A Mid-Winter Flood

Well we had a mid-winter flood! The weather just seemed to get warmer and warmer and then viola a meltdown! Good thing there was no hay in this round bale holder, because it would have been ruined.

Its a pretty big pond for this time of year...takes up a good portion of the field. It is supposed to drop to -19 tomorrow and stay cold for a while....so soon we will have a big ice rink in the field. And I supposed that bale feeder will be stuck there for the rest of winter. Ah good old Canadian winters!

Buckleberry decided that he would rather drink from this new pond than from the heated water tubs. What a silly boy. He HATES the water heaters in the tanks, he is afraid of them, lol. So any reason or excuse he can find to not use the tanks is great with him :)

With the sunlight and one lone horse drinking from a temporary pond this picture struck me as a unique picture. I like it.

Cujo's Couch

What a tired little boy! Having a snooze on his own personal couch after a busy few days.

Ha, ha, his personal couch is just his size and he recieved it as a christmas present. He loves his couch.

Snow Dogs!

Cujo had lots of fun playing in the snow over the Christmas holidays :) He likes to run through the snow and eat snow flakes. But the poor little fella gets cold very very easily and usually only plays outside for about 10 minutes before he wants to come in to the nice warm house!

Jumping through the snow!

"What should I do next?"

This ol' girl is Sasha. She is a husky/german shepherd and she is well suited to the snow! In her younger days (she will be 14 years old in 2009) she loved to race through the snow. Now she meanders around a bit, watches the little fella and comes inside to have a long nap in a cozy bed.

Merry Christmas To All!!

Well all the animals out here have gotten into the christmas spirit!! Cujo the boston terrier looks very full of christmas joy in hit santa suit!

Hehehehe! Yes I torture him by making him wear festive costumes. Poor guy :)

What a cutie! I think here is is more confused as to why he is sitting on a kitchen chair rather than the santa suit.

Molly enjoys hanging out with her friends under the christmas tree. Her she is with Moocow...a lovely little cow that moooooos chirstmas songs and with Oinker a bashful little pig who oinks christmas carols. Molly does not sing any christmas carols. What a crew!

Merry Christmas and happy holidays to you from everyone, both human and non human, here at Acres of Grace !!

Farm Life In Winter = Chores, Chores, Chores

It is a snowy cold season out here at the farm. I have never disliked snow until I bought farm animals!! There is so much more work in the winter and so much less fun activities to do with the animals. It hard to ride in the snow, and if there is a frigid wind blowing forget it.

I spend hours each week shuffling hay around...from the barn to the feeders.....from one feeder to another.....from the ground where the horses throw it back into the feeder.....it never ends! The small bales are about 80 pounds. First you have to climb up the hay stacks and throw the bales down from the top....then you have to pick it up by the strings and carry it out into the yard....travel down an icy, slippery embankment with the strings digging into your palms....shuffle it onto your knee as you try to open the gate to the field....and then try to make it through a mass 0f 8 animals (6 of which a big horses) each trying to eat the bale as you carry it out to the feeder.....throw it in the feeder.....climb into the feeder so that you can get the strings oof of it....which is a whole other problem, because they are so tighly wound they can be very difficult to get off sometimes......climb back out of the feeder and do it all again.......11-15 more times.

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Speaking of hay, we also have to put 2 big round bales out in the feeders on the weekends. Each round bale weighs about 1500 pounds. I have to try to roll it out of the barn and down an embankment so that the tractor can lift it up and take it out to the feeders. Not too bad.....except when there has been so much snow that I have to spend half and hour diggins out the door to get the hay out and another half an hour digging out the gate to the horse field so that tractor will be able to get in. The tractor is not able to plow in front of the barn door because it cannot get up the embankment. And I cannot plow infront of the horse gate well because it cannot get close enough and just ends up pushing the snow against the gate. Then there are the times....like yesterday....when the tractor breaks down (which happens frequently because it is old) and we cannot use it so we have to call a neigbour or try to push these big 1500 pound bales out to the fields ourselves...(almost impossible). Sometimes the tractor works to take the hay out but breaks down in the field and then we have to try to keep the horses away from it so they don't run into it and get hurt.

The water is a whole other story. The hoses freeze so every other day I have to get the hoses from the basement....drive them to the farm....unwind them....fill the buckets.....stretch the hoses out to drain.....wind them back up.....tie them with baler twine....and take them home again....once home I have to unwind them again...drain them again and wrap the dang hose up...again. Not much work? Hmmm....well it is the MOST ANNOYING thing ever, winding and unwinding these dang hoses every other day....your hands get wet...the hoses are cold so they are stiff....the water the runs out of them makes icy patches.....and it is just a big chunk of my time that I could be using to do the many other chores I have to do. Oh and thats if the water pipe has not frozen...which it does a lot....in which case it has to be thawed with a hair dryer. Sometimes the actual pump out in the pump house freezes....and that requires a professional plumber and a whole lot of stress.

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And no the horses cannot just eat snow for their water. They could phsically do it, but it does not provide enough liquid and they have to use precious body heat in order to melt the snow. In winter dehydration is a huge problem and even bigger is that dehydration can lead to colic....a life threatening and sometimes fatal problem where horses cannot move anything through their intestines and their intentines eventually die and thus so does the horse. Water is the single most important aspect of the horse being able to move food though their system, it lubricates the organs and flushes all the toxins and food out.

Once per week I have to add new straw to the horse and llama shelters because the horses poop in their bedding and make a nasty mess. The llamas do not (Thank goodness) but they get a little more bedding on the cold days. This is not too bad, but the twine is impossible to get off sometimes and often when I am trying to spread out the straw a few of the horses come over and get in the way because they think I might be spreading out more hay.

Then there is the feeding of two certian horses and two certian llamas. The night before I feed I have to soak beetpulp pellets in hot water so that they become soft and palatable. Then I have to make sure I remember to bring it to the farm ! I make a mix of different grains and a concoction of supplements and mix it all together. Take it out to the barn yard and one at a time bring each animal out and feed it, so the other animals cannot fight over and steal the food. This is not too bad, just one more chore that needs to be taken care of out at the farm.

I know that this post sounds like I am complaining. But I am not, truly. I do it because I love my animals so much and want them to have to best care that I can provide. Which means lots of water and hay on these cold winter days. I decided to write about it because I heard some friends complaining about the snow and winter and realized that not too may people realize how much work is involved in maintaining a herd of horses and llamas throughout this cold season.

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But I have no regrets. Its true I do not enjoy winter as much as I used to and a big part of that would be that I have to spend so mcuh time outside in the snow. And yes I HATE winding and unwinding the hoses day after day and I wish there was a heated hose I could use (there are heated hoses and coils but becasue I have to run my hose through the snow these are not appropriate). But it is simply part of owning horses and I have a lot of fun with my horses. It is more fun in the summer and fall because among the chores we can do a lot of riding, but each season has its own set of chores that has to be done. Winter is just hard because its cold, wet and windy and there is more that has to be done. ie hay coupled with less that we can do ie. riding. The thing that I really focus on during those cold, windy and wet days when my boots are soggy and my fingers are ice is that winter leads into spring....and spring means little hooves racing around the fields and the foaling season begins :)

Snowy, Snowy, Snowy Day!

It was a very snowy day.....there was lots of snow and it was very windy. The horses stood out in the snow and got covered in the stuff! they looked kind of funny actually.

I did manage to get some very good scenery shots of everything blanketed in white. So pretty.

Buck and Cricket stood out with their bums to the wind and had a nap in the snow. They got very covered in it, but lucky them they have a fur coat....I was freezing! If you look very closely you can see a dark blob in the run-in shed....that is Phoenix....she decided to get in out of the wind and snow. It must have been pretty warm in there because the snow melted right off of her.

Pheeny going for a run in the snow. See even horses like to play in the snow!

Misty spent her time eating....snowy hay? who cares! She just kept munching away. Actually the digestion process keeps the horses very warm.

Jazz and Ace also spent time chowing on the hay. They were eating at the top bale feeder. These little boys are good little friends.

Kiwi and Ebony....the llamas who come from the Altiplano.....which is covered in snow...COLD SNOW.....spent all their time in their llama hut. I only saw Ebony come out once, other than that they hunkered down on their straw bedding. Silly llamas! This is their natural habitat! Me thinks Ebony and Kiwi have been too spoiled!

The Scary Horse Eating Snowman!!

BAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! This is my rendition of a snowman....more like a snow triangle :) Anyways, I thought it would be fun to build one for the horses with hay shoved in it for them to eat. It was fun to build, and so funny to watch them approach it. They were quite nervous of it when they first saw it. They thought it was a scary horse eating snowman!! By the time they saw it it was getting dark. I had to use my flash, which scared them even more.

Ace and Jass were the first ones to approach the snowman. They seemed to get over their fear of it much faster than the big guys. They began to eat the hay almost immediately.

Buck was next, I guess he figured that if they little boys could get near the intruder and not get eaten then he would go have a look himself. So he chased the little boys away and checked out the snowman.

But....Ace came back...the snowman is so tasty!

Phoenix decided that she too wanted to see what everyone was upto. So she came over to eat some of the snowman too. Yummy.

Buck and Phoenix spent a long time just standing by the snowman, not letting anyone else near it. Misty never bothered to come and check the snowman out, she is pretty standoffish, that one. Cricket was totally freaked out the "the monster in the field" that she did not come over but rather ran around it snorting and stamping her feet. I suppose with her poor eyesight, she could not really figure out what it was and it took much longer for her to get her nerves up to check it out.

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When I arrived the next day the snow triangle was shorter....someone knocked the top off and all the hay way eaten. It was fun to watch them though. Next time I am going to build a bigger one, and earlier in the day so I can get better pictures.