My red hat friends and I went to a miniature horse farm this past weekend in Fort Collins. Beautiful facilities and horses. Long ago I remember miniature horses, but with big heads. But these horses looked very proportionate to my untrained eye. Of course, a lot of them were in winter coats, but they were very appealing to me. We saw some babies, the youngest being a week old.
The moms are usually 150# and the babies are 30# I believe she said. Ouch! My Nubians are bigger than these horses.
These folks show their horses all over the US. They had a treadmill in there barn, and work out the horses for 20 minutes every other day.
Picture of their indoor birthing facilities. I am told that there farm is listed for 2.5 million dollars. But you would not have to do much fixing up, could move right in!
My favorite was a black and white stallion, named Buckaroo. Pictured here below.
I was told that I could own one of these horses for $500-$20,000. Not in my budget right now.
Update on eggs.
Our guineas were nesting out in the pasture, and were up to over 30 eggs. (I included a picture and had written about them a few days ago.) Dennis was going out to get them with three egg cartons in hand, and was going to put them in the incubator as it has been so cold, and the bugs aren't hatched out yet. Well anyway, the night before the dogs had found them, and had eaten every egg. I was wondering why Bear did not eat much for breakfast. A few days later I found 3 piles of regurgitated egg shells. He felt much better after that and is back up to eating his usual portions. Being a big working dog, he eats 8 cups of dog food per day, and LuLu eats 4 cups, Casey eats 2 cups. Anyone want my dog food feed bill? But I figure it is cheep security.
The turkeys hatched out 10 babies, we have them in the garage under heat lamps.
We are now incubating 30 guinea eggs and are starting to collect chicken eggs. The guinea eggs take 28 days to hatch and the chicken eggs 21 days. So we won't have to buy chicks and have them shipped from the hatchery.
We have baby goats.
Gabby gave birth to 3 baby Nubians on Monday night, a cold and rainy night. She had 2 bucks and a doe. All black and white. The birth was not without incident however. Gabby was a first time mom, and we knew that she was going to have her babies that day, was standing off to herself, and stayed in the barn most of the day. She started with pushing labor around 10pm, with no progress. I checked her and her first kid was breech, one hock could be found, but I could not find the other. Since Gabby is not a bottle raised goat herself, she is the most skittish of my goats, and was hard to do an assessment on her, we really needed 3 people to do the job. So the vet was called. Gabby was lying on her side, screaming and in so much discomfort,(it was all I could do from totally loosing it seeing and hearing poor Gabby in so much pain.) but she did deliver the kid before the vet showed up. The kid must have repositioned itself. After the first kid was "unstuck" the other two popped out within 5 minutes. So I was very busy cleaning them off.We had a good visit with the vet, (she is a very knowledgeable goat and sheep vet)and she did an exam of Gabby to check that nothing was torn. So everything turned out OK. Also, turns out that the vet is an avid quilter(mostly hand quilting) and invited me to her quilt club that meets near Wellington. Of course,I had to show her some of my quilts, while Dennis was blow drying the babies. Any way, when all was said and done, we went to bed at 12:40
Gabby is a very good attentive mother.
Dosado is our next doe due on the 25Th. So some time to rest during deliveries. I have a Radio Shack monitor system that I have out in the barn, and I turn this on at night so that I can hear if the does are starting labor. It makes for a less than good night rest.
Happy Easter, if I don't hear from you all.
More later......................................................................
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