horse, kids, Uncategorized

Non-stop fun

2 Comments

It’s been 2 weeks since I posted.  It’s not that there hasn’t been anything going on, but rather, we have been so busy I’ve been too tired to sit down and write.

On May 16th, we had the CT State 4-H Horse Show.  6 kids from our club, the Barnyard Buddies, attended and had a great time.  Vicki managed to win the walk-trot division and the 18″ hunter division.  On the 17th, our club participated in PetTopia in Jewitt City.

wpid-20150516_085911.jpg

Monday, the 18th was Amanda’s fifth birthday.  We had a small family party Sunday evening before my parents (who had been in town for the previous 2 days), left with all 3 kids and our travel trailer Monday morning.  They took a trip to Steamtown, PA and had a great time.  I don’t have any pictures because I stayed home with Anna.

wpid-20150517_200049.jpg

A friend who knits made Amanda a “big pink stocking” in accordance with her repeated requests.

wpid-20150523_201043.jpg

Of course, while they were gone we got some good trail riding in on Dakota and Mysti.  We have found a nice 6 mile loop for conditioning the horses.  We also have a 4 mile loop and occasionally even ride in the arena.

This weekend, the weather was amazing.  Since I had both Friday and Monday off work, we did a family trail ride on Friday (6 mile loop) with everyone geared up for the first hunter pace which is 2 weeks away.  Never try something new on race day!  The plan this year is Vicki and Anna will ride in the slower division and Alex and I will ride in the middle division.  So, today, Alex and I went out and ratcheted up the speed.  Dakota and Mysti are an amazing team on the trails.  Dakota is a rock star in the lead!  Mysti has found her confidence and is very sure-footed.  She isn’t ready to be a leader, but we will work on that later in the summer.  We logged about 20 miles in the past 8 days, so her conditioning is progressing nicely!  When we got back today, Vicki hopped on to cool her off in the arena.

Sunday was Amanda’s “A Very Hungry Caterpillar” birthday party.

This afternoon, Anna and I worked on planting more in garden – this will be our biggest garden yet.  Anna also spent about 4 hours teaching lessons in the arena today.  After dinner tonight, Amanda insisted that we have a Memorial Day party, so Vicki and Amanda did an impromptu performance of dog tricks with Turbo and Mack.

Luckily, I go back to work in the morning so I can rest up for next weekend!

 

horse

Horse focus has returned

Leave a comment

Since the goats left the farm, we have had a number of people ask if we missed them.   The answer has been a unanimous “No”. While we still have rabbits and chickens and dogs, we have restored our horse focus.
Anna is teaching more lessons than ever (and I think actually enjoying it). We have taken 1 boarder, bringing our horse tally up to 7. The herd is doing great and we are enjoying our passion.

image

Even now, I am sitting in the yard with the waning light getting eaten by mosquitos, watching Anna ride Mystique. She was watching me ride while working with Amanda on Huey (her 4th hour in the arena today). As Amanda finished,  Anna took Mysti to do some training with her. Anna claims it is painful to watch me ride Mysti.
Anna is the trainer (at least under saddle) and the instructor. I’m just the farrier and labor.
But, together we are the heads of a horse focused family, and we love it.

horse

Back in the saddle and hitting the trails

Leave a comment

Now that the weather has improved, we are back in the saddle and riding regularly.  The kids are riding 5-6 times a week.  Considering last year my rides were measured more in “times per month”, the fact that I have ridden 4 times in the last week is a huge increase.

Last week, I took 2 days of leave.  On Thursday, all the kids were at activities, so Anna and I hit the trails with Dakota and Mysti.  I was our first longer ride of the season and we went a little over 6 miles in just under 2 hours.  We definitely were not pushing the pace too hard, because we were testing out a number of new items along the way.

Anna decided she wanted a Garmin GPS watch for tracking her mileage on the trails.  We also decided to buy 2 horse heart rate monitors that interface with our Garmin watches.  It isn’t a big concern, but more of a neat thing to have and see how the horses are doing from a conditioning perspective.  Since my goal with Mysti is to ride some limited distance endurance with her, it will be a nice accessory for training.

We did get plenty of water and Mysti is fine with it now.  The horses both did well, although, I’m not knocked out with the fit of my English saddle on Mysti. I have an Endurance saddle on loan that was used on a 4 mile ride this evening for the first time.  While that fit her much better, I’m not sure I like how it fit me.

Overall, we are off to a good start and will be ready for our first hunter pace in early June.

health, Trimming Blog

Lyme in people and horses

1 Comment

As we are all aware, Lyme disease is a way too common in our area.  Some friends who live farther away may not realize the disease is actually named for Lyme, CT, where the disease was first diagnosed in 1982 (about 25 miles from our house.  In fact, the disease was diagnosed at Subase New London (according to a display I saw on base).  While some still believe Lyme is a temporary illness that is gone after a simple round of antibiotics, I am not one of them.  I truly believe based on my experience and observation that Lyme, while occasionally short-lived, is frequently a life long problem once contracted.  I want to share a few quick things just in case it might help someone dealing with Lyme.  I’m not a doctor and I’m not a vet.  These are just my thoughts and experience, so take it or leave it.

First, even if you had a negative Lyme test or never saw a bullseye rash, that doesn’t mean you are not dealing with Lyme.  The estimates vary dramatically, but there is general agreement that the Lyme tests are not perfect and false negatives are not uncommon.    In our family, Anna has had Lyme for years, Amanda was born with it (possibly got it in-utero from Anna), and I now believe many of the symptoms I thought were related to my concussion in 2013 (migraines and memory problems in particular) were actually Lyme related, even though I tested negative for all tick-born diseases.
Symptoms that might be an indicator you are dealing with undiagnosed Lyme in your horse:
unexplained, and inconsistent lameness
lethargy
stiffness resembling arthritis
hypersensitivity to touch
Unexplained muscle loss, especially along the topline
general poor performance (more apparent as a reduction in performance in competitive horses)
For people, symptoms may include, but certainly not limited to:
bullseye rash
lack of energy
flu-like symptoms
persistent headaches
memory loss or degradation
swelling and joint pain (similar to arthritis)
numbness of hands and feet
I listen to podcasts from The Horse Radio Network and the founder, Glenn, shared his story about Lyme a couple of years ago.  That got me to start noticing a lot more about Lyme.  Recently, they did a revisit to the topic.  If you are still interested in what I have written so far, I HIGHLY recommend you take the time to listen to this single podcast.
There are some alternative treatments that don’t require large doses of antibiotics, which is sort of the point of this post.
Dr. Tobin is a holistic vet that has done some extensive research on Lyme, and specifically has identified Ledum as a treatment that is effective in animals and humans.  Now, I will say this is not something we have used yet on our own farm, however, I have a friend who used it on her horses that had chronic Lyme, and had been through multiple rounds of Doxycycline without success.  She tried Ledum and saw a dramatic improvement in her horse in under 48 hours.  Here is a link to the article from Dr. Tobin and more information about Ledum.  Check our the entire website for some interesting alternative views to traditional medicine.
For people, we were turned on to Silver Biotics by a friend.  We have used Silver Biotics, purchased via Amazon and noticed subtle results.  The Silver Biotics aid your immune system by killing the spirochetes of Lyme.  It’s not ucommon to feel a little worse initially as the spirochetes die off.  The changes were actually more apparent when the Silver Biotics were stopped. For me, I had some chiropractic adjustments to my neck at the same time I was taking the Silver Biotics.  My migraines ended and my memory challenges faded away.  However, after not taking the Silver Biotics for almost 2 months, the memory lapses returned.  For Anna, the joint pain and stiffness seemed to lessen when taking the Silver Biotics, but returned when she stopped.  Now, this is far from definitive evidence, but the silver is not very expensive (the dose is only 1tsp 1-3 times a day, and we just take 1 dose at breakfast) and has been helpful to both of us. Care needs to be taken not to overdose on silver as it can turn your skin permanently blue. It is also toxic in large quantities.
There are many other alternative treatments for Lyme disease.  It’s not about the right answer, but rather what works for you.  I encourage everyone to keep an open mind and be willing to learn.  If you have other treatments that have worked, please leave a comment below!
horse

Mystique aka Sophie

Leave a comment

Today we got a pleasant surprise of contact from Sophie’s breeder.  As I mentioned before, I wasn’t knocked out with the name Sophie and had wanted to change it.  So far, nothing struck my fancy.  However, we have now learned her original name was Mystique.  Anna and I agree we like it, so Mystique will be her new name, with a likely barn name of Mysti.

Over the past 2.5 weeks, Mystique has been settling in on the farm.  She and King do not get along (which is par for King’s record with mares).  Huey isolates her from the others when she is in heat (again, as expected) and the other boys follow her around.  She is definitely a dominant mare which is good in our herd.

We did a couple of lunging sessions and it was clear she understood and had experience on the lunge line.

Yesterday evening I rode Mystique for the first time.  I was very pleasantly surprised at what she knew.  I set my expectations low since we got her without a test ride.  She was much more finished than I expected.  She was very light with my leg and a good balance of forward, without being too rushed.  Her canter transition in particular was better than I expected.  Anna is a much better rider than I am, and will work on her balance.  I will be focused on building her confidence on the trails.  Now that we have contact with her original breeder and know a little more about her previous training, it makes sense.  She definitely has some confidence issues that we will work on.

Overall, I am pleased with how she has settled in on the farm and look forward to our summer.

 

goats

Goat Sales

Leave a comment

We have made the decision to sell our herd of Lamanchas and focus only on the horses on our farm.  We are not happy dividing our time and have been skirting this decision for a while.  Our entire herd is for sale, along with all our goat specific supplies.  The first half of the herd was sold today.

It is a bittersweet end to our goat farming. We have enjoyed our animals and learned a lot about husbandry and farming in general.  Our experience will encourage us to support other farms.  However, we are ready to move on and enjoy our horses.

goats, horse

It’s been a busy week on the farm

2 Comments

Let’s start with the biggest news from today.  Anna and I had talked for a while about what our criteria should be for the next horse we add to the farm.  Here is what we came up with:

1. Not a thoroughbred.

2. Gelding.

3. Already trained and able to be used in Anna’s lesson program.

4. Young enough to have some go and be fun for Rob on the trails.

So, today we brought home a 15hh, 9yo Arabian mare (Shagya bloodlines) that is still pretty green.  But in our defense, Anna has wanted an Arab (but prefers geldings) and I am interested in limited distance endurance riding.

Introducing Sophie (pending a name change!)  Sophie will be a training project for this year.  Anna will focus on her dressage foundation and Rob will focus on her trail and ground work.  We plan to divide up the work on Dakota in a similar fashion.  The bottom line is, horses will continue to be our main focus.

Backing up a few days, on Tuesday, Sawyer Farm’s Onyx kidded and gave us a cute little buckling named Sawyer Farm’s Smores.  Smores is being raised as a bottle baby and will hopefully find a home for use in breeding.

On Friday, we got another round of snow (about 3″ at our house) and triplets, 2 does and buck, from Longvu Bx Tangueray Texter (Tang).  Sawyer Farm’s Three Musketeers was the buck and the larger doe, Sawyer Farm’s Kit Kat is already reserved and will be leaving next week.  Sawyer Farm’s Twix was the runt at 4.6 lbs and will be raised by Vicki.

We only bred 1 other doe this year, but it appears she didn’t actually get pregnant, so we think that wraps up our kidding season.  Final tally – 4 does and 2 bucks.  Now as soon as the snow finishes melting, we can saddle up the horses!

goats

Bottle Baby Video

1 Comment

Today at work, a friend said I should add some video of the goat kids to our site.  This year we are doing things a little different with the goat kids: we are planning to raise them all as bottle babies.  We have chosen to do this because we have always found the bottle baby kids to be so much easier to handle and more docile as they grow up.  So, Sawyer Farm’s Milky Way and Sawyer Farm’s Caramel who were born on Monday, are living in a dog crate in the office.  It’s not that they couldn’t live in the barn, but rather, Anna likes the convenience of not going out to the barn in the middle of the night to give them bottles.

Of course, goats that live inside, get to wander around the house for exercise.  It has become a routine that they follow the people into the kitchen to get their bottles.  They love to run and hop around.  Unfortunately, all the antics were complete by the time I started the video and both kids were getting down to the business of drinking milk.

Watch the video on YouTube!

goats

Saffron kicks off kidding season 2015

Leave a comment

Last night,  I had an unexplained allergic reaction that resulted in a short trip to the ER. As a result of being up until 2am and the meds making me so drowsy, I went to work for only a few minutes and then to see the Dr’s. I got some more meds and came home for rest. Around noon, Anna woke me and informed me West View Swan’s Saffron was kidding. I joined Anna and Vicki for the event in the kidding stall.
Saffron is a 4th freshener 5 year old who gave 11-12 lbs of milk a day last year.

image

This is an udder that has “popped” meaning looks like 14 hours since it has been milked and is stretched tight. Don’t milk her, just get your kidding  supplies by the back door, because it means you won’t be waiting long.  For Saffron,  imminent signs of kidding included lots of pawing,  grunting,  visible contractions for about 40 min, and then baby goats.

We are raising all the kids as bottle babies this year.  Since Anna doesn’t want to trek back and forth to the barn all day and night, they are in the office in a dog crate starting out.

goat2

 

Saffron gave us 2 doe kids: the dark one is Sawyer Farm’s Milky Way and the light one is Sawyer Farm’s Caramel.  It appears this year’s name theme will be candy.

goatHere is Vicki holding Milky Way.  She is very excited to have babies to bottle feed again.

kids, Uncategorized

Sewing Breyer blankets…

2 Comments

After Vicki finished her home work this morning she begged me to help her make some blankets for her Breyer model horses. So we used some left over fabric from the pillow case project and some bias tape and sew on velcro to make some fabulous blankets. Vicki did ALL the sewing. I helped with some of the pinning and taught her how to make a pattern. She’s really happy with the outcome.

image

image

image

image

image

image

The story of our lives with horses. And goats.