My journey through life on South Dakota Ranch
Here’s a pretty bay stud colt (which is a boy, for those of you who’re not equine savvy) by our stallion, WDX Banjobreeze Baby out of DX Silver Bueno Chic. The colt and mare are both owned by Zach’s son, Ty.
Here’s a pretty bay filly (which means girl) by our stallion, Poco Tivio Pep out of a pretty sorrel mare we call Gidget. Her real name is DX Toots Zee Pop
XO
A pretty paint mare and her dun filly:
Kelsey’s cute little dun colt:
The girls feeding a mare herd some oats:
Three noses:
Peek-a-boo:
Baby back:
Mama and daughter:
Kara and Coco (DX Silver Chic A Dee)
More Oats:
A baby antelope and prairie chicken:
Tall Grass (one of this cowgirl’s favorite things):
Peace on earth:
I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine:
All is right in the world:
On Wednesday, the girls and I (Kelsey, and our intern, Kara) checked on the mare herd. We’ve all but one baby on the ground now, and they’re all so cute! There’s so many of them though (12 so far with one mare left to colt), and so many amazing pictures that I think I’ll have to break them into separate posts!
We’ll start with some photos I took of Kelsey and her mare, DX Frosty Sue. Both girls, Kelsey and her mare, that is, are pretty, and very photogenic! And of course, so’s Frostine’s baby! Her palomino stud colt, is by our stallion, Poco Tivo Pep (click on the link to see photos and his pedigree if you’re interested).
Enjoy!
Happy Friday!
XO
There are people who have raised horses their whole lives who have never seen a foal born. Mares are typically quite private about it. And births rarely occur during the day. They are more likely to occur between midnight and 5am. When a mare goes into labor the whole process, if nothing is wrong, should take no more than 45 minutes. Longer than that, and they’re having trouble for sure.
When we came upon this mare herd, we caught Jazz right as her water broke. We watched her, and photographed her from afar for about 10-15 minutes. Everyone was very excited as it was the first birth that Zach, Kelsey and Ty got to see.
She laid down.
And then got up and down again and again, and rolled around. Myself, having witnessed the birth of one of my own colts two years ago knew this was not a good sign. Although, we do believe that her rolling around was a way to help put the baby in a better position. However, this mare belongs to Zach’s Daughter, and she doesn’t have the best luck with her foals, or her horses for that matter.
Normally we don’t intervene, but we decided that in this case we should. This mare is a really gentle mare, and we figured if she’d let us help, we should. So we drove over closer to her. And tried to remain really really quiet.
Zach crept over to her so he could help. The foal’s elbow was stuck.
And, success! The first touch:
At this point Zach motioned us over. So long as we crept and were quiet. He was all wet and looking a bit disheveled.
The mare was quite comfortable with us being there, so Kelsey crept up to be the first to rub the colt!
Look at the smile on that girl’s face!
He is not altogether sure that this world is where he wants to be!
Now it’s time to get down to business and see if these legs will work.
Mama says, “c’mon baby, you can do it”!
This getting up stuff is really hard work!
Jazz thought she’d show her boy how it’s done.
And she gave him some encouragement!
Then Kelsey thought she’d see if she could help.
Oh these legs are wobbly!
Kelsey got a lot of his trials on video.
It was a great experience!
It was an absolutely gorgeous evening on Wednesday when we went to check on our mare herd.
The mares have split into two bunches. We knew we’d find some babies eventually. As you can see from the above photos there were no babies to be seen with this bunch! There were however some really fat, and very uncomfortable looking mamas!
What we didn’t know, while on this little outing, was that we’d manage to catch a mare in the act of having a foal! Of course, it wasn’t just any mare- it was one of Kelsey’s girls! We caught her right as her water broke! More on that later, though. You’ll have to wait, ahem, because there are very nearly 300+ photos of the event! I need to sort through them all! It was the first equine birth for Zach, and his kids, Ty and Kelsey to witness! It’s just such an amazing thing!
But in the meantime, here are some photos of the other babies we have on the ground…
Grade mare with a red dun foal by WDX Nukem.
A red dun filly by WDX Nukem out of DX Mystic Chic. This is a first foal for this mare.
Here’s another red dun filly. Her mama is a palomino mare named Raffia Sioux, and this filly’s daddy is WDX Nukem. For those of you that are interested, I believe I’ll do a post on horse colors in the coming weeks. So stay tuned!
This mare always has big babies- so big in fact that they look “over” at the knee for a few weeks. Her filly was very friendly. She came up and smelled me and let me rub her velvety, soft nose.
I will do my very best to get the photos and the story up of the birth we were fortunate enough to witness. I must say it was probably Divine Intervention on so many levels.
In the meantime, everyone have a happy Friday. I know we will!
XO
Hope's pretty filly!
It has been rainy and dreary here on the ranch the past couple of days- and according to the weatherman, the rain isn’t going anywhere. But rain doesn’t make me dreary- no way Jose! I spent the sunny part of the weekend planting flowers, mulching beds, and getting some spring cleaning done. I also got to go shopping and make a major purchase! More on that later. My chickens are still sitting on their eggs, but if they don’t hatch this week, they’re not going to hatch, so they’ll have to start over. Poor girls. But enough about all that! Here’s something y’all have been waiting 11 months to see- the first of our 2010 foal crop! She’s by our Stud WDX Nukem (Nukie) and out of Kelsey’s Mare, Hope.
She looks just like her mama!
This week’s Spin is all about what makes us happy. So I figured a photo tour through the things that make me a happy(er) person than I already am were in order.
Texas
My mare Nora and favorite stud, Tom
Nora’s Baby, Dolce
If this doesn’t make you smile, you’re broken.
Same with this one. Curious colts are great!
Zach. Pitter Pat. Pitter Pat. Goes. My. Heart.
Wide Open Spaces.
Gumpers. Even when he’s filthy.
Calves. Look close, there’s one in the background bawling too.
Chickens.
Manes. What’s not to love about a mane?
Running barrels of course!
My Shuttlebug and neice, Tatum.
Higgins the Papillon
My Cowboy. Riding into the sunset.
This spin brought to you, courtesy of Jen, the Keeper of Sprite.
Happy Friday folks!
Thursday night my computer melted down. It began making noises at me, and running slow. Did I mention that it was S.l.o.w. ??? Because it was. The fabulous man in my life checked it out and informed me that I had barely any free space on my hard-drive, so we began deleting some programs that didn’t get used, and were taking up a lot of space, except for that it didn’t work. It wasn’t until almost a full 24 hours later that we discovered that Windows Vista was running an indexing program that was indexing. Every. Single. File. We’d wondered for quite some time, why the CPU just ran and ran at full tilt and why it seemed like the fan never got a break. When he was finally able to get that ridiculous indexing shut off, the computer started running great! I am getting an early Christmas present in the form of an external hard-drive so that I can dump all my 200+ video files off of this machine. I might have a problem. I can’t hit delete. You never know if the video you took of a horse when you halter broke it will come in handy.
Last night I pulled every single cockle-burr out of my poor Higgins dog. They were matted and everywhere, such that you couldn’t even pet him without risk of getting stuck. It wasn’t so much pulling them out as it was cutting them out with scissors. He looks like a butchered Papillon now, because I had to cut so much hair out of him, but at least I was able to give him a bath. He smelled like he came out of a Toni & Guy salon when I was done with him! As much as I will miss Zach this winter, I am looking forward to getting him someplace where he can have regular groomings and his gorgeous hair can grow back. Not only does this lovely creation of mother nature affect my dog, but they are also in very nearly every horse’s forelock and their tails. I suppose they do serve a purpose, to help stop soil erosion but that is hard to swallow since they are just so annoying!
Due to the computer melt down I had to do some major reorganization of it, and found some video I had dumped out and never watched, so I am sure I’ll be sharing! In fact, I found a really cute one, from last year at this time, of me scratching Dolce. I think that in the next week, in addition to daily updates on my Thirty Days of Thanksgiving post, I may share some of the cool videos I re-discovered.
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We’ll be heading to Texas on Tuesday so we can spend Thanksgiving with my folks. I’m really excited about going, but not so excited about the drive. Oh well, at least I have my new BFF the Blackberry to keep me company on the way. I’d say that I could call my BFF in real life on the way down, and I can, but not while I’m in Nebraska. Nebraska hates cell phones. I’m pretty certain of it.
The weather is gorgeous today; Zach’s kids are here for the weekend, so there will fun had, no doubt about it. I think I’ll probably take advantage of the freshly worked up arena that Zach so graciously fluffed for me. Without me asking.
Life is so good.
Life has just been smooth sailing around here lately. I’ve spent everyday this week horseback in some form or fashion, because well, the weather has been lovely. I mean, other than yesterday’s wind, which did chase me in early, it’s been gorgeous- sunny, in the mid 40s to upper 50s. Like I said I am completely thankful for the fact that we have had a beautiful month of weather so far.
I have some video (and new photos of this year’s colts) that I’m going to upload today, but in the meantime, have a look at my baby, Sun Frosted Badger- aka Bam Bam. I just LOVE him. He’s sooooooo sweet!
I’m taking Jill’s suggestion and naming him Sun Frosted Badger. But I’m still gonna call him Bam Bam. I can’t help it. I picked it out, and I love it, and Zach loves it and it’s…just, stuck.
So without further ado-
