Another Crippled Horse

While I’m absolutely loving life up here, so far; not much good has happened this past week.

We lost those 3 mares, and 6 colts, and on the fourth we got a call from two neighbors that said we had a mare down by the river that was crippled. So we finished up the work at the ranch and hooked up the trailer to go get her and bring her closer to the house. She, you see, is pastured out by where I’m living, on the Missouri River.

Roughly, we had an idea where she was located as the callers had told us. We got there to find that it appeared she had a broken front leg. She was all drawn up and her baby was hungry. There was no milk being produced by her, as she was so dehydrated. We’d just seen her the night before because the stud, who’s exceptionally kind and friendly brings his merry band of mares up to the house every couple days. I figure it’s because he likes to have his head scratched!

Immediately I lost it, as this is one of the older mares and she’s exceptionally kind- I believe she’s 21 and she has a super nice colt at her side. Zach left me to go bring the trailer to her- as we’d scouted her out on the four wheeler. I was to get her baby ready to halter since we were certain she’d not be able to load up. He called a couple people to see if we could put her down. He found someone with a gun. And when he got back with the trailer, you’d not believe it, but that mare, loaded herself up, three legs and all, and we got George, her baby, loaded too. When we got them back to the ranch and got them unloaded, she sucked down a good 5 gallons of water straight away, and began munching on the feed we brought to her. We really need to have this mare alive for as long as possible as her baby is only 6 weeks old- nowhere near old enough to be weaned at this point and horses, unlike cows, are harder to bottle feed.

Yesterday we looked at her, and have since decided she’s dislocated her shoulder and all the muscles and tendons and ligaments associated with her shoulder. She’s spending a good deal of time laying down, but is not drawn up, is now producing milk again, and is getting around. There is nowhere in the leg that feels broken, and if you pick it up, you can put it back into place. So time will tell and we’ll see if we can get her healed. She’s on anti-inflammatories.

Wish us luck on getting her healed up.