Between ticks, worms, shedding, and her current skin problems, Ellie will use anything for a scratching post. After I took this picture, she swung around and used the rabbit hutch. I’m pretty sure the bunnies are scarred for life now.
If you haven’t already, go check out Ellie’s update over on Rescue Recoveries.
Sometimes you just need to laze around and do nothing on a rainy day. If you’re an adorable little bunny, you pretty much laze around and do nothing every day. But at least you look cute and cuddly while doing it.
Not one of these gals laid an egg yesterday, but it was pretty tempting to snap off an ear when a chocolate craving hit.
Which will be hard since I’m not wearing any. As usual.
But if you were me and you felt the need to lay on your stomach in the grass and call “chickie chickie chickie”, this is what the world would look like.
And you would tremble in fear at the thunder of stampeding chickens. You would gratefully throw out scratch grain if they would but spare your life. Alas, you have no grain, so you just lie there awaiting your doom. Your life flashes before your eyes and it was boring. You wonder how many will show up at your funeral and what Glenn will do with your ashes.
Then you realize that your brain has gone off on it’s own and that you really need some sleep.
Turn to the left and you find Ellie, who has no fear of the feathered beasts that follow her around most of the day.
Have a great weekend, yaw’ll!!
As usual, I’m late getting things into the ground. Pinetree has not helped matters by still not shipping my March 3rd order. That order had most the early stuff that needed to go in the ground and it ain’t early anymore! I did have some beet, radish, and carrot seed, so that went in the ground tonight. The lettuce, spinach, cabbage, broccoli, and collard seedlings will be ready to go into the garden in the next week or two.
The seeds that were sown tonight got covered with deer netting in the hopes that it will be enough of a deterrent to keep the chickens from scratching them up. If not, then lesson learned.
All my herbs are coming on strong from last year:
Oregano
Chives
Lemon Balm
For fear of over greening you, I didn’t take pictures of the Hyssop, Yarrow, Catnip, and Bee Balm. I was hoping the bronze fennel would come back this year, but the two plants I had took quite a beating last year and I’m afraid they weren’t very healthy when Winter hit. But I did take a picture of the seemingly happy garlic plants.
Note the lack of snow. This is what April is supposed to look like.
There’s something inherently evil with snow in April. It’s just plain wrong. I didn’t want to take a picture for you because it’s way too depressing. I also blame the snow for making me feel worse just as I was getting better. Glenn is back in truck driving school (hooray for finally passing the CDL tests!) so I have no one to whine to except you. Don’t you feel special??
Ellie has decided that she does not want to eat unless I’m either holding the bucket for her or petting her while she’s eating. As soon as I walk away to do something else she stops eating and comes with me. She’s also still trying to find a way into the house.
I’ve got a blanket on her, but it was Megalia’s and is WAY too big. Unfortunately, it’s also the smallest one I have that isn’t too small for her. She’s in no danger of getting the straps caught in her legs so it’s better than nothing. When I first put a blanket on her I could tell she hadn’t ever had one one before. She was so nervous that she actually stopped chewing. The first blanket was too small, so when I put the second blanket on she was done being terrified and just kept chewing.
Yesterday I proved my worthiness to ride the short bus. When I go out to check for eggs, I usually leave the small gate to the pasture open if there are no horses from the main herd anywhere near. The big herd was way in the top pasture and Ellie was on the other side of the pond hanging out with Stride, so I left the gate open. In the time it took me to get the eggs and get back out of the coop, Ellie had made it across the stream, through the yard, and was trotting up the hill towards the main herd. Of course I panicked, as she really isn’t strong enough to go out with the herd yet and I didn’t want her getting hurt. She must have heard me because she stopped, turned around, and came walking up to me to sniff the eggs. I had to make promises of sweet feed and ear scratches to get her to follow me back through the gate and into the yard.
At least I know she’s getting stronger and feeling better. Pretty soon she’ll be feeling good enough to cause all sorts of mischief.
Oh boy, I can’t wait!
Ellie won the pony name contest by a landslide, but I have a feeling a certain someone that suggested the name voted more than once. But that’s ok, because I already started calling her Ellie this morning before I had even checked the poll stats and she seems to like it. Or maybe it’s the bucket of grain that she likes.
Ellie has no idea what treats are. Carrots, peppermints, and apple wafers have all been tossed out of her grain bucket and ignored. I think that’s always the saddest part about some of these rescues. It’s so obvious that no one has ever shown them the simple kindness of a treat.
Because I’m a fruitcake addicted to this blogging thing and have an almost obsessive compulsion about documenting stuff, I’ve created a new blog. Rescue Recoveries will document the ups and downs, failures and triumphs of bringing a horse like Ellie back to health. I’ll try to keep it as clinical as I can, with feed amounts and times, weekly weight gain or loss, ailments or lameness, etc. I’ll take new pictures of the horse at least bi-weekly so everyone can follow along with his/her progress.
Like the training blog, each post will be titled with the horse’s name and the date, and labeled with the horse’s name. Eventually, there will be a new page on the rescue site that links to that blog as well.
The first post about Ellie is there now and provides an update on her since Doc was here this morning to look her over. So head on over, and please don’t hate me because I like to type. :)
The new rescue has been fed four times since arriving last night. Apparently she paid attention when I got her food from the can on the porch. Also apparent is that I have some fence to fix.
Hello? Hey human, I seeeeeee you! Want to come out and give me some more food?
Pony pulling is a big time sport around these parts and before we moved up here I had never even heard of it. Now I seem to be surrounded by idiots that seem to think their pony/horse can sit in a pasture with no food and little water and just be pulled out and harnessed up at the next competition. Why feed them?? They’re ponies, they don’t need to eat! And as I was told today, they only need to be wormed once a year. And those shoes that got them through competition last year will be fine again this year. Just leave ‘em on and save you some money!
On the way to the feed store there is a pasture with a run-down barn and several horses. Two months ago a few of them started to look a little ribby. We had no idea who owned them, and due to the county that they were in, I was reluctant to call the police. There is one specific officer, who shall remain unnamed for now, that likes to seize horses for his own back yard breeding program. And at that point the horses weren’t thin enough for the county to even be able to seize them.
The pasture they are in is 75 acres of hills and trees. You can only see a small corner of the pasture from the road, so you couldn’t be sure you’d even see the horses when you drove by. Last month one of the horses started dropping weight more than the others, but still wasn’t in dire straights yet. Then we didn’t see that horse again until yesterday.
This is what we saw.
We tried to find out who owned the horses, but there was no one home in the surrounding houses. We went back today during my lunch break to see if we could catch someone and in the house across the street we found a wonderful old gentleman that owns the property and leases it to the owner of the horses. He told us where the owner lived and said the owner usually comes by to check on the horses around 6pm every day.
So… wait a minute here. The owner comes by every day, sees how thin his horses are, and what? Still doesn’t put anything but moldy hay in the pasture for them? Doesn’t feed them grain, according to the neighbor, and there was no water in sight? Granted, there could have been a stream or pond somewhere in the pasture that we didn’t see. All we did see were oily mud puddles and a roll of mold that may have been hay at some point.
We went back at 5:30 and drove past the pasture to find the owner’s trailer. I wish I had had my camera with me! He had a boxer dog tied up in the yard that was about the size of Heidi and MIGHT have weighed 25 pounds. Heidi is 60lbs. He was nothing but skin and bone! I wanted to put him in the truck and take him home with us since the owner wasn’t even home. We drove back to the pasture to wait and didn’t have to wait long. Ol’ D.S. came driving by shortly after and when Glenn told him we were interested in a horse and wanted the skinny one, he immediately said he’d give us the horse. As it turns out, D.S. has been in trouble with the law before when it comes to cruelty to animals. We were the opportunity that fell into his lap to rid himself of a critter he didn’t want to take care of.
We also offered to take one of the very skinny Belgians off his hands, but he wasn’t really skinny you see. That’s one of his pullin’ horses and “that’s just the way he looks”. Right. Because a horse’s back bone should stick up several inches, his hips should be visible a mile away, and he really should have a great big bloated belly full of worms. I’m beginning to learn that this is the way “pullin’ horses” look up here. Instead he tried to sell us one of the seven foals that he’s expecting this year from his stallion and broodmare herd on another farm. How did I just know he’d be another idiot backyard breeder??? Might as well call him an auction supplier instead of breeder, especially in this economy.
On our way home with the mare Glenn mentioned that it’s a very good thing that I have laryngitis right now.
We hooked up with Michelle who brought her trailer over to pick up the pony. The poor girl practically pushed me onto the trailer. GET ME OUT OF HERE! We were worried she might fall down on the ride home, but she is stronger than she looks and got home safe and sound. Michelle took these pictures once we got her off the trailer.
How adorable is that face???
We put Stride and Maverick back in the pasture behind the house and put the pony in the quarantine paddock. She was tickled to have grass and water at her disposal and dove right in to the handful of sweet feed I gave her for dinner. When a horse is this bad you have start off slow with the grain or you could do more harm than good. For now she’ll be getting two cups of food 5 times a day and we’ll gradually increase the feed and decrease the feedings over the next few weeks. Doc is coming out today to examine her and hopefully he won’t find anything more than worms and starvation. She seems bright-eyed and healthy other than the malnourishment and long feet.
I think we’re going to call her Daisy until something better comes along. Suggestions?
Glenn and I went to the feed store yesterday and a shipment of rabbits came in just as we were about to leave . Why, oh WHY, couldn’t we have left a few minutes earlier? It was all my fault this time. I will take full credit, but it couldn’t be helped. Just trust me on that, ok?
This is the little bugger that first caught my eye. How could I turn her down? I picked her up and she immediately snuggled up under my chin and licked me. Would you have been able to resist that???
Maud was picked for her long hair and smooshed face. And because I didn’t want Lily to be lonely on the drive home. Really.
We had to divide the hutch up when we brought them home because Travis decided he really was old enough to “get busy” with the ladies. Travis is now in half the hutch with Elvira the Silky and the three girls are on the other side. As you can see, Loretta and Lily became fast friends.
Somebody stop me.
