Monday was my day to sleep in a bit, I got up and my hubby had the chores half done. Karen was here and working on the giant birdhouse. I went and fed the bunnies and birds and took a look at the waters, we are, as always, struggling with keeping all the troughs thawed out. I managed to find some dual timers on Amazon last night, so with any luck they will work for us. I wired a new light socket for under the auto-waterer and got everything set up under there, went to get our feed order and was just about petered out when Jason showed up and asked me if I needed a hand. He helped with mash and meds which was enough to keep me going. Karen finished up the birdhouse so I am super excited to get some straw in there and get some birds in there tomorrow.
Tuesday got away from me a bit, I wasn’t finished chores and mash until after dark. I unloaded all the feed in the garage and Randy also came with a load of bales so that’s what set me back. I was a little disappointed because I didn’t get the nesting boxes done in the big birdhouse, but everything else got done, so that’s the main thing. It was beautiful outside today so the animals were pretty playful, it was great watching them run and play.
Wednesday I went out and did chores and then came in and had a job interview. I then went out and gathered up all the buckets so I could put together the nesting boxes in the big birdhouse. They were all stuck together and I had a hard time getting them apart. Once they were set up, I realized I was a couple short so I plan on going to get a few more tomorrow. I received a call from a lovely woman who is going through a very hard time today, she had to put one of her horses down. She is not only devastated, but the one horse she has left is losing his mind without his buddy. After a discussion, she picked out the lovely Moonbeam, and she will be fostering her until her pony is no longer with us. I think it will be great for Moonbeam to get some one-on-one loving. I also went to Equitech to pick up some more meds for Tina and Azzie, they have about 10 more days on their medications and I am pretty close to out.
Thursday was a busy day, after chores, I went to town to get some quickcrete so we can finish the last pen we are building this weekend. I also grabbed a 5-gallon pail so I could finish the big birdhouse. I got that all together and then had to go pick up Jake to help me catch Moonbeam. We got a call from a lovely lady yesterday who had to put her horse down and she was desperately looking for a companion for her remaining horse. We brought Moonbeam over and the two of them made fast friends. We then headed to pick up two horses that were being surrendered to us. This was a pretty rough one. We picked up an 18-20 year old quarterhorse, one of the thinnest horses I have ever seen. The pony is in much better shape, weight-wise, but both of them have had a fair bit of their manes hacked off, I assume to get out the burrs. We did not see a stitch of hay when we were there, the horses both loaded into the trailer amazingly well, I couldn’t believe it. It was dark when we got home, I immediately put together a mash for Felix, not too much as I don’t want him to colic or anything and some 60-30-10 for little Betsy. I got a blanket for Felix as he has no winter coat to speak of. When they were finished eating I put them in the petting zoo for the night as there is a light in there, they have water and hay and none of the petting zoo animals will push them away from the feed. We will have to do some moving horses around tomorrow, I sure hope we can bring this boy back, we’ll do the best we can.
Friday morning Tracey came to help me do chores, she hasn’t been feeling very well the last few months so it was nice to see her and catch up. In the afternoon I went to go get our loop pickup (items from Superstore they can’t sell and set aside for farm pickup) and heard from Erika, she is quite concerned about Shadow as he has been laying down alot. After I got home with the loop Jake and Karen were there, Jake was riding Casalsa and Karen was there to sort out the loop stuff and feed some of it out. I got to thinking that maybe Shadow was having a bad reaction to the different food he was being fed or there was something in the mash we were feeding him that he was missing. I mixed up about eight days of feed and whipped over there. Shadow heard my voice and came to the door of his little stall, made me feel like he just missed me lol Erika was shocked at how much he perked up. Erika has been spending a lot of time brushing him and his coat looks amazing. While I was there I noticed that his stool was off, not runny, but not as firm as normal and that it smelled pretty bad. I got Erika to take him off the RX Roughage entirely and she will feed him our mash instead. I wanted to load him up in the back of my truck and take him home, Jack is doing really well though, he looks like he might have even gained some weight.
Saturday I went and picked up Jake right away and brought him out to help me do chores, Grace came by not long after we got started, so the three of us got the chores done fairly quickly. Then we got the feed and water together for the chicken coop and caught all the chickens and put them inside. I was reading last night and read that you need to put them in the coop and keep them in for 1 – 2 weeks so they understand that’s home and sort themselves out, so that’s what we’ll do. Grace and Jake went home and I went to work hanging up salt block holders and putting out salt blocks and some mineral blocks and salt rocks we had around. The horses were immediately all over them so I guess they are pretty happy to have them out. I think I will try to get some more.
Sunday we had a ton of helpers out! Tracey, Jake, Tamara, Hailey, Quinn, Skye, Maureen, Anne and Sean were all here getting chores done and jobs as well! We got some straw put out in the shelters to help keep everyone warm, hung a gate on one of our new pens, so that’s ready for horses, gathered up twine, found two broken salt holders from the four I put out yesterday, cleaned up the garage a bit, took a load of garbage to the dump, picked burrs from Felix and Betsy, put a new latch on the chicken coop, finished counting and sorting to loop and fed out a bunch to all the critters, and put timers on the trough heaters so hopefully we won’t have any more power issues. I also took a few minutes and laid on the straw in the pony pasture, I love how curious those little ones get and come hang out with me. Unfortunately, I hadn’t planned it and didn’t have any yummy treats in my pockets.
