared to see plucked chicken (dead of course).

pictures finally!

I finally got around to taking some pictures last weekend! The fall is beautiful here in Wisconsin. Because I feel like I shouldn't take the time to do it, and it takes so much longer to upload a lot of pictures to blogger, I've decided to post my facebook album. All of the following pictures were taken last Sunday. You can see Wisconsin fall colors, and horse updates.

Check out my facebook album.

Together at last

This weekend, I decided that it was time to open the panel separating the two wild ones, and let them be together. This is primarily a decision in preparation for winter...we will need to be able to water them both down in the front of the barn next to the water spigot, since we can't run a hose to them in the frigid WI winters. We use a self draining PVC pipe to get water to the horses in winter and it works great.

The opening of the panel was extremely uneventful. The two have been close to eachother on either side of the panel (even grooming eachother through it) that it was no different for them to be together. It was crazy though, to see Kachina beside Griffin because he makes her look puny! Kachina did try to show Griffin a little bit of puny mare attitude when he was eating hay with her at her pile, but she was extremely half-hearted about laying her ears back and picking up one back foot. Griffin showed no aggression at all toward Kachina.

I laughed out loud as I watch Chico notice the "new" horse in the front pen...the horse that they see and hear, but can't smell. He sauntered over, trying to look kinda tough and really cool (although a roly-poly mustang slipping on the muddy ground had a really hard time looking cool!). Griffin met him at the fence and they sniffed noses down low for a while, then Chico pawed and struck the ground over and over. Griffin stuck his nose through the panel and Chico hit him with his leg and Griffin did a squeal and spin and butted up against the panel, but there was really no kicking. Chico didn't react when Griffin did that...he just stood there trying to look really tough.

I think this will be a good step to get them all used to interacting with one another. My grand plan is to try to turn them out in the pasture over winter break. I'll be able to be around then...plus if I do it in the winter, I don't have to worry about transitioning anyone onto pasture. AND if there is an event where someone goes through the fence, we can bait them with hay if we have to recapture...just a thought. I think Kachina will be easy to approach in the pasture, but I think Griffin is going to become very hard to approach...I say that based on how they act together in the same pen. If I stand in the center, they'll both trot around me (Griffin on the outside, Kachina on the inside), and Kachina will turn and and approach me almost immediately. Griffin keeps himself on the opposite side of Kachina, no matter where I stand. I can't approach him when he is with her. But I shoo'ed her through the barn to his side and shut the gate behind so that he had to deal with me, and then I could approach and pet him. So, I see that we need to work on the trust thing a lot more, but I think he can get to be a horse for the winter...since I have no time to work with them right now.

I've been posting a lot lately! Can you tell that I've been procrastinating studying?

So, I heard an interesting fact today...it was from a study published in the Annals of Diagnostic Pathology. They analyzed the content of 8 brands of fast food hamburgers. This is what they found:

Average water content was 49%
Average meat (skeletal muscle) content was only 12%!!!!

The rest? Well, it varied, but all 8 brands had the following, in order of amount: fibrous connective tissue, blood vessels, and peripheral nervous tissue. Most also had fat tissue. Then the weird stuff? Some had unidentified plant material (could this be stomach contents?), cartilage, and bone fragments.

Yum...that's why I don't eat fast food. Well, that and many other reasons including my own health, as well as the health and comfort of animals that are raised for that industry. I try really really hard not to eat meat or eggs from animals raised in the industrial farm setting. I think it is a horrible atmosphere for those animals where we basically treat them like inanimate objects that grow meat (or eggs). In addition, those factory farms use breeds of animals that are so heavily selected for their ability to produce meat, that they cannot function as normal animals...it's actually cruel to keep a meat animal beyond maturity because their poor bones and ligaments cannot support the weight of all that abnormally laid down muscle (I'm thinking meat chickens and turkeys). Those factory farms also produce meat and eggs for so cheaply that small farms where animals are actually raised relatively naturally, humanely and without nasty drugs to enhance/support abnormal growth cannot compete. So, it's a vicious cycle. I try to either raise my own (or buy from our neighbor), or buy locally in some fashion or another. I don't freak out too much about "organic", but I must say, I know my own eggs are organic!

Anyway, didn't mean to go off on that, but that's what I think.

I laughed when Andrea mentioned her clicker and trying to get Anchor to want to work with her...I laughed because I decided something similar with Griffin this weekend. I don't use a clicker, but I do like to use treat rewards. Well, first you have to get the horse to like treats (and take them from your hand). I offered a treat to Griffin, and it took me repeatedly shoving it between his lips before he finally decided to taste in instead of spit it out. He showed me the flehmen response after his first taste...and then chewed very pensively on the next taste. Finally, toward the end of the lesson (where I also trimmed his feet), he finally took it by choice from my hand and ate it! It's a start!

dumped

So, what do you get when you mix riding bareback on a horse that hasn't been ridden in several weeks (much less just not much all summer) and a dummy deer used for bow target practice? Yes! You get dumped in the sand! I had sand from head to toe and in my ears (and other places I won't mention). And, because I wouldn't let go of the reins, I swung down into Chico's legs and now I have a nice bruise on my back from his hoof (he was trying really hard to keep from hitting me, but I was in his way). I'm fine, and once I was on the ground, I could lead him right up to the fake deer and everything was fine, but he just couldn't face it alone.

Griffin is healing well. The swelling is almost gone from his sheath, although he still had a little fluid left under his belly (where the overflow from his sheath area emptied). He's feeling good though, and I worked with him on Saturday and trimmed all four of his hooves again, this time with the hoof stand and rasp.

I wanted to play with Kachina too, but there was no time this weekend.

Gelding pictures

My mom sent me the pictures from her camera.

Here is Griffin still recovering from the anesthetic after the "surgery".

These are his small nuts. Too bad the picture is not in focus.

And these are pictures of the swelling from today (4 days later). Do you think it is excessive? I'd say probably not, since he really can't move around much in that small pen, and I am not there to force him to move around. He seems to be walking around just fine though. I figure this pain and little bit of swelling is nothing compared to what it must have felt like when his chest abcessed liquified tissue.

Griffin is a gelding!

Sorry, not much time for posting lately. I don't have any pictures from the big event either...although I know my mom showed up later and took some pictures of me holding the horse nuts.

The whole things was more uneventful that I could have ever hoped for, especially since I have found VERY little time to do anything with any of my horses other than pet them randomly when I am doing their chores on the weekends. It really has been over 3 weeks since I've done anything with Griffin. Yet, I was able to slip a regular web halter on him with no fuss (usually he wears a rope one when I work with him), and brush him down and pick out all his feet. I also spent time pinching his neck where the needle stick would go. He was unresponsive to it.

When the vet arrived with her bucket, she walked into the pen, and Griffin stood with alert ears and was prepared to back away, but she just stood near his shoulder for a bit to let him get used to her. Then she pet him, then went right to sticking the needle in his vessel. After she first stuck it in, he did back up a couple of steps, but she just advanced, pet him, then gave him the first shot that just makes him droopy.

We stood back and let that take effect, which happened very quickly. His lips sagged and he stood with one foot cocked funny. Then she gave him the "sleepytime" shot. A minute later, he was backing up, backed into the barn wall, where he stopped, then just flopped over, rather unremarkably...he didn't lay down nicely, but he didn't really fight it either. He went down well.

Then I was amazed at how fast the actual gelding went. I held his leg for the vet while she did the cut-cut, and it was over in 5 minutes!

We chatted while we waited for Griffin to come out from under the affects of the anesthetic. She dissected the testes and explained all the parts. And she also said that they were smaller than a typical two year olds testicles. She said that he would probably not have been a good breeding stallion because he wouldn't have had the drive to do it. Which I took to mean that if he'd been in the wild, he would have been a permanent member of a bachelor herd. Well, he can be in my "bachelor" herd with 3 mares and another gelding.

Griffin came out easily too. He rolled up, tried to half-heartedly get up a couple times, but decided to wait when it was too much. Then he finally got himself up, and stood for a while.

The vet also confirmed that Griffin is indeed 2.5 years old, and Kachina is 3.5 years old. When I said that I wish she would grow, the vet went off about mustangs, and said that you'll never find a good sized mustang unless they have had a quarter horse stallion put out with the herd (not true - Griffin (from Kachina's herd) is good sized...I think Kachina is a little stunted). I agreed that most herds have had some level of domestic influence, and the vet continued to tell me that "true" mustangs all have long backs, no hip, short legs, big heads and big feet. If they are anything other than that, then they have had a quarter horse stallion put in with them. I pointed out Chico, and she said he has quarter horse in him...which I think is possible, but Chico looks more Andalusian-type to me...but the vet was on a roll. She was using Kachina as her example for this long backed big-headed mustang type...but Kachina has tiny feet (proportioned for her tiny stature), a cute head (with the slight bump above the nose typical of sulphur horses), yes, she has a longish back, but it's actually in proportion with her body. And her hip is not awful...it's just not a quarter horse butt.

She also said that only man makes horses with big butts (which is probably true), but she tried to say that wild horses don't locomote using their back ends to power with. She said only domestic horses do that, which I think is completely false. She said my long back mustang (like all mustangs) use their front ends to pull themselves along and so they won't be able to collect, and I think that's bologna! Wild horses HAVE to collect in the wild on a daily basis as they travel and interact with eachother! Argh...I wish people wouldn't always give their opinions when they weren't asked for. This is the same vet that told me that if you get a mustang as an adult, you'd never truly be able to tame it down. Anything older than a weanling or yearling is too old, she says.

But, she's older, and she does know what she's doing with vetting horses...I can't fault her for not sharing my enthusiasm for mustangs. I just hope she's not spreading that blather around to people who don't know the difference.

Well, I made it through orientation last week (it was intense) and now am on my second day of classes. We have begun dissecting our dog. Thank goodness the dog looks nothing like my dogs! I already feel behind in classes and I'm looking forward to the weekend to be able to try to catch back up and perhaps get ahead...although I don't think that happens in vet school...

I'll keep in touch. I did work with my horses last weekend when I visited home and this weekend I'll do so again. I have a volunteer recruited (my neighbor) to help me get Griffin worked through his stranger danger (which I don't think will be an issue at all, since a couple weeks ago, he scratched Griffin on the neck). The week after is Griffin's castration appointment! I'm super excited to see this, especially since it sort of has a lot of relevancy for me, being in vet school and having the option to specialize in equines...which I might do if the wildlife route turns out to not be what I'm into. We'll see.

Posts will taper off now

Well, the summer is over for me now. Tomorrow begins orientation for vet school. I'm settled into my apartment in the big city. I will be going home many weekends (it's only an hour and 45 minutes away) to be with family and play with my ponies. But that means that posts will be tapering off for a while. I'll probably only manage 1 per week at the very most...unless of course, you all want to hear about what's happening in vet school...but that won't be very horse related! I WILL for sure post about Griffin's castration coming up in a couple of weeks.

Wish me luck! I'm about to get super busy!