Happy belated Thanksgiving!

Nov 30, 2024

Happy Saturday friends!

Wynter is still doing great, yay!

Here's the story: When the ponies arrived a month ago, they had been eating a type of local hay called Coastal Bermuda. I had asked my trimmer about it, because he’s from North Carolina and has horses and he said it was a great hay. He also told me that some people said it caused impaction colic but he hadn’t had any issues in all the years he’s been feeding it.

Off to the internet I went. Looks like there were studies done and some said yes absolutely while others were saying those studies weren’t a big enough sampling and there were extenuating circumstances. I was also reading that feeding coastal in hay nets was the best. We already feed our hay in slow feed hay nets. The ponies had been eating it for years with no trouble. I thought I’d put a bit into their hay bags along with their normal amount of hay just to see if they’d even eat it. They loved it. I took two full weeks to transfer them over to the new hay so I didn’t cause a colic (haha).

Two weeks into everyone being on full coastal and all was well.

Then the weather changed and it was much colder overnight (for North Carolina anyway). That’s one of those funny things about horses, sometimes a sharp change in the weather can mess with their systems. Why? Because they don’t drink enough water—because it's cold and they don't need it to keep cool.

We came out that Thursday morning to do chores, put out everyone’s grain and Wynter didn’t eat. Wynter is always excited about his food. I stood there and looked at him and he plopped down on the ground.

Oh dear.

“Buddy…does your belly hurt?”

He looked me right in the eye and then turned his head and touched his belly. Twice. Just to make sure I understood. We found the stethoscope in the goat birthing bin and listened to his belly. Left side was gurgling but the right side was silent. Belly sounds are what we always want to hear as horse owners!

I always start with peppermint therapeutic grade essential oil along the spine. I’ve had a couple of times that it was enough to stop a very early colic. I called the vet and we gave him 13 cc’s of oral banamine, a pain killer. He came to stand right next to me and seemed to be presenting the owie side to me so I put my hands on him and did some energy work, pulling off the pain, seeing the energy flowing through his intestines. After about 10 minutes of that I suddenly heard, without the stethoscope, gurgling! YES! As soon as his belly made that sound, he uncocked his hip, stood straight up and walked over to his hay! YAY! It looked like we had nipped it in the bud.

But hindsight is 20/20 and the hay he was eating was that same coastal right?

I kept an eye on him and he seemed fine every time I went out to check.

But…no.

At 4pm when Linda brought the ponies back from their day of fun in her pasture, she and I noticed that he was laying in the back of the pasture. He was doing the typical colic thing, rolling, laying down, getting up, pacing, rolling some more. It was obvious he needed help. I called the vet and between the time I called at 4pm to when they arrived at 5pm, he went downhill fast. At one point after a painful roll, he went and stood next to Rayn’s grave...gulp. I had texted his California mom Katie and she called right about then. She asked to be put on speakerphone with him and talked to him for a bit and then she started her type of energy work on him. He immediately perked up when she started talking to him, Linda saw it too! He stopped standing next to Rayn’s grave and seemed to make a decision to not give up. As he walked himself around the pasture, I walked right next to him with the phone so he could hear Katie’s voice. Katie is a medical intuitive as well as an animal communicator so she was figuring things out as she went. She didn’t think he had a twist in his intestines but more of a block, so that was good. She also thought Wynter was holding a lot of grief of his own about Rayn but also holding some of my grief.

She put herself on mute when the vet got there and continued her work while the vet started her process. They sedated him, gave him a smooth muscle relaxer, did a rectal. Put a tube into his nose and down into his stomach and pumped in about a gallon of water mixed with some mineral oil. They had another colic to get to so they asked that we mix up some warm molasses water and see if Wynter would take that. He drank about half of it right away!

The vet came back out at 8pm and repeated the sedation (to get the tube into his nose), more water into his belly, more muscle relaxer, and more banamine. We left him in the coaching barn that night with just a tank of water and a 5 gallon bucket of molasses water to entice him to drink. He was obviously feeling better as he watched everyone around him eat and was annoyed that he wasn’t getting any!

Friday morning came and he had pooped! YAY! And had slurped up all the 5 gallons of molasses water! Ok! Things were looking good! Every three hours he was allowed to have half the normal amount of his grain turned into a soup. He was like a toddler, covered in grain soup!

Finally on Saturday morning he was allowed to have hay again, not the coastal of course He switched back to the timothy/orchard hay.

However. All the other horses will have to take two weeks to switch back to the original hay so the sudden change doesn’t cause THEM to colic. So, he can’t be with the herd for the majority of the day because everyone is eating differently and he can’t have any of the coastal.

So much fuss right now!

On Saturday when the ponies came back from Linda’s she helped me introduce them to the donkeys, one at a time. It was a complete non event. None of them cared much and if anyone got too close during food time, back feet would fly but not connect and that was it. Good! I’m so thrilled to have all four of the littles in together! That will make life much easier!

THE RANCH:

I can't say enough about my girl Tori:

There is a story about this photo below:

Thanksgiving morning I looked outside before we went to do chores and I found Cash in with Wynter. Wait...what in the world? I KNOW I left her on the other side of that fence! I walked out to the pasture and before I could go investigate Tori walked up to me. I asked her, "Did Cash go over the fence?"

Tori just gave me a simple, "YES."

Cash is 25! The fence was a little wobbly but Brad straightened it out again and reattached the clips to it and it's fine. Funny girl. She wanted her boyfriend! I asked Wynter later, "Did you call her over to you??" He said he had NOT. This one was all on her lol

Linda had family in town over the holiday so they joined her in coming to get the ponies each morning :-)

I've been getting the goats used to being with horses more, especially Wynter. His new home with Katie in California has goats and Katie often has the goats and horses working together with clients. Of course he is fine with it. Even let the babies eat from his hay bag with him:

Wynter is in the goat's normal pasture so his shelter is the old tobacco barn. Boy does he fill it up when he steps in! I'm 5'7" and he's towering over me:

THE MEMES:

And finally, my most favorite Thanksgiving meme of all time:

I need this shirt for Brad:

Brave to say and show himself in this world right now. Sending him safety and light:

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, one of my favorite book series growing up! This twist on it made me laugh out loud! "They were literally in the closet!" 😂 I had totally forgotten about the older sister Susan!