Dahlia and Cadence Go Home

A friend of mine recently had to put down her old appaloosa gelding who had gone both blind and deaf.  He was running into things in a pasture where he’d lived for years, causing himself pain and injury, besides just being very unhappy.  Her husband thought the best remedy for the heartache would be to find a foal to raise.  My friend thought it best to get a well-broke and kid-friendly horse for their many nieces and nephews.  So they compromised and got both!

When I delivered the two tonight, there was only a couple of minutes of trotting around and establishing dominance, then everyone settled down to graze in a tight knit group around Cadence. 

Dahlia was tickled to have all of that well-groomed pasture to eat and never really bothered with all that dominance nonsense.  She didn’t even seem to care when the other horses took a sniff at Cadence, as long as they weren’t aggressive about it.

 

See that paint mare on the right in the picture above?  I bet you don’t recognize her, but that’s Abby!  The first picture below was taken when we rescued her back in March of 2009. 

 

This is her now!

 

I never did get pictures of her when she was adopted last year because she was delivered on the same day that her sister, Genesis, was delivered and I used up all my memory card space on pictures of Genesis in her new home.  Oops!

I’m going to miss little Cadence.  The day she was born, I swear she hit the ground running and bucking!  She was always playing and entertaining herself and any humans that happened to be watching, including Doc.  She had him chuckling the last time he was out because she kept charging around at top baby speed and slipped in some wet hay and went down.  She hopped up and gave him a look like it was his fault, then charged right at him and swerved at the last second.  After that, her nickname became “Little Miss Assitude”!

 

Yes, Dahlia.  I’ll miss you too!

 

 

Good thing they’re not very far away.  *sniff*

Hay, hay, and yet more hay

In the past week and a half, three different people have called me to donate hay.  The first had lost her last horse and didn’t want anymore.  She had about 130 bales in her barn and was looking for a place to donate it.  It took two trips, but it’s in our barn now. 

The second was a very nice couple that live about 6 miles away.  I’ve never met them before, but they called me up last week and wanted to “come out and just see what you’re about”.  So they came out a few days ago, met all the horses and we traded stories (they currently have six horses, one of them a rescue), then they said they wanted to donate a bunch of hay, but first needed to make sure I was nothing like the “so-called rescue” an hour down the road.  Apparently, I’m not.  170 bales delivered by them over the last two days now sits in our barn. 

The third is a friend of mine that is also fostering two horses and adopted Shortcake, Ginger, and Huey.  She and her husband bale their own hay and they were offered a new farm to bale this year.  I went down today while they were baling and now 82 more bales are sitting on the truck and trailer waiting for tomorrow to be introduced to our barn.  They offered more hay, but my barn is full!

 

Even though I feed round bales, I still like to have the barn full of square bales in the event that the weather is so bad that I can’t get to my round bale supplier.  I should have put “fill barn with hay” on my project list just so I’d have something to cross off!

 

I also got some training done yesterday and Mariah really wanted to hinder help!  So go check it out over on the new blog!

Baby #5

When Dahlia first arrived, she was ribby and thin with a bit of a pot belly.

When Doc first examined her shortly after arriving here, he felt her udder and thought she might foal within a month.  But there was a lot of edema in her udder and he couldn’t tell for sure without palpating her.  Since she was far from friendly at that point, palpation was out of the question.  

This was what she looked like on 5/4. 

After I moved her here to the farm, her tummy tucked up even more, she muscled up, and the edema in her udder went down.  She has the hill of death to thank for the muscle tone!  Doc took another look and agreed that her original pot belly must have just been worms and she didn’t even look pregnant any more. 

Just a few weeks ago, the pot belly returned, but she was still very small.  If she was pregnant, she didn’t look that far along.  Then her udder started filling up with milk shortly after...  here we go again!

Cadence was born early this morning out in the pasture and is doing just fine!

 

Of course, she’s adorable.  Aren’t all foals adorable?

 

Check out those long legs!  Cadence is going to be a pretty good sized horse.  No pony here!

Because of her color, my guess would be that Don Juan is her sire, but there’s no guarantee since we don’t know what other stallions were at that hell hole that died before we were able to save them.

I’m glad little Cadence has finally been born.  This means she and Mariah are only three months apart and can grow and play together.  Poor Mariah hasn’t played much at all for lack of a play mate.  Hopefully that will change soon!