Last day of April. Hmm…hard to believe with these temperatures.

This picture looks a lot better in real life. It is really quite a beautiful series of greens.

The S-pony is becoming more friendly and curious about me. Today he kept getting too close for me to get a good photo.

Another brisk morning at horse farm diaries. Today the farrier comes to visit the boarder’s horses, so most of them will stay in their stalls until they get their pedicure.

For those of you still addicted to the foal cam, here’s an up-close picture of mom and baby. The baby is a little frightened of humans coming into the stall and is usually hiding behind his mom.

Harley is one of the few horses let out to pasture this morning. He’s a little hesitant on going down without a herd. I may have mention that Harley is our oldest horse. He’s a retired police horse and was born in 1971. I’m sure that out-dates a lot of you reading this blog.

A cool morning with promises of rain, sleet and snow.

A quiet morning view.

The weather reports have been wrong lately, perhaps it will turn into a warm, sunny day.

Duke and Little Boy, hanging out.

Duke, looking for a kiss.

This is photo is from yesterday, but I took a few after I posted that I really want to share. Like Athena trotting towards the fence when she saw us standing there.

And how could I not share this.

Maddy was out for an evening ride on Monty.

Hi Ho and Away…

Good Morning, the temperature is in the 40s, but bright sunshine and no wind. I’ll take it.

The grass is so green and growing.

And the trees are blooming. Dare I say it would be a great day for a horse show?

Just moments earlier, Duke and Little Boy were sitting side by side, but I couldn’t get to my camera fast enough.

I’d like to title this photo “friends.” In the morning, Amber waits at the gate until we bring Tessa out. Then they walk away together.

Ginger and Athena are living large.

Pretty soon Athena will have a friend to play with.

And one of these days she’ll shed out that wooley coat and we’ll see what color she really is.

And a special good morning to our new guest.

Hopefully he will get a name soon or I’ll start calling him “Sonny.” I kind of like it, since he is a son and it has to be an “s” word. The owners have three other horses, Sugura, Spice and Sweet Marie. And in a few weeks, Sweet Marie will have her own baby.

I would like to welcome a new visitor to our site, Judith of Wales, UK. Check out her beautiful Bed&Breakfast that features equestrian activities. Maybe some day we can all go visit.
Have a great day!

So it looks like any normal April day where the weather goes from lovely 70s to really windy 40s. But seriously folks, the normal temps in April should be in the 50s, not 70s. But this will be anything but a normal day.

This morning I walked down to the pasture. Chuck was going to deliver hay, so I stand guard, making sure the two horses left in rough board don’t try to make an escape to greener pastures.

Next week we will start to let the horses out to graze. Now isn’t that a sign of summer, grazing horses. I can’t wait. We will introduce them to green grass slowly. Too much too fast can cause them to colic, which can be a death sentence for a horse.

So, as I said yesterday, I would go through some of my daily chores to let those not walking the grounds of the horse farm know what we do. Here are some of the tools used to clean a stall — a shovel (for the messy stuff), a pick (aka fork or rake) for sifting through the semi-clean stuff and a broom to sweep when finished.

And my favorite tool, the bobcat. This is great for hauling away bad bedding and bringing in new.

I know, I know, those of you who were here today are getting really frustrated with me. But, let’s be a little methodical here.

Here’s a stall before. I realize this isn’t a good example of what a mess they can be, but it is the only one I have.

So here’s the shovel putting dirty, wet, stinky bedding into the bucket of the bobcat.

Here’s what is left of the bedding in the stall after I sifted through it all.

Okay, okay, I can hear Taylor saying…why is she talking about cleaning stalls when something much more exciting happened today. Grrr…

So a little after noon today, while cleaning stalls, Taylor comes running to the upper barn screaming, Sugura is having her baby. Which causes me to scream to my daughter, who’s better at this than I, Sugura is having her baby.

Low and behold, we have a new baby.

I’m sure you’re all wondering why you can’t jump on the foal cam to watch mother and baby right now. (Saturday night around 8 pm) Well, Chuck is trying to download the images so we can have a slide show of the birth. Which is a good thing, because, believe it or not, rather than take photos, I tried to help with the birth.

Tori ran to Mandy’s house to get her while Maddy coaxed Surgura into pushing.

Mandy, our infamous barn owner, is trying to get this baby to stand. He seems a little weak in his legs, which is worrisome.

For those of you who were there, yes, it has only been about 10 minutes, but it seemed a lot longer.

Meanwhile, Maddy is walking Sugura outside. She has a tendency to colic after giving birth. She doesn’t want to get up so the baby can’t nurse. It is crucial that the baby nurse within the first three hours or the baby could die. If you’re wondering what is hanging out of Sugura, that is the placenta and other goodies. It takes a little while for her to pass those things. Tomorrow the vet will come out and make sure it is all out and in tack.

With a little help, the baby is standing better.

and better.

Wala, he’s standing on his own.

Look at him go.

Mandy is talking to the baby, telling him how good he is doing.

To make a long story short, the baby is doing well. Presently he is nursing. We cheat, we have a direct link to our t.v. and can watch it live. Chuck will get the web cam up and running again. The camera takes a picture every 5 seconds and now he’s downloading those images. If you do the math, there are a lot of images. Stay tuned and we’ll try to get a slide show up of the actual birth.

What? No temperature? Can you believe it. I forgot. But you’ll have to trust me, it was about 60 degrees. I expected colder after the nasty thunderstorms we had last night.

Karyl Smith from Nebraska wrote a comment asking for more photos of the daily chores. So I thought I’d give a short run through of my morning. The first thing I do is ration out grain for all of the horses and feed them.

Since the weather is predicting lots of storms, with possible hail and strong winds, I decided to keep the horses in today. I have to give them all hay in addition to grain. In a way, I’m really punishing myself because I know the stalls will be nasty tomorrow, but I know if I don’t do it, I will feel really bad.

If horses do not have automatic waterers in their stalls, I have to fill water buckets.

Some horses need supplements and extra types of feed, so I keep track of that as well.

When I’m done feeding, I reload all the buckets with grain, corn and other supplements.

These are the bags of oats and corn. I’ve really developed quite the muscles by throwing around 50 lb. bags of grain.

I reload the cart with hay — more work for the muscles. When I’m all done feeding the horses, I tag team with Chuck, who comes out about 30 minutes later and lets them out to the pasture or paddock, depending on the horse. Today he gets to skip this part. Tomorrow we’ll show you stall cleaning. I’m sure you can’t wait.

Well, I think this is going to be as warm as it gets for the next seven days.

Happy 2nd Birthday Duke! What follows is a small tribute to his two years.

It is a little cool beginning for what should be a beautiful day. I do believe they are predicting sunshine and 70s. Can we ask for more?

Ranger would like to ask for more. He’s on a diet AND it is his birthday. What’s wrong with that picture? Well, Happy Birthday Ranger! I guess we’ll have to let the other horses eat your cake.

It is quite the magical morning of moon, mist and mystery. It looks like the set design for a motion picture that has eerie music. Actually, this is one of the benefits of getting up so early. I have watch the fog come up as the sun rises. It is spectacular. Days like today I wish I had a better camera to capture a lot of what I’m seeing. However, if I had a better camera, it wouldn’t bounce around in my pocket while doing chores. So I guess there are trade-offs. You will just have to trust me as to how beautiful it looks.

Have a good morning everyone! Keep your eyes on the foal cam. Today may be the day. But then again, tomorrow is Duke’s birthday. Perhaps he would like a baby horse to play with.

Well Tori, it looks like a beautiful start for a birthday.

As you can see, Sugura hasn’t had her baby yet. We will see if she delivers before your birthday is over.

As you can see from this photo, the grass really is greener on the other side of the fence.

Happy Birthday Tori. I hope you had a good time! Perhaps we’ll have a baby horse yet.

Ahh…it is beginning to feel like summer.

If you look in the background, you will see a nice morning fog.

And would you look at that…buds on the trees. Life is good.