The horses have found themselves in the unusual situation of having many things penciled in on their calendars lately. Many of them have had their teeth floated recently. I’m in the throes of spring body clipping and general spring grooming. We also had our second and final Vaccination Day of the spring on Friday. Yet again Jason and I used the electric tape method to trap contain against their will conveniently locate the horses at the front of their pastures by the gates. W

Yesterday was Vaccination Day, Part 1. We vaccinated all of the horses on the front half of the farm. We decided to make sure the day got off to the worst start possible by vaccinating Timbit first. Last year vaccinating Timbit was largely a non-event. I clicker trained him, first teaching him what the clicker meant, and then working with toothpicks to get him to accept needle pricks. We broke a couple of boxes worth of toothpicks but eventually, after a couple of weeks of de

The last couple of weeks have involved an almost non-stop stream of farriers, dentists and vets spending large chunks of time at the farm. It has felt like every day was a long marathon as we started very early (think 5am start time) and finished very late. Today was “only” a 12 hour day and it felt like we only worked a half day or something. However the good news about working an insane number of hours is you get a lot done. Yesterday we had our last visit with the equine d

Today was Part I of Vaccination Day. You will recall that last year we finally decided there was a better way to handle Vaccination Day. Instead of doing it all in one long marathon day we decided to break it up into two days. We do the four pastures on the front half the farm on one day and the three pastures on the back half of the farm on day two. The other thing we started doing last year was using step-in posts and electric tape to pen the horses up at the front of thei

I’m not sure if Jason and I are getting smarter or lazier or both, but we made some significant changes in how we approached vaccination day this year. For starters we decided to break vaccination day up into two days. We vaccinated the horses in the first four pastures yesterday. We will be vaccinating the horses in the last three pastures next week. This was not our only change to vaccination day. In addition to breaking up vaccination day into two days we also set up temp

Wednesday was vaccination day and we are happy to have that day done and over with. The day itself is never that bad, but of course there is always the possibility that it could be awful. We’ve explained before that the biggest issue on days like vaccination day is dealing with the runners. We always use the term runners to refer to the horses that decide to run away after they have evaluated a situation and decided they do not want to participate in whatever activity happens

Benign neglect is one of many terms that many people use to describe the decision to turn a horse out for a period of time in the hopes that the end result is soundness. Usually this decision is made only after exhaustive attempts have been made to return the horse to soundness. Usually some combination of the following has been done to unsuccessfully rehab a horse: stall rest, surgery of some type, joint injections, shockwave, PRP or IRAP, tildren, chiropractic care, therap

There aren’t very many days that we celebrate the end of when it comes to caring for our horses but I have to say that we’re both very glad to see the end of Vaccination Day. Truthfully, Vaccination Day is more a series of events than an event that takes place on a single day, but there is no doubt that the biggest event happened today and we are both thrilled to have this day behind us. When most of the horses live outside in a pasture and everybody has to be caught every ti

Jason and I are both recovering our voices and things are much louder around here again. It has been a busy couple of weeks so a couple of days of relative silence weren’t such a bad thing. I’ve mentioned before that we go through periods where we have no need to see our talk to our vet for weeks at a time. I remember fondly when we were in one of those periods this summer. Since he had not heard from us in quite awhile our vet called me to ask jokingly if we had by chance st

Jason and I took a short field trip with Norman and Winston to Winston having his mouth examined Silky and Thor grazing Faune and Winston #vet

Jason was telling me a couple of weeks ago about a conversation that he had with our vet. The vet said that given that the majority of our boarders are either elderly and/or retired due to soundness issues it is amazing how little they see us. Jason said the vet was really giving us a compliment and that he wrapped it up by saying that we were the perfect example of getting the basics right and therefore eliminating a lot of need for him (the vet). I cringed as Jason was re

We certainly had a busy last few days to say the least. Friday was a farrier day so lots of horses coming in and out of the barn. Then Saturday morning we had one resident who apparently was having a gassy day. It was what a lot of horsemen refer to as a “one banamine colic” but anything involving the dreaded C word is stressful no matter how easily it is resolved. Jason and I are still a bit on edge although everything appears to be completely fine and back to normal. It

We have been very busy this week. Yesterday was vaccination day. Administering the vaccines is the easy part (with one glaring exception), but the prep work takes awhile. We go around and put halters on all of the horses ahead of time to make it easier to catch everyone. We have a few “runners” here that hate to be caught so when they catch site of the halter odds are good that they might take flight! However once they have a halter on you can then walk up to them in th

It is hard to believe this is the last day of 2009. Overall it has been a great year and I would not complain if 2010 continued on in much the same way as 2009. The low points of 2009 were saying goodbye to Poco, Bridget and Trillion. Unfortunately when you live on a horse retirement farm you do get to experience the full circle of life on a regular basis, including the sad parts. There is so much fun and joy involved that it makes it worth it though. In 2009 we had the

Jason and I had an interesting weekend. Tennessee Equine Hospital is the veterinary clinic that we work with at Paradigm Farms, and we have a long running relationship with them. The clinic has an excellent staff including seven equine veterinarians and an equine surgeon, and there is always someone available 24/7/365. They have been building a huge new addition to their clinic over the past year and it was just completed a few weeks ago. This addition includes a new, ful

Today was kind of one of those days where it might have been better if I had just stayed in bed and pressed fast forward to tomorrow. The weather today was like we have had the last several days, overcast and looking like it could rain at any moment. It rains at some point every day (or night), sometimes just a brief shower and sometimes a downpour that lasts for awhile. The mud around the gates is simply charming (not) although the horses certainly seem to like it! Today

Jason and I are celebrating our wedding anniversary today. After a few years of marriage we both still like each other a lot so I think we’re on the right track! I wish he would pick up his dirty socks and he wishes I would shut up about it but all in all we don’t have too many complaints. We had a nice dinner at Stoney River Steakhouse. You might remember that we helped Jason’s friend out by letting him film a portion of his horse nutrition video at the farm. As a thank y

Poco is home! After six days in the clinic Poco came home on Thursday afternoon. He still isn’t back to 100% yet. Most of the time his breathing is very normal but his respiratory rate is still higher than it should be at times. He came home with six different medications and a chart to help us keep it all straight. Poco in his stall at the clinic; although he looks pathetic here he looked a lot more pathetic when he had his IV lines attached Poco especially hates having

Poco had a horspital visit #farmmanagement #mom #vet