by Cowgirl on March 29, 2012
It’s springtime, and babies are being born, and it makes me start wishing and hoping. No, we don’t have any expectant mares this year, but my folks out in Idaho have several mares that are bred to this Hancock bred blue roan stallion, Handmade Forever, for his first foal crop. They purchased the stud colt and two fillies from Keith Munn’s production sale two summers ago, and are really excited to see how this young stallion turns out. I’m looking forward to lots of baby pictures and celebrating spring as it should be.
I’ve been really busy the last three days. Four days ago we lost a calf. One of our herefords’ calves was stillborn, and it’s a real shame because the calf really would have been something—a purebred hereford bull calf. But for some reason or other, he didn’t make it through the birth process. So we went to the cattle auction to try to find a replacement calf to graft onto the cow since her milk was still good. I had seen my dad do this many times, and figured our chances were pretty decent, since this particular cow is Dorothy’s mother, and is very gentle and easy to handle.
When you’re just buying a horse, or beginning riding a new horse, it can be really hard to know what type of bit to use. There are two ends of the spectrum, where you don’t want to use a bit that is too severe and risk ruining a horse’s mouth, but you also don’t want to use a bit that the horse doesn’t respect at all and risk getting thrown or run away with. So choosing what bit to use for your horse is a very important decision, and I’ll share some tips that might be a help.
I have a horse story to share that my oldest sister Kandra has written, telling about her very first horse, Apache. If you’ve read very many of my own horse memories, you’ll remember that my sister is the one who influenced my siblings and I to love horses, and I wanted to know the details of how she came to own her first horse, because it happened when I was just a toddler, and I don’t remember it so well. I have always felt a strong gratefulness to the man who gave her the horse, as his generosity set off a wave of fondness for horses that encompassed my whole world, and changed all of our lives. It is Kandra’s favorite horse memory, and this is how her story goes….
One of my biggest complaints about spring is the mud in our barnyard. The mud wouldn’t bother me so much, but I have to wear my muck boots. And my muck boots wouldn’t be a problem if I didn’t hate how they feel…they feel yucky because my jeans bunch up inside them and actually wear blisters on the sides of my ankles as I’m walking and working around the farm. But I recently learned about a neat little cure-all for riding jean bunchiness. It’s called the BootStroot, and I’m giving away a BootStroot set right here on this blog post!
by Cowgirl on March 1, 2012
It’s calving season! Granted, we aren’t all done with winter yet, but we’ve had such a warm one it’s made us think spring a little early. The cows have been out on cornstalks the last couple of months, and now a few of them have calved, and it’s fun to drive by and watch the little babies trying to get their legs under them and navigate through the corn stubble. It’s just one of the first signs of promise that winter is going away and there are brighter days ahead.
