And cutting this hay

It is finally the end of a very Memorial but not altogether pleasant weekend for me.

Since I was down to my last twenty-thirty bales of hay, I had a hay delivery this afternoon. Two guys brought the grass hay up from the valley in their truck and flatbed and then my son and his friend brought it into the barn.


Here is an update on my Foot and Mouth problem. My neck is quite sore on both sides and my mouth is a mess. My mouth is all black inside and there is a little flap of skin about the size and shape of a 1 mm pearl bead hanging down where I bit my lip and it isn't going to heal back, which I find to be both painful and annoying. I find it very hard to move my mouth and lips to talk and eat but thankfully, I am quickly recovering. I also cannot smile, much, yet.

When the hay was delivered, I made sure to brace up my knee and I managed to help carry in a dozen or so bales. Once it was all in the barn, I counted it. There were supposed to be 214 bales but I could only come up with 189. We all recounted and agreed there were 190. I often wonder when I get a delivery how much hay I'm really getting. I can only hope it was an honest mistake on their part and they counted one too many rows of 25.

It's a good looking grass mix but I swear either 65 pounds is lighter than I expect or I'm just stronger than I thought I was because the farmers always swear their hay bales weigh more than that and I can pick them up and carry them without any problems. Why then do I struggle with the 40 pound cat litter buckets??

And cutting this hay - song: Kingdom Come, artist: David Bowie covering Tom Verlaine, album: Scary Monsters

Darkness and dismay

After working in town my required eight hours, it's usually dark by the time I get home. My son, Trevor, often feeds the horses for me in the evening. Last night, he went off to band practice before he could feed them. He is in a band called Spring Loaded Hotdog. They have been performing quite often locally in the high schools and small clubs. This weekend is very important to them. The Launchpad is one of the bigger local venues and they will be performing there.
Cool, huh!!

When I got home, I began working on dinner. My older son, Ross, was already home and had started boiling cut up potatoes for me. We were having leftover fried chicken and homemade potato salad. Every Tuesday, I take advantage of Popeye's two pieces for $.99 special. I buy about 6-7 orders so that we can leftovers. With my son cooking the potatoes, I decided to feed the horses.

I bundled up in my barn coat and gloves and went out to the barn in the dark. And boy, was it dark! I often think about the old days, not too long ago, when there wasn't any electricity and everyone had horses. This gets me to buck up and face the dark with a better attitude. I imagine myself a hundred years ago and what it would be like. When you think about it, unless you have automatic waterers, there really isn't much in a barn that distinguishes it from olden times. They had rakes and troughs and wire strung hay bales. The horses were groomed and ridden, blanketed and fed.

When I got to the barn, although I couldn't see them, I could hear Scout trumpeting and Annie softly nickering from the general direction of the arena. I couldn't hear anybody neighing or see anybody looking at me from the first stall. Strange. In the morning, I had put Annie and Scout outside in the arena and left Yalla! and Nadia inside. I went inside and the first stall door was open! Where were Yalla! and Nadia? I could swear I had shut the door in the morning after pouring hot water into their water buckets.

I had this feeling of a presence nearby. Then I heard Yalla! neigh at me and, looking in the stall, I could see her in the distance. Okay, where was Nadia? I still had the sensation of a presence. I turned towards the hay and, sure enough, there was a large white shape right near me. Nadia had come towards me and kind of slowly ooomphed past me into her stall. After eating ALL day long, she had the nerve to nicker at me! Her belly was round and I noticed she was having trouble moving, not colic, just engorged. Well, I guess it couldn't have happened to a sweeter pony. I wondered if Yalla! had been alongside her, happily munching and exploring the barn. Yalla! doesn't particularly like coming in and out of her barn stall since she was raised in the outside stall. I thought that maybe this was a good lesson for her in getting more comfortable in the main barn. Fortunately, they only ate most of a bale of grass hay and nibbled on the alfalfa bale because it was still tied. They had access to water and all around the outside of the barn because I had left the barn door open. I imagine Yalla! went off to visit Annie and Scout and explore the area while Nadia stood and munched.

I decided that since they had been having such a hayfest all day I wouldn't feed them. I put hay in the other two stalls and went out to open the arena gate. Scout and Annie trotted right into their correct stalls and proceeded to eat.

Remembering that my dinner was being prepared, I hurried back to the house and decided to survey the damage in the morning. I debated about going back out to ride Nadia to get that hay burning but the cold and darkness deterred me. I decided to survey the damage in the morning light. It wasn't too bad except for several piles of horse manure. Couldn't she have at least walked away for that??

Darkness and dismay - song: Lady Stardust, artist: David Bowie, album: TRAFOZSATSFM

Hey, hey

Yalla! began eating with her mother at about three weeks old. At first she was just curious, grabbing a nibble or two of her mother's grain. So I started creep feeding her at that time. Now she looks forward to her feedings and eagerly munches down. I am feeding Annie a mixture of grains and supplements and her teats are ridiculously full of milk. Yalla! is still nursing, of course.

Twice a day, I like to feed Annie a mixture of 1 - 2# coffee can of cracked corn, 1 -2# coffee can of 12% sweet feed, and 1 - 2# coffee can of 10% pelleted feed (I buy it at WalMart). I also feed her 1/2 ounce of MarePlus vitamins and about a 1/4 pound of Calf Manna. I've read both good and bad about Calf Manna but I've used it in the past so I decided to go ahead and use it again.
If you don't overfeed it, it makes a good supplement. The biggest complaint I've heard is from too fast of joint growth and too much protein.

I add a squirt of apple cider vinegar and a dollop of vegetable oil to the mix. I prefer to use corn oil but I figured I'd use up the veg oil first. I take Annie her grain in a big yellow bucket and then turn it over for a stool for me to sit on while I bucket feed Yalla! For Yalla!, I feed about a 1/4 pound of Calf Manna, a handful of cracked corn, and a handful of sweet feed. She doesn't eat it all yet so I just sit and let her eat what she wants while her mama eats her grain. Annie is a slow eater, savoring every bite, but she sloshes grain around so I should have her teeth checked, I suppose). It takes Annie about ten or fifteen minutes to eat up her grain so that's as long as I'm creep feeding Yalla!

Yalla! likes to taste everything, just like a kid, everything goes into the mouth. I've had to work on breaking her of nipping. She would take a bite of grain and then nuzzle my arm and then nip it while I was holding the bucket. I started smacking her mouth whenever she tried. She would walk off in a pout and then come back and we'd start all over again. I will not tolerate her nipping at me. I think she's getting better although I still don't fully trust her.

I feed the horses grass hay in the morning and a combination of grass and alfalfa at night. A week ago, when I was feeding them, I heard some strange scrittering noises in the hay trough. I investigated and found a baby mouse in the bottom of the feeder Annie and Yalla! had been grazing from. I caught it in the grain bucket.

Now, what do I do with it? It's been a week and it's still alive. I give it water in a little plastic cap and there's grain for it to eat. Because of the oil in Annie's grain, it got all greasy for a few days. But, I just can't kill it! I throw away dead mice all the time from the traps in the tackroom but this is a little baby! I've even been able to hold it in my hand. Any suggestions? I've thought about just letting it go in the field next door and I've considered a cage. What would you do with it?
The same day I found the mouse, I found a bird's nest in my hay.

I also found a tiny egg (the size of the speckled candy eggs at Easter). I don't know what kind it is or if it actually came from this nest but I suspect it did. The nest is interesting. It has hay, string, horse hair, and feathers woven together.

In regards to hay, my sons and I went out last weekend with the truck and trailer but we could only get about 35 bales of alfalfa. I didn't like the looks of the hay so we only took half of what he had. I guess you get what you pay for-it was $5.00. This was in the north valley so it wasn't too far away. Otherwise, what a wasted trip!

Last year, I bought a truckload of hay and had it delivered. It was a fiasco. They dumped some of the load on the way over to my place when they turned a corner too sharp, so I don't know if they lost some or not. Anyway, the trailer was too long to back up to my barn so they unloaded it in my arena and we had to haul it into the barn using my son's little truck. All 200 bales! We might as well go get it ourselves and drive it into the barn, huh?

However, after last weekend's wasted trip I called around for another delivery. I found an ad for grass hay at $6.00 a bale, DELIVERED and STACKED!!! I called him and although he doesn't usually deliver as far as where I live, he said he would bring it to my house if I bought 200. Also, the ad I saw had no restrictions on delivery. He has a smaller trailer than the guys last year, although it's bigger than mine. He can fit 100-120 bales at a time. The only problem with where I live is that the freeway has road construction all through the canyon which means a twisty two lane road with high walls on both sides and a huge hill to climb. It's very scary to drive anyway, much less with a big load, and hard on the truck engine in the heat! I told him to come along Route 66, the old highway, because there are no stops and the hill isn't as steep. So he agreed.

In record time he, his two teenage daughters, and my two sons had unloaded the 100 bales and they were off to get the next load. It started raining just as they were finishing, big soaking drops, but it only rained about fifteen minutes or so. Luckily the hay was safe in the barn by the time it began raining. I suppose you wonder why I didn't help. Hmmm, I was in town running errands and headed for home when my son called to tell me they were at the barn. They unloaded the hay so fast that they were gone before I got there.

He brought back the second truckload in just a couple of hours time. They were pulling in with the second load as I was pulling brownies out of the oven. I fixed up a plate of still hot brownies for the man and his two daughters and went out to help them all with the hay.

The bales are clean grass with some alfalfa although they are on the light side. Now I know how they could have unloaded so fast! But the hay looks good and it was a fair price. I spoke with someone else who would only deliver for an extra $3 a bale and that hay could easily be the same weight bales!

Update- I have let the little mouse go. Hopefully he will run far away and never come back. I cannot guarantee that my traps won't get him next time.

Hey, hey - song: Amlapura, artist: Tin Machine, album: Tin Machine II

It's not really work

Oh yeah???

Every summer I need to fill my barn with hay and my woodpile with wood. Well, this year I really fell behind. My barn was getting empty. On Saturday I was down to 11 bales and I use a bale a day feeding my three horses.


So, I figured that instead of 5 trips with the truck and trailer @ 75 bales a trip, I would buy a truckload and get the barn filled in one shot. This would also cut out the wear and tear on my poor truck. Besides, with the price of gas, it averages out to about the same cost as the delivery charges. For the last several weeks, because of all the rain, everyone I called told me they had rained-on hay or that they would have hay in "two weeks". I was starting to get worried. Finally, Friday night, I spoke with Paul and bought a truckload of hay: 200 bales of grass and 100 bales of alfalfa.

It was to be delivered Saturday afternoon. Then I got a call from Paul saying they had loaded 200 bales of the wrong hay and had to unload and reload it, so they would be coming by on Sunday morning instead. Well, around 12:30, I called Paul and this time he told me that the guys delivering the hay had turned a corner too sharply and dumped the load. They were reloading the hay as we spoke and would get to my place as soon as they could.

When they finally arrived with their semi rig and 40 foot trailer around 2:30 or so, I quickly realized that they weren't going to get very close to the barn. My barn has a high, wide doorway and my husband could back our long bed pickup and 8 foot trailer up and into the barn but there was no way any rig this big and long was going to make it in.


As a result, they unloaded the hay in the arena in two stacks. This meant my two sons and I had to bring it all into the barn ourselves. We used a wheelbarrow to carry a bale or two at a time and also my son's little pickup to take 20 - 25 bales at a time into the barn. Jeez- almost like going to get it ourselves, huh?




It took several hours but we finally got it all inside the barn. WHEW!!! At least I think we got 300 bales. Because the truck came with the stack jumbled and we loaded it into the barn in staggered rows, there is no possible way I can actually count them. I guess I'll just have to trust that they're all there. One thing's for sure- that hay has been around!


Oh, did I mention the poor hay guys also got a flat tire on one of their trailer tires? Good thing they had dual tires. Jeez, what a day!

Now, for the wood...

It's not really work - song: Modern Love (David Bowie) album: Let's Dance