Strays and snow

 Driving to town the other day we noticed that the neighbour's cattle, a mile down the road, were all gathered at the fenceline, and that their pasture was about gone. The next day, sure enough, there was a jailbreak. We ended up with cows in our yard, 3 the first day, and a couple more the next day.  

We don't mind having them come graze, but I could do without the cow pies they leave behind!

We got our first snowfall last night, so far about 3 inches.  When I checked on the mares, I could see that Gussie Was Not Impressed.  She has the most expressive nostrils and stink eye of any horse ever!

I'm sure they think I should open the barn door for them, but they do have a large shelter complete with a round bale in it for them to eat if they don't want to venture out in the pasture where there is plenty of grazing still. (Only slightly spoiled!)

Since I am feeling a lot better, I am waiting for a bit nicer weather as I want to start riding again. Nothing too demanding, just a few putts around the pasture. I hope the nice days aren't all gone! 

Ho ho ho....hum

 Well....

 I figured a lovely warm sunny day would be perfect for taking Christmas photos of the horses. 

You know, 

Deck the ponies with poinsettias,

Fa la la la la la la la la.....

Beamer....Hey Beamer, wake up!

Whaaaaat?

Ok my eyes are open, happy now? Can I go back to sleep?

Oh Ruby, thanks for cooperating!

Can I go back to sleep now please?

Then there was Velvet....

She was on alert! 

Not putting that stuff on me!

Does it make me look cute? If so it can stay....

Hmmmm. How about the hat, Velvet?

Whassat? 

I guess it can stay as long as I can snooze....

But it tickles!

Went up to visit Shayla the other day and got in a few photos there too.

A nice Christmas one of Boe with a bow 😄

And who doesn't love a Christmas cow!

Shayla sent me this one of Gussie's filly, Evy, decked out in silver poinsettias that look like snowflakes in her mane. She's the sweetest filly!

In other news - Shayla bought a new stallion prospect. A coming 2 yr old red dun with some nice old school breeding. 

https://www.allbreedpedigree.com/majors+pistol

Love those ears! They are like Beamer's ears

He's a big bodied colt, reining bred; his sire was a successful show horse and his dam comes from a strong line of cutting horses. He should cross well on all the mares.

Barn name Shooter

 

Gussie gets to work (cows!)

Cows, that is. And a bull.
We woke up to a bull and some cows and calves in the yard.

A guy down the road from us had trees blow down across his fence in a storm yesterday, and of course the cattle went walkabout. They headed away from our place, but later turned around and came back. Now, we have neighbours just across the fence from us who have cattle too, and this bull just had to visit with them. He got separated from his cows, they stayed down the end of the road while he and that tan calf  turned back to visit the other cows. Of course, right through our yard again. I grabbed my longe whip and got them headed back towards their own farm, but there was no way that bull was going to line out for home when there were girls to visit with. And the owner only had a quad to move them with and I could see he was getting frustrated.

Visiting with the neighbour's bull, not a good idea!

So I offered to go get Gussie and help. We went back and got "his" cows and got them lined out for home.

That's our driveway, managed to line them out at a good enough clip they didn't turn in there. Once we got close to where the bulls were having their discussion about whose cows were whose, we managed to get them past that spot and continue down the road to their own farm, and I headed down to get the bull while the cow's owner kept trailing the cows.
He was in deep bush and I couldn't get around him so I had to take a wide trail down to the dyke and up through the bush- Gussie is just the best bush horse, goes wherever I point her-  and managed to come out on the side of the bull that allowed me to push him where I could get him turned towards home. He had one last conversation with the black bull but a lot of hollering and pressure from Gussie convinced him to get moving.

Of course, he wouldn't go down the road, instead had to go through yet another yard.....

which bordered the hayfield of the farm where he escaped from....

and he was reunited with his cows, which had been successfully trailed home. I locked the gate and gave my hard working horse a hug! She did great!  She worked up quite a sweat on this muggy humid day. But I'm glad this all took place in the morning; we were done by 11 am, because we had one more rockin' rollin' thunderstorm in the afternoon. I was cleaning the horse pens on a tractor and managed to get them done just before the skies opened up.

Riding day 23

A ride and a walk and- flowers!

Happy Spring Equinox! Another glorious day here.

A lovely sunset and I found some more flowers too!

Such cheerful little faces. I really need to plant daffodils this year.

Had a nice ride on Gussie yesterday, just ambling along through the brush, looking for different routes through the trees, listening to the riversong, and noticing how many fir trees toppled during that hellacious wind earlier in the month. Also enjoying the picturesque old stumps that are remnants of trees toppled long ago.

After riding I debated ponying Drifter but opted to take him for a walk instead. We didn't go far, but he got to do a couple of new things like walking over the bridge we have over our spring runoff channel.

He handled that well, I look forward to doing more obstacles with him. Should be fun! 

He also spotted the neighbour's cows....

and the cows spotted him; being curious critters they had to come check him out. This little black baldy was quite cute.

Yes that's Merle yapping

I could just see the wheels turning! The mares are always chasing him away, so for him to have something he can move is really going to make him happy.

Riding day 11

Making the best of it

This week I have spent my horse time trimming feet. I got Beamer done last week, and over the last week I got the girls done- 2 feet at a time. Fronts one day, backs the next. Josie had bar overgrown over the apex of her frog on both feet, so I really took my time with her. She is really good to trim. I did Clancy the last 2 days, her feet are a work in progress. When I got her she had contracted heels, and instead of a nice round hoof it is pinched at the heels and more of a pear shape. They are slowly spreading but I think it'll be another year before they are where they should be. The nice thing about her is that I can ride her barefoot and she doesn't get ouchy. She has nice strong feet.
Today, as I was trimming, the heifers in the next pen got the wind up, as the landlord was doing something in the next pen that involved a bunch of yelling.  I was underneath Clancy, trimming her hind feet, when she snorted- Josie was snorting and blowing so I watched for a bit. When the heifers came roaring up to the fence Josie ran right up to them (gonna be a good cowhorse someday). I grabbed my little camera for a video but it was a little late.

As you can see in the video, we are into the muddy season here. I can't get the tractor into the pens for cleanup until it dries out a bunch- this is the worst time of the year; mud season- and it's early this year.
Now that all the horse feet are done, I hope we get some good weather next week. I really want to haul to the local indoor and put some time in on Clancy.
I googled the meaning of her name yesterday just for fun- and I like it- it means "red warrior" . Pretty cool!
It was a good week for doing feet, pretty dull weather. This is what it has been like the last few days:

The locals

I'm hoping to get some riding time in this weekend- I'm feeling much better, but I thought I'd show a few of the other critters here.
Our bird feeder is usually commandeered by Goldfinches. One brave Redpoll managed to sneak in.

These birds have been challenging for the feed lately. I'm not sure what they are, they don't fit the description of any of the blackbirds around here and I don't think they are starlings. UPDATE My bird lady confirmed that they are juvenile red winged blackbirds.

This one looks to be the female counterpart.

Once the flocks are gone for the day, the Downy Woodpecker comes for some chow.

Of course, there is the owl- it makes me happy that it seems to have decided that it lives here. I'm hoping it will take over the ravens nest; the owl mating season is about to begin.

Then there are the cows; this curious critter is one of the heifers who are penned next to the mares.

We don't get a lot of wildlife here other than birds, with the exception of those travelling grizzly bears that Tess put the run on last year. I've never seen deer in the yard but I did see some elk tracks last summer before we had the round pen up- just after we laid the sand down, there were a perfect set of tracks where one had come through the yard.
But- these are the  most important creatures to me! And this one in particular!

Just stuff going on

It has sure been beautiful weather here this last week; sure can't complain waking up to mornings like this:

We had a wee visitor the other day. There is a dairy farm the next quarter over, and one of the little calves got loose from there and wandered over to visit my landlords calves. It was across the fence from them, which is hot wire, and they were concerned that it would break the fence and then all the other calves would get out, so we chased it into the pen with the mares. Who of course, thought they needed to boss it around...

 Poor li'l thing had been out all night and was thirsty.

I ended up having to lock up the mares who pestered her a little too much, then we loaded her in my stock trailer and hauled her back to the dairy farm. But not before Josie showed me some working cowhorse moves! Clancy wanted to work her too.

Today Josie had a lesson in ground driving; it went really well.

She sure is looking good. I will be hauling her and Shayla and me and Clancy to a Bruce Koch lesson on Sunday up at Janice's place, I've got some things I'd like to work on with Clancy, getting her to use her body more efficiently, which of course means that I have to improve what I am doing to help her and it will be good to see where he thinks I need to improve.

Smoke everywhere

Not about the horses- but this weather sure does affect them. This is what I woke up to this morning.

The thunderstorms we had during the night must have pushed the smoke filled air in - there are fires everywhere but up until today no smoke in the valley.

Clancy doesn't care as long as I fill up her feeder!
There is an old cow in the next pen, she is 12 years old this year and has been such a good producing cow for her owners that they didn't have the heart to ship her. For her swan song, she produced twins this year, nice healthy ones too. They keep her separate from the herd. Look at all the smoke in the air behind her.

Such a sweet old cow!

Ahhhhhhh.......

O glorious sunshine how I missed you! 

It had been waaaay too long since your warmth last kissed my cheek!

Beamer has been complaining of boredom lately so we saddled up and headed out into the cow pasture. This is a pen of heiferettes who will be bred for the first time this spring. I think there's a few late calves in with them.

My trusty sidekick wasn't about to be left behind, Tess is happily trucking along. Reminds me of the Christmas Carol "mark my footsteps good my page" from Good King Wenceslaus"

The field was our arena today, we loped circles, worked on sliding stops (fun in the snow!)

We practiced our two track......

And just had an absolutely lovely ride!
When I got back I turned the kidz out for a romp. I took Nitro out first.

He was happy to be able to light it up, their pen is a mix of mud, ice and poo right now.

He's a power house! But he kept looking for his buddies, so I added Kai and Josie in the mix.

 That was good for about 20 minutes of horseplay!

There was some red-headed attitude going on- I heard her give Kai double barrels when he was being too pesky.

Th' boyz were at their head games, rear up and bite each other.

I think Nitro won this round.

Yup, a totally wonderful sunny afternoon, perfect for that overdue horse fix I (and my horses) desperately needed!