New Arrivals
I had this one queued up to post later, but in honor of Phyllis's complimentary post on her blog: aardwolfnews.blogspot.com thought I throw it up today. And no - we did not compare notes before writing. All duplicated sentiments were developed independently, hee.
Phyllis' Mike came by this week to drop off their two horses to stay with us for awhile until their move is done. This whole thing about moving with livestock is a real juggling act. I know when the sellers of the ranch had to move - they had about 40 horses, 20 or so horse sized, and 20 or so miniatures. And 2 trailers. One that would hold 6 horses, and the other held like 4 or 6 minis. Since they were moving locally, they could take horses over in groups every few days as they got their barns set up to keep them.
Moving across states ain't that simple. Their horses have been boarded at another location for awhile now anyways, but with their horse trailer doing double duty as an alpaca trailer (perhaps that is really their alpaca trailer doing double duty as a horse trailer!) not to mention a load-up-with-moving-stuff trailer, it was bound to be putting the mileage on regardless.
Anyhow, it worked out to be advantageous to bring the horses down now and leave them with us.
Which leads us to the project Dave and I completed last weekend -- rearranging our horse pens from two to three. We had to buy more panels and gates, of course. Seems you can never have enough of those! It would have been great to have some helpers with us, but those scheduled to come out weeks ago got snowed out, and we just didn't get organized to ask the to come back this weekend. So we shoved, lifted, wrestled, dug, and dropped panels around until we had 3 working pens. Yea.
We might have quit sooner that night, leaving them in partially finished configuration, except that we were reminded by Jordan darn near pushing over an entire section of panels because he just HAD to lean in on them to sratch his haunches -- that horses are pretty rough on pens. Though come to think of it, they are nothing compared to our friend's bull who was staying at our neighbors last year to breed his herd. The day came to load him up to take home we just happened to amble by and stayed to watch the process. Man! They had a 30 foot diameter pen and backed the trailer right up to it. Then they methodically made the pen smaller pushing the bull towards the trailer. He really was in no mind to get in, however. And it was astonishing to see him turn around, duck his head and lean into the panels and just drag the entire pen around with him.
Anyways - back to the story at hand... all the time we were working, we were also trying to keep a couple of horses inside the enclosure. They are so funny - move a fence and they go bezerk like you are completely rearranging their world. And gates that are left hanging open? Why -- those MUST be for walking through! So Babmi and Jordan spent most of the time running back and forth between the three partially formed pens feeling so smug that they got through a gate uninvited. Harley and Shadow came up out of pasture at one point to get a drink of water. But to get to the water trough they had to walk by a line of panels laying on the ground. OH MY! What are those scary things??!! Goofballs.
So, we fashioned 3 decent sized pens on the top edge of the pasture where we can keep our 3 sub-groups of horses off of the pasture while we work on spraying and seeding this summer.
Only, now that Phyllis' horses have arrived we have 4 groups of horses. Heh. Tis the story of our lives -- always feeling one step behind.
Phyllis' Mike came by this week to drop off their two horses to stay with us for awhile until their move is done. This whole thing about moving with livestock is a real juggling act. I know when the sellers of the ranch had to move - they had about 40 horses, 20 or so horse sized, and 20 or so miniatures. And 2 trailers. One that would hold 6 horses, and the other held like 4 or 6 minis. Since they were moving locally, they could take horses over in groups every few days as they got their barns set up to keep them.
Moving across states ain't that simple. Their horses have been boarded at another location for awhile now anyways, but with their horse trailer doing double duty as an alpaca trailer (perhaps that is really their alpaca trailer doing double duty as a horse trailer!) not to mention a load-up-with-moving-stuff trailer, it was bound to be putting the mileage on regardless.
Anyhow, it worked out to be advantageous to bring the horses down now and leave them with us.
Which leads us to the project Dave and I completed last weekend -- rearranging our horse pens from two to three. We had to buy more panels and gates, of course. Seems you can never have enough of those! It would have been great to have some helpers with us, but those scheduled to come out weeks ago got snowed out, and we just didn't get organized to ask the to come back this weekend. So we shoved, lifted, wrestled, dug, and dropped panels around until we had 3 working pens. Yea.
We might have quit sooner that night, leaving them in partially finished configuration, except that we were reminded by Jordan darn near pushing over an entire section of panels because he just HAD to lean in on them to sratch his haunches -- that horses are pretty rough on pens. Though come to think of it, they are nothing compared to our friend's bull who was staying at our neighbors last year to breed his herd. The day came to load him up to take home we just happened to amble by and stayed to watch the process. Man! They had a 30 foot diameter pen and backed the trailer right up to it. Then they methodically made the pen smaller pushing the bull towards the trailer. He really was in no mind to get in, however. And it was astonishing to see him turn around, duck his head and lean into the panels and just drag the entire pen around with him.
Anyways - back to the story at hand... all the time we were working, we were also trying to keep a couple of horses inside the enclosure. They are so funny - move a fence and they go bezerk like you are completely rearranging their world. And gates that are left hanging open? Why -- those MUST be for walking through! So Babmi and Jordan spent most of the time running back and forth between the three partially formed pens feeling so smug that they got through a gate uninvited. Harley and Shadow came up out of pasture at one point to get a drink of water. But to get to the water trough they had to walk by a line of panels laying on the ground. OH MY! What are those scary things??!! Goofballs.
So, we fashioned 3 decent sized pens on the top edge of the pasture where we can keep our 3 sub-groups of horses off of the pasture while we work on spraying and seeding this summer.
Only, now that Phyllis' horses have arrived we have 4 groups of horses. Heh. Tis the story of our lives -- always feeling one step behind.
Labels: Ranch
posted by Monica at Sun Pony |
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