New Pasture, New Herd

Opening up new pastures around here used to be easy...when we were the only ones with horses. Not so anymore. There are six mares in the neighboring pasture, one baby, two geldings (I hope) and a stallion in a pen--it's chaos around here.

My mares are going crazy wanting to get to them. They have my old geldings working overtime with the discipline. Not that it's working, but they try. Tonight one of the mares broke an inner fence.

Ahhhhhh!!

So, we locked up the geldings, walked over to the fenceline in the East pasture and haltered the mares, led them home and locked them up, then let the geldings back out.

Does anyone have any suggestions? Should I keep the mares off of the fence line that runs alongside the other's pasture? There's about ten feet between the lines, but it's still too close. So, should I just keep them in the West pasture...maybe let the geldings only on the East side?

Does anyone else have these problems?

More Spring Surprises: A Neighborhood Cougar

You can call Spring cold, hot, windy, colorful, green--but you can never call Spring boring! No way!

Today it's high winds that blew the trampoline away and had me scrambling to get the horses off pasture and locked back safely in the barn.

Last night Cia had a little gas colic. I gave her a small dose of Banamine and let her be. She was standing and comfortable by then. Still, my heart always sinks when I see them get their gastric upsets. Scary. Today she was back to normal.

I'm glad I brought the horses in, looking out my window right now--with gusts up to 60 mph--I can see a green baloon stuck to the horse fence and several sacks blowing through. The horses are on high alert watching the green baloon especially.

Also, there's a cougar loose in the neighborhood. I hope it has moved on, but a couple of nights ago it was threatening the neighbor's foal.



We had a great weekend with the grandkids here at the ranch. My horse-crazy grandaughter and I braved the rain to ride horses in the arena. Her lips were a little blue from the cold, but she still wanted to ride. She wants to be on horseback as long as she can! And, she's becoming more independent each time. The arena gives her a nice large space to work on her skills.





All the horses still have their Spring silliness, but now that I know about the cougar--I have to wonder what part of it is from sensing danger. And, what do you do about a cougar? How do you protect your horses at night?