First of all, because it is officially spring! Although this morning it wasn't very spring-y with temps of -18 C . There was a herd of mule deer does munching near my bales this morning and I paused for a while to watch them- they sure are graceful jumpers as they hopped over the fence to go down across the still frozen river.
The day warmed up nicely though- all the way to plus 3 C- woohoo.... but it was nice enough to head out with the other thing that I am happy about- I finally got batteries for my Nikon with the telephoto lens! So of course it was time finally for some action shots of the mares.
They were pretty lazy in the warm sun, so I led them to the far end of their pasture, and turned them loose. Sure'nuff that woke them up and it was tails up and go time!
Power take off
Old pregnant mares can still give 'er!
Who you callin' old?
One toe balance
Didya get all that?
Deep snow is hard work! Yes we do still have 2 ft. of snow.
Powering through!
Nothing like a good roll!
Love how uphill this mare runs
She's gonna be fun to ride!
The mares are wintering really well. I did the math and all 3 horses are getting about 30 pounds of hay a day; a 1300 lb. round bale lasts me 15 days; I fork feed, not free choice. They are fed twice a day and usually have just a few scraps left between feedings. Beamer gets a half a scoop of oats so I can give him his 2 oz. of camelina oil, and Velvet gets a pint of senior feed with a pint of oats. Hopefully we will start getting some meltdown so that they can slowly get back to grazing; I do continue to feed hay for the first month of grazing so they aren't eating too much spring grass. It's a little different here than the last 14 years where they lived on a dry lot and had minimal pasture- here, it's all pasture so it will be a learning curve on managing them.
The saddle hunt is still on...
