Five Acres with a View

We buy our hay in three ton lots from our suppliers, delivered and stacked by two wiry young men.  The two young men have changed over the years, since slinging around eighty pound bales of hay is not a long-term career.  It gets stacked in the hay aisle of our barn, as high as seven layers.  Sometimes it seems as though the stackers are being unnecessarily clever about how they interlock the bales as they stack. I try not to fuss about how high the bales go, since they are doing pretty well to stack the hay and still leave room for me to get into the stalls from the hay aisle.

However, getting the top bale down when it is stacked seven high can be challenge, since they are over my head. I used to get Jack to do it but he generally brought down half the pile, scattering bales like pick up sticks, and fussing about getting clobbered in the process.  So I mostly do it myself now.  I became a lot more cautious about doing it after the time I impaled myself with a hay fork when a bouncing bale hit the hay fork in my hand. One doesn’t expect eighty pound bales to bounce, but they do.

I’ve developed a fairly efficient process for getting down the top bale.  I hook the hay fork into the twine of the bale and make sure it is securely attached.  I loop one of my lead ropes though the handle of the hay fork and hold on to both ends, pulling steadily until the desired hay bale drops to the ground.  The lead rope gives me enough room that I can move back if I’ve miscalculated how many bales will drop.  However, usually no more than two bales will come down if I’ve selected the correct bale. 

I am extraordinarily gratified each time this method works since I’ve developed it.

Full Size 1200×900

I thought it was bad when I went out to feed horses this evening and I saw Hap was standing on three legs behind the barn. I was sure he had broken his front right leg and the vet confirmed it when she came out about forty minutes later. He was humanely destroyed a few minutes later.

It really sucks.  But as my friend D said, it would have sucked just as much if he had been 35 as 25.

Horses Demonstrate Ability to Count in New Study. I’ve always thought horses believe that the other horse got more carrots for any value of more given.

YouTube – Hevosagility.Hipin harjoitukset.Tunneli, puomi, pujottelu ..

So about 11 am I notice that my critter-sitter, also known as R, had just left a message for my cell phone.  Unfortunately, the routine that I use to check messages while in the US did not allow me to pick it up in Canada.  This wouldn’t have worried me so much but my critter-sitter wasn’t supposed to try to reach me except for an emergency.  After several failed attempts at using the cell phones belonging to me and Jack I started begging cell phones from friends here at the convention.  (We left one very elderly dog at home and horses are ALWAYS an emergency waiting to happen.) I finally got hold of my friend D who boards my mare and asked her if she knew why my critter sitter had called me.  (The friend D who boards my mare has what is essentially our medical power-of-attorney for our critters so I knew she would know what was going on.)  D assured everyone was fine including Rion who was playing in her back yard and that R was there.  It turned out that Indi (a very sweet, older grulla gelding) had decided to play with the hydrant in D’s barn the previous night.  He had never, ever done this before.  In fact, no horse had done this for over a decade, which is why there wasn’t a safety fastener on it.  It was quite a stretch for Indy to reach the hydrant and flood the barn.   When D got to the barn in the morning, all the horses but my mare were up to their fetlocks in water.  R was calling to find out where we keep our Shop-Vac, so she could take it over to help the clean-up process.  I don’t know if she ever found it, but D reports on Facebook that her barn has been cleaned up.

It’s always something.

Not Exactly Rocket Science explains how the modern jockey posture makes things easier for horses and speeds up races.

Full Size 1200×798

Lily is convalescing quite well.

Lily seems to be doing well this morning.  She will be on restricted rations and painkillers for the next couple of days, and we won’t totally relax until she is back on her normal regime.

Update: 2:04 pm MDT: The mineral oil has passed through Lily’s digestive tract. This is very good news. I am about to leave to pick her up at the clinic.

Yesterday, when I got to the barn, D reported that my mare Lily had been acting as though she was having one of her “spells.” She has had a fair number of these spells over the years, which present as mild colic attacks. We arranged our plans for the day so we could keep an eye on her. By mid-afternoon, we started to worry that this was more severe than her regular spells, and called the vet out, who diagnosed a moderately severe impaction colic.  However, there were no signs of a torsion after a rectal exam, so she tubed her with oil and water, and gave her heavy-duty pain killers.  Two hours later we called her when it was obvious that the pain-killers were doing very little, and she was accumulating gas rather than passing it.

I called the vet and we had one of those grim little discussions about whether Lily was insured (NO) and whether colic surgery was an option (NO). (If colic surgery had been an option, she would have handed off Lily to a clinic that does them.) As Lily was continuing to try to throw herself down when allowed I was afraid to even put her in a
trailer for the fifteen minute ride to the vet’s clinic.

The vet came out again. While we were waiting, Lily managed to go down and get her
hind legs through the rails of a fence. I felt like giving up at that point, but Lily managed to get herself uncast right after the vet arrived while we were discussing what to do. The vet did another rectal exam and still felt no signs of torsion (a twist in the intestine). I was sure she had a twist higher than the vet could feel but not quite sure enough to request she be put down. The vet had given her more drugs, and this time they seemed to give her some relief. Even so, of the three of us, D was the only one who had much optimism at that point. D and I arranged to meet the vet at her clinic in forty-five minutes since the vet had another call to make, which gave us a chance for a long over-due supper. The vet was having the day from hell since her partner in the practice was out of town.

Lily went into the trailer without too much fuss and came out breathing fire. I walked her (actually was dragged around by her) for a while, then led her into her stall at the clinic.  She investigated the stall and then went down. She still looked more comfortable than she had for many hours and lay quietly with her head up. As we waited for the vet to arrive, we could hear gas gurgles, which was very welcome since she had been lacking gut sounds for a scarily long time. I told the vet I wanted to her to call me with any significant change, good or bad. The vet had another colic case in clinic, and expected to be up all night administering pain-killers and fluids.

I was laying awake at 1:30 when the vet called to say that Lily had made a big pile of manure and had passed a lot of gas and seemed reasonably comfortable. We had previously discussed a procedure which would vent the gas but she had not felt it necessary. After that, I was able to sleep for a few hours. At 6:30 I spoke to the vet again. She had left a vet tech monitoring Lily and had gone home to catch a few hours of sleep herself. She was guardedly optimistic, since Lily had made another pile of manure, had gut sounds on both sides (though diminished on her right side) and was only occasionally looking at her right side. If all goes well, we hope to bring her home today.