Spring Break 2012

We have been soooo busy lately!!  Can you tell?  Lack of posts would be your first clue!  Part of that is also due to the fact that my laptop no longer supports blogger......not sure what that is about, but that means I have to use one of the kid's school laptops!  And since they are usually doing schoolwork on them, I don't have many opportunities to blog.  But since it's Spring Break, look who's posting!!!  Yippee!!

A few changes in our animal world.  We got a new baby shorthorn bull.  He's soooo adorable and since he's not a jersey, he doesn't have those annoying jersey habits, like licking you to death or eating your clothing!  In fact, he only has one annoying habit: kicking.  He doesn't really mean to but if he's startled, his little leg shoots and and wa-bam!  He's as fast as lightning!!!

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 We bought him from Sabrina's boss.  She is a ranch hand for a local cattle rancher and he buys and sells calves.  More about that later!

Isaiah was welcoming our new bull to the family, just having a few words with him!

We also had to make a hard decision to sell our Belgian.  Turns out she was a learning experience.  Sigh, those are not my favorite kinds of experiences sometimes but, yes we all learned many valuable lessons.  Mostly, honest people are hard to come by sometimes....especially in the horse world!

Turns out, our Big Mama was not going to foal in the next month or two.....because she wasn't pregnant!  First lie by the previous owner.  And, she was not a friendly horse or "super sweet"!  In fact, she hated us and only tolerated any humans if they brought her food.....and lots of it!  We took her in the round pen a few times and she actually broke out and rearranged our round pen into a rectangle pen......we had a vet come out to see if he could give us some info on her health, etc.  Because many times if a horse is in pain, etc. they can be very crabby.  She just about mowed him over twice.  He was good and very patient but his recommendation to us was to sell her as quickly as we could.  She needed a lot of training and a lot of food, which = expensive!!!

We couldn't sell her fast enough!  And we were completely honest with the new owner.  He was a big, tough cowboy that had plenty of experience. He was going to train her and sell her for a nice profit!  Good riddance!!!!

When you have a pasture full of animals, you have to deal with all the different personalities out there!  Amazing how those can affect the other animals.  Take for example our little mini, Peaches.  She had Cherokee wrapped around her finger, er um, hoof.  They stuck together and it created kind of a hazard for our other little mini, Spring.  Cherokee was not very nice to her if Peaches was nearby. She also was a little stubborn.  She was coming around slowly but we decided that if she wasn't here, the other horses would all behave differently.  We decided that we would find her a new home.  Turns out it was a great idea!  We miss her but she went to a home where she will be worked and the dynamics in the field have improved! 

Well, I was going to type more but it's lunch time and when there are this many kiddos home, I have no choice but to listen to their pleas!  :)  More later!!