Posted By purdylady on February 14, 2012
Well, yesterday I found that Bossy had aborted her foal. He was three months too early. No real reason why this would have happened but a few days before this I saw her laying down a lot out in the pasture so I decided to put her in the round pen with Rain and Panda to keep an eye on her. I gave her some Probios paste to settle her stomach since she had what looked like the runs. She still layed down from time to time but didn’t seem to be in distress. Then yesterday I saw the foal laying on the ground off away from the mares and went to investigate. Nothing seemed grossly wrong with the foal. It was a tovero colt with really nice markings. Just born way too early to live outside the womb. So this is the last time I will breed any mares. Not only because of my heart break but because our lives have really gone a different way.
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Posted By purdylady on February 10, 2012
Laminitis is a disease of the horse; not just of the hoof. There is always an underlying reason why it happens and its up to us to figure out by process of elimination what that is. I’m going out in a limb to write that laminitis is 99%directly diet related. I would even go so far as to say that it happens probably more frequently to horses that have very consciencious owners…due to overfeeding sugars. Protein is not the problem. Its the sugar and the horse’s inability to metabolize it. What happens to a diabetic when he eats a piece of apple pie and doesn’t take any insulin. The body has an inflammatory response and every organ is at risk. It is similar in the horse, except they don’t have a pancreas and don’t secrete insulin. What goes in must be used or it becomes toxic in the hind gut. Next leeching into the blood stream, ultimately affecting the poor laminae of the hoof. Destroying the connection between hoof wall and coffin bone. Also a huge misunderstanding even among master Farriers is that the bone rotates. This is a complete fallacy. The hoof wall is no longer attached so it is pushed out and away from the bone due to forces from the ground.
What I have found works is to fix the diet first. Feeding rinsed beet pulp or a grass hay with NSC value of 10% or less like Timothy will reduce glucose levels. Next trim the hoof to where the peripheral wall is non-weight bearing. Lower the heels and rasp the toe back from the top without reducing its height. Trim this way every three weeks religiously and the new hoof will grow in about 8-1215-20 months. No shoes. No expensive medicines. Just time. Oh…and exercise.
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Posted By purdylady on January 30, 2012
Well its been a long time since I have updated my blog. With Facebook, I don’t really visit my blog as much. So I’ll just do a quick update and get everyone up to speed.
I still trim 100+ horses every month for clients. I keep very busy and trimmed more during this hot summer than I ever have. We didn’t get much riding in since it was extremely hot and we had 50+ days over 100 degrees in a row. Too hot for me and definitely too hot to ride. In fact it was so hot that we lost Trixie. She had a heat stroke on July 8th and we had to put her to sleep. It was 112 degrees that day. I am praying that this summer won’t be quite so hot.
I also think that Bossy is in foal. Scott said he felt movement the other day. I think she is also since she is very easy to walk up to and be around whereas before she really didn’t want to be around people much. She won’t be due until around the middle of May so we have a while. I plan on having an outdoor webcam since I was told by her previous owner that she doesn’t do well in a stall.
And we are riding Herfie now. Even Allison likes riding her. We have taken her on a half a dozen trail rides this past fall and now she is just pretty nice for anyone. She needs some refinement now so she is in a bit instead of the sidepull. She is just a eager and willing little horse.
Other than that not much going on…I’ll post some pictures up here soon…gotta run…horses to trim!
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Posted By purdylady on April 25, 2011
Panda had a colt on Saturday 4/23/11 at 2:30pm. We were celebrating Easter down at Scott’s parent’s house with his sister, brother in law and nephews. Earlier before we left I saw that Panda was dripping milk. I just had a feeling she would be foaling very soon. Scott said she would wait…so we went ahead with our plans.
Luckily I had been watching the webcam closely and also a viewer texted me saying “BABY NOW!” and we dashed to the truck and headed home as fast as the speed limit would allow us. Scotty didn’t even grab his shoes we left in such a hurry. I was driving and went straight to the barn and saw that the foal was out but that the sack was still partially on him. I went and removed it and then stood back. This foal was so strong that he jumped up and was standing within 20 minutes! Woohoo!
(more…)
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Posted By purdylady on April 22, 2011
Here is Bruiser…Panda’s foal from 2008. Hasn’t he grown so much? He’s a bay dun tobiano. We’ll start him under saddle real soon. (more…)
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Posted By purdylady on April 22, 2011
Well this is new territory. She didn’t do this before…Waxing…what’s that? She has white wax hanging about a 1/4″ off both teats as of noon today. So what does that mean? Well…we’ll just have to wait and see. I’m guess I foal is going to be born soon. 
Yippee!
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Posted By purdylady on April 22, 2011
Still waiting. 360 days. Man that’s a long time. I just pray everything is ok. Panda’s body is very ready but I guess we’re just waiting on the foal to say “all systems go.” All this next several days we’re expecting rain and thunderstorms. Surely she is going to foal soon.
One person suggested naming her Bunny if she was born on Easter. That name reminds me of Laura Ingalls black horse she rode on Little House on the Prairie. She rode it in a race and she couldn’t tell her Pa. That was one of my favorite episodes.
So Scott is supposed to call me if anything changes. I have my phone plugged into the charger in the wall in my bedroom so I won’t have a dead phone. I couple of times I’ve woken up and my phone is totally dead. How is anyone going to call me if my phone is off? So anyway…call me or text if anything strange is going on…like Panda laying down more than once in an hour. She may only lay down one time and then push a foal out. She hasn’t laid down in several days that we’ve seen. Surely her legs are getting a bit tired.
So I’m off to bed…its 1:45am Friday morning. The kids are home from school today and I have trims in the morning at 9am. Trims in the afternoon at 4pm and 5pm…
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Posted By purdylady on April 20, 2011
But I really really think tonight is the night for Panda. When I went to express some milk it shot out. Still a clear/white color but a little on the sweet side. And when I checked her vulva it is bright red and very swollen to where its sticking out.
I just pray that we have a uneventful textbook delivery and a healthy foal. Never before have I been worried like this but I’m still so shell shocked about Seneca’s foal that I’m just constantly thinking about what I need to do when the time comes for this foal. I’m ready and have my foaling supplies all right there in the barn. I have plenty of people who will let me know if I’m sleeping when she decides to finally foal.
My friend Cathy’s mare, GG, is very close to foaling also. She’s a little bitty mini mare who has had more than one foal before. She’s pretty darn cute. The link to watch that one is at http://www.marestare.com/fcam.php?alias=starlane
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Posted By purdylady on April 19, 2011
Just in the nick of time…I just about had a total melt down when I went out to see why the webcam wasn’t running and figured out that the computer’s power supply had given up. I couldn’t even get it to turn on. I’m assuming that is why it had kept freezing up the last several days. Just a very old Compaq computer that was on its last leg anyway. SO now it has a “new-to-it” power supply out of my Dell computer that doesn’t work anymore. (I think the mother board went out in it back a few months ago.) So I swapped out parts and voila! we’re back in business. I tried just putting the smaller 333mhz computer I’ve always used back out there but it just wasn’t cutting it at all. It was constantly dropping the internet connection and the MPEG-4 wasn’t working very well. I had to figure something out! I was to the point I was actually going to buy another computer from the surplus tomorrow just so I could get it working again. But I know Panda is close and of all nights for the webcam to be down…I don’t think this needs to be one of them!
I have seen Panda pawing a lot tonight and when I was out switching computers she was in a zone concentrating. Would be nice if she did foal tonight.
So all the links on my old and new websites are back to the Flash animation and everything works now. I only have the stall camera running during the night to save bandwidth and concentrate it on the one camera.
I’m hoping Panda will go soon. I’m very anxious about her foaling. My own confidence has really been shattered and I’m a little doubtful. I did see the foal moving today. I don’t think it has much room in there now but yes, I did see it moving. Her whole body shook as it moved. It must be really crammed in there.
Seneca is back out with the mare herd. She reunited with her sister, Bossy, and things are back to normal now. She did run around quite a bit at first and some of the more dominant mares did try to run her around but she settled in pretty quickly and no one got hurt.
And earlier tonight I went with Scott and the kids to go trim Abigale and her foal Sophie. Abigale is abscessing right now so its a bit painful for her on her front right hoof but with some soaking and some time she should be getting around pretty well by the next time I go back to trim her. She is badly foundered but is slowly healing. Her foal that was born back in late February has had a lot of problems since her birth. She was a bit premature and had a plasma transfusion and had to recover from pressure wounds on various parts of her body. She also has had some joint swelling due to her growth…one of her hocks got a bit swollen and now one of her front pasterns. The vet did pull some fluid off the joint to examine it but he didn’t find anything wrong. I trimmed her tonight again and it seemed to help her stand up a little straighter. She is such a cutie. I hope she continues to improve.
So if Panda is doing anything remotely strange don’t hesitate to give me or Scott a call. Scott is at work but he has his cell phone on him. Call me first of course but if I don’t happen to answer Scott won’t mind getting a call. Now that he is able to view the stream on his phone I’ve been able to sleep a while longer without getting up every couple of hours to check…its been nice. Two months of getting up every couple of hours makes me a very grouchy person! :p
My number is 316-209-4543 and Scott’s is 316-209-4544.
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Posted By purdylady on April 19, 2011
Barn computer stopped working… it won’t even turn on. (bad news…as in paper weight probably now) I’m scrambling to piece another older one together to get the webcam back up soon. :<
Switched out computers…back to the old one for now. No Flash streaming until I get another computer going. The old links will work and I’ve programmed them into my website for now for the MPEG-4 stream again. Sorry!
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