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May 14, 2018: Animal Maintenance

The weather here continues to be crappy – maybe warmer than in winter, but overcast and slightly drizzly. The leaves are coming out on the trees simply because this is what they are supposed to do. I would like a day or two of sunny, warm, windless weather. Is this too much to ask?

Well, the show must go on and so it does. It was an animal maintenance day. Not going to waste a day of good weather doing these chores, that’s for sure.

Cleaned the goat pen. Slowly getting caught up on the outside area – it is too much to do for one day. I also still need to clean the chicken pen. Pete said that there was blood on one of the collected eggs, so


Pete and Raudi

tomorrow I will examine chicken’s butt. A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do – I am talking about the hens, not me.

And I did quite a bit of horsey maintenance today. I cleaned up the areas in front of the hitching post and the trailer – smoothed them out, removed rocks and hay, and then put the foam mats that were in the playground shanty in these two areas and in the trailer tack room. I still need to cut down the one in the trailer.

After all this, I really got down to business. I weighed and measured all horses and did physicals. I did this in the shelter area because it was sprinkling out. I first groomed the horses and felt their entire bodies and in particular their legs for bruises and bumps. Hrimmi did have a little spot of scurfy hair loss on her back – tomorrow I will take a piece of tape and see any lice cling to it. And Raudi’s cornet bands seemed to me to be swollen. Tinni has a swollen dinky shake and it is hot to the touch. Tyra was just fine in all respects.

The weight calculations I found on line did not jive with the weight tape – some horses seemed way under and some seemed way over. So I am again going to do this with a regular horse measuring tape. Mine has the designations in hands, a hand being four inches. Fortunately, Pete has arranged for a community weigh in, which will take place in a few weeks, in a local gravel pit. We’ll get estimates on the three mares because this is the number of horses we can fit in our trailer.

I also checked all the horses’ vital signs, heart rate, pulse rate, temperature, and respiration included. Raudi, no surprise, had the highest heart rate, and interestingly enough, Hrimmi’s heart rate was also a bit higher than usual. All the temperatures were in normal range. And ears, eyes, nose, and mouths looked fine on all the animals.

I didn’t get in a single ride or get the dog out because I was doing all this. Well, what I did do was important, only if, say, something goes awry, I will have a baseline on hand.

And so tomorrow, secondary details.

Next: 135. 5/15/18: A Conversation with Tinni (while out on the trail)

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