Happy Holidays

Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving, it's been a rough 2011 for many, but I remind myself - we that live in the USA are still better off than a high percentage of the rest of the world.

I'm thankful for all I have, even though I may whine a blue streak and have some random pity parties, I'm sincerely thankful for what I have in my life.

Heading towards the New Year, we're still working on reducing the herd, but in this economy I'm not pushing the sales very hard.  Too many people are in financial predicaments, and I hate to see someone take on payments that can easily get away from them.  That and its hard to compete with the number of low quality horses for sale on Craigs List for $200, makes selling registered good quality horses hard.

But considering my life circumstances and the changes coming in the next year. I don't have options but to keep working to find good homes for the ones that need to move along.  My goal is to get under 30, which means half the herd has to leave in the next two years.

It's going to be hard, but that's the goal!  So, I need to get all the horses that are for sale on the sales list - bleah! Not a fun project, but its time.

I've also decided as I want to get to a certain number, I'm not breeding in 2012 and may not in 2013 depending on how life works out.

Fortunately it's been raining so our hills are green - got to love Northern California winters - and the horses are loving the extra pasture.

A couple of the sale colts:

Wesco Farms Bamboozler

Wesco Farms Best Guesstimate

 Wesco Farms Twist of Fate

Finally weaning the babies

We're finally weaning the 2011 foals - Baily (Wesco Farms TC Ascended Allure), Cricket (Wesco Farms TC Defiantly Different) and Jitters (Wesco Farms TC Up All Night) - much to their annoyance.  

Cricket is pretty much self-weaned, as her dam.  Chiclet (Cricket's grand-dam) has always had very independent babies, and apparently Annie is following suit.

Bailey is still very much a momma's girl, so I think she'll take it the hardest.  But considering she's the oldest at seven months I think it's time.

Jitters falls somewhere in the middle.  He's not dependent on his dam, Val, but does like to go to her when he feels the need.

Callita, and Rose are in their as support - they've been with the foals since birth and Sarah and April are there as well - until I'm sure April is not going to relapse with her colic.

Colic time

It's heading into winter and with the weather change, I always anticipate some mild colic as the horses get upset stomachs.  We have something on our property (we've yet to locate it in 11 years), but something that the horses get into in the Fall that guaranteed a few will come down with a belly ache.

This year it was April, one of our two year olds that I do have to watch at this time of year - she's an acorn 'ho, so we keep her locked up in the Fall.  Being one of our smallest Minis at 26.50" we do keep a careful eye on her.
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Wesco Farms April Sunshine BB

I saw her up on the hill above the house laying down (wrong time of day - late afternoon/early evening -  for my horses to be napping).  As her and her dam are good buddies and never far from each other, I dragged her and Sarah down the hill and into the backyard.

Sarah - Wesco Farms Tricked Me Tina

Checked April and I could tell she wasn't feeling great so started treating her. She was insistent she was going to 'die' so we kept an eye on her and treated her throughout the day.  She was still not a happy camper when I gave her, her last treatment at midnight, but calm and hanging with her dam.

The next morning at 5:30 a.m. in the dark, I go out to check her.  She's of course missing. I  began the search - all the gates are closed, no holes in the fences for her to squeeze through, I even looked in the swimming pool, thought maybe she'd jumped in! No April, so I'm wondering where in the @%@% did you she go?

Finally I look under our deck and see her.  She had rolled/crawled or I don't know what but got herself about 6' under the deck.  Mind you this is not that high of deck, she couldn't stand up straight without bumping her head and I'm not a small person (besides having just the day before been given the okay from hernia surgery to resume life), so my the thought is this should be fun!

So, I crawl under the deck to check her and she's acting miserable.  I can't get her up to walk out, and she to far away to roll like a barrel (yes this occurred to me!), so I grab her by her back legs and start backing out dragging her on her back.  She's really not thrilled, but the options were few.  Move, drag, get kicked in the shins, move, drag, kick... rinse and repeat.

As soon as she was out, she called for her dam and runs off. I'm thinking how sore I'm going to be the following day (and I was!), but I still need to deal with her as she's not 100% yet.

Apparently it did the trick though, as I gave her another colic treatment and she began farting and pooping and was grazing with her dam within 20 minutes.  She's been fine since then for the past two days - the little stinker.

Minis they don't make life boring and OMG can they find the most interesting things to get into.

Week in review

Fairly slow week.  The horses are hairy and settling in for winter.  Tomas (farrier) surprised me this week  - yes I write down our appointments - but look at the calendar ... NO!

So, we got the boys all trimmed and de-wormed.  Stallions are so much easier to trim than the mares.  I was hoping to geld a couple more of the boys, but I don't think the funds are there at the moment sadly.

A recent addition to our family - Noomi's niece (out of her sister Jaz) joined us.  So we're going through puppy-hood again!  We're still trying names on her and haven't settled on one.  She's 3/4 Pyreness and 1/4 Maremma.  She's already bigger than our Mini Aussies.

The other exciting news - Anya passed her DMV test, so I'm officially off taxi duty!  Now I don't have to worry about her driving me, just her driving solo!  She's having a great time and is off on daily runs.  Nice to have someone that can run to the store for milk now - lol!

Testing the new Blogger features

Winter is coming, or should say arrived this weekend.  Okay so it's suppose to be Fall, but it's in the 30's at night so feels very wintery here!

The horses are doing great and don't seem to mind the chilly weather.  Wouldn't it be great to be able to grow a lovely thick coat of insulating hair - lol.

We've been doing maintenance around here (the never-ending job) on fences and gates, as well as looking at setting up a new foaling paddock.

I'm hoping to get back to maintaining this blog a bit more - life's been overly busy the past couple of months, but will hopefully get back on track!



Testing out the new blog features on Blogger and incorporating Google+ - fun stuff!