fences and gates

Today, we spent a great deal of the day mending fences and fixing gates that were in need of repair.  We still need to do some more work on the fences and a couple of gates, but we need to go out and get some material before we can finish off the work.

Today

We spent a great deal of our day with the horses.  Of course, they thought they needed treats instead of their regular hay.
     We couldn't let them out on the pasture grass because we have to let it grow some.  It has gotten pretty short.  The bermuda grass is getting thicker and teft grass has gotten a little thin.  We may have to do some more teft hay reseeding.  We would like to wait until next year to do that though.

Trixter ate his psyllium

This morning, we withheld Trixter's food until he ate his psyllium.  It took about 4 hours before he ate it.  After he finished it, he got his food.  He is like a little child that doesn't like his peas.
     We had called the vets yesterday, twice looking for ideas on how to get him to eat his psyllium.  He throws his food onto the dirt before he will eat it and we think he has been eating sand and dirt along with it.

plywood donation needed

We need to cover the floor of a 27 x 16 pen with plywood.  We have a 2 year old that pushes his food onto the dirt and we believe he is eating dirt with his food which is causing an absorption problem.  We need the plywood to keep him off the dirt.  If we cannot put OSB down because he will eat the OSB.  He doesn't appear to eat the plywood.

If you have old plywood you would like to donate, it would greatly be appreciated.

Opal update

We took Opal's temperature around 5pm.  It was running 102.5 degrees.  We have a call into the vets.  She may have pneumonia.

Opal headed to the vet yesterday

Yesterday, we went to feed Opal her dinner and she refused to eat.  She stuck her nose on the food and then walked away from it.  We knew something was wrong but couldn't figure out what it was and so we called the vet.  She asked me about everything that was going on and so we told the vet.  She determined at that moment, Opal was choking and so we needed to get her in ASAP.  The vet said with the heat, she was possibly dehydrated as well.
     We took her in and the vet tubed her.  She tried blowing air in without success.  So she started flushing her esophagus with water.  That wasn't working and so the vet decided to give her some meds to relax her esophagus.  The vet flushed out a dark colored firm textured item about the size of a quarter.  Nothing was coming to mind what she had swallowed that was that large.
     We got her home and then it dawned on us that the neighbor was talking about his Cranapple tree was not bearing much fruit.  While the image of the object was still fresh in our mind, we walked over to see if we could find a Cranapple.  Sure enough.  It was the same size and color!  We called the vet back and told her what it was.
     Opal didn't get any dinner last night because she was given medication to relax her esophagus.  She is being given a soft food (wet whole feed grain) for the next few days for her esophagus to heal.
     Opal has been doing well today.  She has been resting most of the day.   We have taken her to the round pen a couple of times today so she could run a little.

June 26, 2013

We went to go do some stuff on the other part of the ranch and we came back and a horse had gotten into the house and decided our counters were too cluttered and so they cleaned the counters off and put everything on the floor.  Later during the day when we were outside cleaning up the yard, another horse decided to sneak into the house and found the grapes that was on it and decided they were nice and tasty and then tried to steal them.