Interesting Sights

I was thinking today that there is rarely a dull day on the farm. Living with a farm full of large, accident prone creatures there is always someone walking around with a scrape or some sort of boo boo. Or they are doing something that makes me look twice, and I often have a few minutes of freaking out as well.

A couple of weeks ago I was in one of the fields and happened to look up into an adjoining field in time to see Wiz go down for a roll at the edge of a wooded area. Nothing at all unusual about seeing a horse roll. I almost always watch just because they always look so happy and care free. So I'm watching Wiz roll and he is having a great time, and then he flopped over onto the other side. Then trouble started. When he flopped over he flopped into/on a large, downed tree branch.

This really freaked poor Wiz out. He tried really hard to get back up but he needed to flop back to his other side to do that. However the tree branch was really making that hard. Wiz looked like a bug on its back with his legs flailing up in the air. He finally managed to flop back over again and get up, and he quietly resumed grazing. I walked out to check and make sure he was ok. He had several patches of missing hair in some interesting places but was otherwise fine. If I hadn't seen it happening I would be forever wondering what did happen to cause him to have all the scrapes in odd places.

A couple of days ago I was feeding dinner and as I was putting Boo's feedbag on noticed what appeared to be a hematoma on the left side of his jaw. He also had a small patch that I wouldn't even call a scrape, just some missing hair. It was kind of partly underneath his jaw. No sign of a puncture wound or anything. He wasn't sensitive, let me palpate everywhere with no reaction, I took his temperature which was normal and he ate happily. He did not have a nasal discharge or any unusual odor coming from his nostrils or mouth. Just a hematoma on his jaw and a small patch of missing hair underneath the jaw. We started him on antibiotics and anti-inflamatories. Jason is convinced that he got his head stuck in a tree or something and had to struggle some to get it out.

A few days ago I noticed a horse down in dead horse position in the pasture. I realized it was Spike. I've never seen Spike do this although his mom had told me he was a frequent napper. As I said to her I hurdled two fence lines and sprinted through the pasture like I was in training for the Olympics screaming Spike's name the whole time. Spike quickly got up from all the noise, gave me a look like "WTF is wrong with you lady, can't a horse take a nap around here?" and started grazing.

There is no telling what tomorrow will bring.

Elfin

Thomas

Apollo

Tony

Ivan

the group of deer that we see in the same pasture every evening at about 5pm; the horses don't even give them a second glace

Fuzzy, Murphy, Wiz and Dutch

Alex and B-Rad grooming each other

Justin and Boo grooming each other

Sebastian, Asterik, Faune, Winston and Romeo

Lightening and Teddy

Wiz playing in the water again

Missy, MyLight, Harmony and Cuffie

MyLight

More Deer Sightings and Pictures

Remember the deer I saw grazing and then participating in the runabout with the big boys? I saw them again on Friday afternoon. You see such interesting things as you are standing around filling up water troughs! I am assuming it is the same three deer that I saw last time. They were grazing proximate to the big boys again although they were not right in the group of horses like they were last time. I took a few pictures and a short video clip before I moved around too much and scared them off.

Other than seeing the deer again the last few days haven't offered up anything particularly noteworthy - which I must add is fine with me! Jason and I spent a good part of Saturday afternoon looking at land again. The search continues and we saw some possibilities this weekend. We've been looking for so long and had a few things fall through so it is pretty hard to get excited about anything at this point. Horse shopping was a lot easier and more fun! I hope everyone had a nice weekend.

Deer grazing and then running away from me

I guess I didn't realize they had such big ears. When I was looking at the pictures I took of them while writing this blog post my comment to Jason was they look like Mickey Mouse.

We had to mow the grass again because it was getting impossible to take any pictures of Cuffie again. His head is pretty much always down and grazing so you don't see much of him when the grass starts getting too tall!
Harmony and MyLight
Lily, Missy, Buffy, MyLight and Harmony (Cuffie was to the left of Lily, I couldn't fit them all in so he is pictured above!)

Trigger and Chance had a grooming session

Elfin; Elfin had his mane pulled a couple of days ago and it looks much better than when I took this picture early last week.

Trigger

L-R Dustin, Homer, Tony, Leo, Chance

Chance

Tony and Dustin; Baby's head is behind Tony