Not Starved Anymore

Some of you may remember my horrible experience last year with the trainer who starved my horses, and the follow-up post when I discovered how many other people had had similar horrible experiences with the same trainer.

This is a somewhat happier follow up.  As you may remember, Glory was a beautiful Warmblood filly (Art Deco daughter) who was born on my farm.  Here's what she looked like when I had her:

After she went to the trainer's farm she was severely starved.  Fortunately, my sister Donna of Siberia Farm was able to take Glory fairly quickly once I discovered what was going on at the trainer's farm.  This is what Glory looked like upon arriving at Donna's farm after being rescued from the trainer:

Now for the happier part of the story:  My sister recently sent me photos of how Glory looks now, after all these months of PROPER feed and care.  I still haven't forgiven the trainer for what she did, but at least this filly has a great life now!

New Foal at Siberia Farm

 Even though I don't have any horses of my own anymore, I still get lots of horse talk from my sister Donna (http://www.siberia-farm.com).

Today, her mare Serenity gave birth to this super cute and flashy Paint/Welsh cross colt.  He'll probably be large pony sized when he's grown.  His name is Captain Jack Sparrow, and he's definitely going to turn heads in the show ring someday, don't you think?

He'll be for sale when he's old enough to leave his mother, so contact Donna (siberiafarm@ainop.com) if you're interested! 

Storm Senter

Meet Storm Senter!   He's a 2-year old Oldenburg-cross gelding.  His sire is my (former) Oldenburg stallion, Senter Stage, and his dam is my beloved Spotted Draft mare, Charybdis, who now lives with my sister Donna.

Storm is being lightly started under saddle this spring, and is for sale.  Contact Donna Chase for more information.

He's going to be a BIG boy.  Tall with a lot of bone.

Like all of Senter's foals, Storm is kind and sweet natured.  Just a big teddy bear.

Here he is with his 3/4 brother, Senter Fielder ("Willy").  Willy will be standing at stud at Siberia Farm.

Equine Artist's Breyer Repaints Help Real Abused Horses

In addition to being an award-winning equine and wildlife artist, my sister Donna Chase is also a horse trainer and farmer.  She also happens to be one of the coolest people you could ever want to meet.

More than anything else in the world, Donna loves horses.  Even the problem horses, the abuse cases, the horses no one else can handle.  She understands them.  And they understand her right back.

Siberia Farm, Donna's small farm in northern Maine, has become home to a number of formerly neglected and mishandled horses.  Here, they find peace and trust again.

To raise funds to help support these special horses, Donna has turned her artistic talents toward a whole new genre:  Breyer Horse remakes.  Thousands of people collect Breyer horses, and the most valuable collector's items of all are the artist remakes, where a skilled equine artist reshapes, resculpts, and repaints the original shapes into a one-of-a-kind work of art.  These remakes sell for hundreds of dollars each, and go to become the pride of someone's collection.

Donna is taking the art form one step further.  She has just launched the first of her "RealHorse Remakes," a series of Breyer remakes depicting the actual, rehabilitated horses at Siberia Farm.  

First in the series is Piney, a chestnut Paint mare who was severely abused before coming to Siberia Farm.  You can read all about Piney's story, and see photos of the real, live horse here.

This beautiful work of art is at auction on Ebay until March 12, with a very low starting bid.  So act fast!  

All proceeds will help care for Piney and her other equine friends at Siberia Farm.

Trainer Who Starved My Horses Claims Another Victim

Remember when I posted back in June about the Trainer Who Starved My Horses?

Well, not long ago I was contacted by another horse owner who had almost the exact same experience with the very same trainer. One of her horses DIED, and another was severely malnourished.

Here's her story.

Now the trainer has moved to a whole new farm with a new website, with lots of pretty pictures to make everything look clean, happy, and professional. As if nothing was ever wrong. As if the suffering, starvation, and death of dozens of horses could just be erased by a change of location.

It makes me sick!!!

A New Home for Senter Stage

Congratulations to Heather Bolding of Noble Farms in Clinton, IN. She is the new owner of our beautiful Oldenburg stallion, Senter Stage.

As most of you know, I am going out of the horse business, and have spent the past couple of years selling off all of my horses. Senter was the last one to go, so our farm is now horse-free.

Senter left here yesterday to go to his new home. I know he's going to be happy there, and will be able to continue his training and be much more active on the show circuit.

He will also be standing at stud to outside mares again this season, so if you want to breed your mare to get one of Senter's wonderful foals, be sure to contact Heather for more information.

Goodbye Senter! We wish you a lifetime of success at your new home!

A Picture's Worth 1,000 Words

Some of you may recall that I had sent a few of my horses, including my fabulous stallion, Senter Stage, to a trainer. Because her farm was a few hours' drive away, I only had the chance to go there once every two or three months. Nevertheless, I was very happy with her work for nearly a year.

Over the winter, without my knowing it, things took a turn for the worse. Eventually I started hearing complaints from other horse people.

This is what I discovered.

This is my filly Torchsong BEFORE going to the trainer's:

This is what she looked like when she left:

This is my Art Deco daughter, Glory, BEFORE she went to the trainer's:

This is what she looked like when she left:

I don't think I need to say any more about why I pulled my valuable stallion off that farm as soon as I could.

Although Senter (fortunately!!!) was not in as poor condition as the two fillies above, he was still underweight. I've spent the past few weeks getting his weight back where it belongs.

Now, I need to start marketing him. He's the last of my horses I have to sell.

(The two fillies pictured above have gone to good homes, so don't worry, they're being well taken care of).

A Visit to See Senter

Yesterday we delivered a sheep down to North Carlina, and made time to stop by my horse trainer's farm on the way back to visit my stallion Senter Stage and my filly Torchsong who are in training there.

Torchsong was out in the huge pasture with the other horses, but she still came right over and followed us around the whole time we were out there. She does love her people!

I also got to see Maggie and Libby, a mare and a filly that I traded to the trainer in exchange for some of her training services. Libby was as sociable and friendly as ever, poking her nose into everything we were doing. And Maggie---always the excellent mom---was proud to show off her colt from this spring, Phoenix.


Both Libby and Phoenix are offspring of my stallion Senter, who is also there for training. I had not been down there to see Senter's progress in person since May, when he was first starting to be ridden. So it was great to see how much more relaxed and balanced he looked under saddle. He's doing really well, I think. He's very happy there, and he really loves to work!

The Great Un-Trade

Remember back in February when I was so heartbroken because I was trading my two favorite pregnant mares, Char and Scylla, to a farm in northern Wisconsin in exchange for some sheep? Well, the mares and their colts (by my stallion, Senter Stage) have now been relocated to my sister's farm in Maine.

After a few months, Char and Scylla's new owner decided that owning a pair of large draft mares was not for him after all. I had put a right of first refusal into my sales contract for them, so when he decided he didn't want them any more, I had to scramble around to figure out what to do. We re-negotiated another trade: some sheep and money going back to Wisconsin, and the two mares and their colts going to Donna's farm in Maine.

The mares Donna will keep for me, and use them and breed them however she likes. One of the colts will stay with Donna as a stud at least for a few years. The other colt will be for sale. It took a lot of planning, negotiating, and luck to get the whole deal to work out in the necessary time frame, but finally it's done, my girls and their colts are safe and happy, and I can breathe at least a little sigh of relief.

Here's what the mares and their colts look like now.

Charybdis ("Char"), Senter Fielder ("Willie"), and Storm Senter ("Storm"):


Scylla and Willie:


Willie:


Storm:

Horse Update

So, a lot has happened with the horses over the summer. Here's a summary:

Penny:

After trying to sell my filly Penny, and getting almost no inquiries on her for a year, all of a sudden, four different buyers wanted her all at the same time. It got a little confusing for a while, but finally I decided to sell her to a very nice woman from British Columbia. So Penny's first trailer ride was a LOOOOONNNGG one!

Libby:


Libby went to live with her new owner, my trainer. I traded Libby in exchange for future training on my two Art Deco fillies. I really wanted Libby to go to someone who would truly appreciate her quality, and I know the trainer will do that, as she already owns Libby's full brother from this year.

Torchsong:

At the same time that Libby left here, the trainer also took Torchsong to start her training. I put up some "for sale" ads for her, and after a dry spell in serious horse inquiries through most of September, suddenly I have a flurry of potential buyers interested in Torchsong. I've lowered her price to only $3,500 in hopes of selling her soon.

After all those horses leaving the farm, we only have the two Art Deco fillies left here. I thought that was going to be enough of a herd reduction. But unfortunately, finances are still way too tight, and we're just tired of the constant worrying, so we reluctantly decided that we're going to sell the last two fillies as well, and get out of breeding horses altogether. I spent a couple of days giving the girls baths and taking new photos, but I haven't had a chance to put "for sale" ads up yet. That'll be next on the agenda. Meanwhile, here's a peek at what the girls look like now:

Glory: (click here to see more photos and video)

Grace: (click here to see more photos and video)


Their attitudes have improved a lot over the summer. Now, although they are still spirited, they are also very friendly towards me. They are easy to catch now, and not nearly so spooky about things. So, even though I haven't had as much time as I would have liked to work with them regularly, they still have made a ton of progress.

They will be going to the trainer's soon as well, to get the training that we agreed on, and then they'll be sold. So soon I'll have no horses here on the farm at all. It will be weird, but it will make everything---finances, chores, farm upkeep, etc.---much easier when we can just concentrate all our efforts on the sheep side of the business.

Latest Batch of Good News

It's been a busy week. This time of year, July and August, are the hardest for the sheep because of the heat and the parasites, so it's always a time of worry for me. Plus our finances are getting very tight again, which is another source of worry.

But I've had several bits of good news lately, which I'm quite happy about:

1. On Sunday, the mare (Callista) that I sent to my trainer was sold. Hurray! So that's one fewer horse I have to worry about and a few thousand dollars coming in to help pay bills. Now I only have 2 more horses left on my sales list, and I have 3 different buyers interested in one of those.

2. Both of the clients I'm designing web sites for have needed work done right away, and both of them had added complications come up suddenly that created more work for me. But I have had more time available lately to actually WORK on the two sites, so I've been making rapid progress, which feels good.

3. My stallion has now made enough progress in his training that he is being ridden by a 14 year old girl. This speaks volumes about what a wonderful temperament he has!

He also just had his wolf teeth pulled, which will make him more comfortable wearing the bridle. And all of his mares have recently tested "in foal" except one, whom he will be rebreeding this week. Between a busy training schedule and a busy breeding schedule, he has had a lot going on in his life this summer, which is great for him. He loves both his jobs!

4. Although this time of year always brings challenges with the sheep's parasite loads and heat stress, in looking back over my worming records I discovered that one of the ram lambs I'm keeping (Umber) has shown extremely good parasite resistance, with near-perfect FAMACHA scores and ZERO worming.

Since he is also our largest lamb of the year and is a cross between my best fleece ewe and my best meat ram, the fact that he is so parasite resistant as well makes him incredibly valuable to my future breeding program. Especially since he is unrelated to Nicholai, who is my other extremely parasite-resistant ram.

Between these two, the new ram I'm getting this summer (who I know to be highly parasite resistant), and the possibility of another new-ram purchase next year that I have already lined up, I should be able to start making some excellent progress on my goal of breeding for parasite resistance without sacrificing meat conformation.

In another few generations, perhaps July and August won't be a time to worry about the sheep at all anymore!

Weaning the Lambs

After my fun weekend with my gal-pals was over, it was time to worm and vaccinate all the sheep, and to wean the lambs. With the help of Ken and our improved catch-pen setup, this went relatively smoothly.

With all the supplemental food we've been giving the sheep over the past month, most of them have shot from "a little too thin" right past "good condition" and have headed straight on to "verging on tubby."

So it will be a good thing for the ewes to have their babies weaned, so we can take them off all that extra feed and let them gradually come back to their ideal weights. And the rams, who are doing no work at all this time of year, definitely don't need any more extra feed. They already waddle when they walk!

Normally, I don't wean my lambs. I just let them self-wean when they are ready. The process is pretty much complete by the time I separate the rams from the ewes in early September. But this year, most of my sheep buyers are ready to take their animals in July, a full 2 months earlier than usual, which is great for me---I get the money sooner and have fewer animals to feed for the rest of the summer. So that means, all the babies have to be weaned now.

The whole flock got checked, and we wormed those who needed it. And everybody got their annual CD&T shot. Most shepherds give the pregnant ewes this shot a few weeks before lambing to ensure maximum resistance gets passed to the lambs in the colostrum. But so far I prefer to do all the vaccines---lambs and moms---at the same time.

Up until this year, my flock was small enough that if I vaccinated the lambs and ewes separately, I'd be wasting most of a bottle of vaccine each time. This year, the flock is large enough that this isn't the case, so I may switch to the more conventional vaccine schedule in the future.

The babies will all get their booster vaccine---along with their ear tattoos for the registry and their ear tags for the Scrapie program---in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, they have to get used to being without Mom.

The first night they were apart, both moms and babies cried all night long (I should know, my bedroom window faces the sheep paddocks). Not only were they upset to be separated, but two thunderstorms rolled through that night, a mild one at dusk, and a rip-roaring one at 2:00 a.m. that included lots of VERY bright, scary lightning and about 1/2 hour of hail.

Now that a few days have passed, the lambs and moms are starting to get the hang of the new routine. The lambs can go off and graze in their pasture and the moms can go off and graze in theirs. They can still come together and visit each other through the paddock fence if they want to, but no nursing anymore.

The one possible problem from weaning time was that one of the lambs managed to squeeze through the other paddock gate into Glory's paddock, where we only noticed when Glory started running around trying to trample him. We rushed over there and got him out, but apparently Glory had managed to knock him in the head with one of her hooves, as he was bleeding around one of his horns.

The horn didn't seem to be knocked loose, and the blood quickly dried. The lamb is subdued today, so I'm keeping my eye on him, but here's hoping all he has is a (very understandable) headache.

Naughty Glory!

And speaking of naughty horses, over in the other paddock, Grace decided she was going to disassemble part of the barn. Her run-in shed is actually a bay in the barn with a wide opening and a small section of wall blocking part of the opening.

One of our previous horses already kicked that small section of wall and jarred it loose, and Ken had not yet figured out a sturdy enough way to repair it. Only recently he had said that since it was not a supporting wall, maybe it would be easier just to tear that section out rather than trying to repair it in a way that would be horse proof.

So Grace took him at his word. I heard a terrible creaking/scraping sound out there, and when I went to investigate, there was Grace deliberately rubbing and pushing against that little section of wall until the post was off its support and all the boards were starting to come loose.

Fortunately, she didn't hurt herself, and it only took Ken a few minutes to finish the disassembling that she had started. Now the whole front of the bay is open. Let's hope Grace doesn't find something else more important to break now!

I'm Still Here

I want to thank everybody who has been inquiring about where I've been and what's happened to all my blog posts. I'm still here, just very busy around the farm lately.

Besides the usual daily farm chores, I'm still trying to sell the last few sales horses before they eat us out of house and home. Many of the sheep on my sheep sales list are already spoken for, but I've been trying to get the others sold as well.

I've been trying to fit in a little spare time to put a little training on the two Art Deco fillies I'm keeping, and I gotta say, they are not easy! They are so hair-trigger, they take about 50 times as many repetitions of a lesson before they settle into it as my other horses have. For example, I was thrilled yesterday that when Grace managed to scrape her halter off in the paddock, she let me put it back on her without making very much of a fuss. This is only the second time I've been able to do that without investing a serious amount of time on the lesson. So at least she's making progress!

Glory is also making progress. I've been doing mostly desensitizing training on her, because she's so suspicious and spooky. The first time I waved a flapping raincoat (one of my usual desensitizing tools) in her paddock, it took more than 3 hours before she would settle down and reluctantly let me bring it near her. Now, she'll still spook at first, but then she remembers she's supposed to stand still, and she'll let me flop it against her (although her skin still flinches every time).

We had a professional shearer come and shear the sheep, which is a first for us. Usually we struggle along and try to do it ourselves, but it kills my back and takes a really long time. The professional shearer did an excellent job, and finished the whole flock in just a few hours.

The sheep have mostly been doing pretty well. The summer is always the most difficult time for them, because of the heat and the parasites. Once they were sheared, I could see that a lot of them were thinner than I would like them to be. Our pastures are not very good, so we've been supplementing the sheep's protein levels with protein blocks and hefty doses of pelleted sheep feed every day.

At this point, the bossier sheep (the rams and the larger, older ewes) are starting to get fat. I'm just waiting for my vaccine order to arrive so that I can do the annual shots for the flock, then after that, I'll be weaning the lambs.

I don't normally wean my lambs, I usually let them self wean. But this year, a lot of my buyers are ready to take their new sheep as early as July, so the babies will need to be weaned first. This will be good anyhow, since once I separate the lambs from the fat, bossy sheep, I'll be able to cut down on the feed for the adults, while still continuing to give the youngsters lots of nutrient-rich food to keep them growing well even through the hottest part of the summer, which will soon be upon us.

It's been helping a lot so far, I think. There are still a few lambs who are on the smallish side, comparatively---mostly the twins by the smaller, first-time moms---but the majority are much larger than usual. I've had occasion to pick a few of them up, and there are several that are well over 50 lbs. now, at only 2.5 months old. Compare this to a group of sheep I bought a few years ago, where the smallest was only 35 lbs. in September!

Since breeding season is still 4 months away, these lambs have tons of time left to keep growing before that. The larger and more mature the lambs are at the time, the more likely they are to have a good first breeding season. So, things are looking good so far.

I'm trying to sell off all the polled sheep and keep just the horned ones, which I happen to like better. I had two buyers who between them were planning to pretty much buy up all the adult polled sheep I have. But one sale fell through when the buyer had a financial crisis and the other buyer changed her mind and decided to buy horned sheep instead.

So, now I am almost completely sold out of all the horned sheep on my sales list, and still have the entire group of polled available. I was hoping that adding polled to the flock would expand my customer base, but apparently not. So, if I have to keep them through another breeding season and lambing, I will. They are very nice quality sheep, after all. But they'll stay on the sales list until someone decides to buy them.

The polled ewe lambs are all spoken for now, not because they've been sold, but because David, who is the person I traded my beloved mares Char and Scylla to in exchange for the group of polled sheep, has decided that he can't keep them after all. So I'm trading the ewe lambs back to him, plus Scylla's foal, to get Char and Scylla back.

If you remember how depressed I was about having to sell (trade) those mares in the first place, you would think that trading back would be great news. But we simply don't have the money to bring the mares back here. We can barely afford to feed the animals we have, that's why we got rid of the mares in the first place. So I'm trying to work out a way that the mares can go to my sister Donna's farm. Donna is also taking Char's foal, who will be her new stud to breed to her mares.

The difficulty is that David's farm and Donna's farm are very far apart, so shipping is going to be expensive. And I have to bring the ewe lambs to the Michigan Fiber Festival to meet David, so he can take them back to his farm, which will be another very long trip for me.

So, while I am committed to not losing Char (my favorite of all my horses) again, this turn of events is rather complicating my summer plans.

In other news... I've been trying to tackle a major cleanup and reorganization of our house. Because when we moved here, we knew that every room in the place was going to eventually need renovating, we didn't at first try to set them up the way we really wanted them. In time, several of the rooms ended up turning into big, messy storage areas for all the renovation supplies and all the belongings that we didn't have a final place for yet.

But since it seems that we are not going to have any money for continued renovation any time soon, we've been getting tired of having all those rooms be messy and unusable. So I've been struggling along doing a deep-level cleanup, pulling everything out of every closet and room, throwing away all the junk that is no longer relevant, and reorganizing how and where all the rest of the stuff is stored. It's a time-consuming job, and definitely makes the house look worse before it looks better, but when it's done, it will make the house a lot more livable until we can finally start renovating again.

Anyway, there's been more stuff going on in the past month when I haven't been writing blog posts, but that's the gist of it.

I appreciate all the people who contacted me to tell me they missed my posts and to ask if I was doing okay. I'll try to make time to post more frequently again. I appreciate all your comments and support!

Callista Loses Her Long Locks

Taking advantage of another hot, sunny day, I gave Callista a bath today so I could take some new sales photos of her.

She had the most beautiful, long mane that came down a good 6 inches past the bottom of her neck (as you can see in some of her previous photos), but living here on our windy hilltop, it was always horribly knotted and tangled. And Callista hates standing still to have her mane combed. For some reason, it really upsets her.

So, reluctantly, I decided to cut it all off in a short hunter horse style. (I know, technically, you're supposed to shorten a horse's mane by pulling it, but if Callista can't stand her mane being combed, I wasn't about to try pulling).

After her makeover, I took her to the round pen for the photo shoot. The lighting was a little too harsh, and the heat made Callista a little sluggish, so I didn't get the best selection of pictures. Still, at least she's clean!