Day One, on the Ranch

I have been really busy since I’ve been here and my routine is all jacked up, so the blogs might be sporadic for a while, until I’m settled in to a routine. Tuesday, July 2nd was my first day on the ranch.

Some background to begin: The ranch has four studs and the mares are currently turned out with the studs, each in different pastures. Last Thursday they had a terrible hail storm which ruined, (by shredding) a bunch of pastures. On July 1, we got a call from a neighbor that reported some dead horses along the river; It was Tom’s bunch– so we jumped in the pickup to see what had happened.

It was devastating. We lost 3 of the best producing broodmares and 6 colts. At first we thought we’d lost Tom too; but I spotted him a good mile away in a neighbor’s pasture along the bay. Best we can tell is that the storm blew them into the river and they tried to swim to somewhere else. There were tracks heading out to the point; and no returning tracks, so it’s likely that between the hail and the river they drowned. Made for a very crappy afternoon. I cried.

We headed back to the ranch and grabbed the four wheeler, because we wanted to see who was alive on the other side with Tom; we found him, and the sucker met us half way and practically put his head in the halter to let us catch him; Zach got on and rode him home, while I pushed the only grade mare left on the place and her baby behind them. It couldn’t have been the grade horse to die; it had to be the good, registered ones.

Made for a sad day; but it would have been way sadder had we lost the adorable Tom. He loves people and is such a nice horse to be around. I just only got to spend some time with him the first time at branding and he’s an amazing creature. Probably, from a personality standpoint, he’s one of my favorite horses on the place. And the other silver lining is, that even though we lost 6 foals, we still have some good mares that should be bred back to him for ’09 foals.