From Our Farm to Yours ...

Here at Rainbow's End, we have our own version of the chorus to "The 12 Days of Christmas."

12 snakes a-sleeping

At least we hope these guys are hibernating now!

11 novels selling

Other new titles can be found at Steel Magnolia Press

10 blog posts waiting

With 3 blogs to contribute to, I always seem to be behind in my posts!

Confessions of an Animal Junkie

Dare To Dream / Be Thrilled

Where Imagination Blooms

#2 on New Year's resolutions is to get ahead and stay ahead in 2012.

9 hens not laying

The flock is older now, and winter is a poor season for eggs anyway.
But who cares as long as the girls are all healthy?

8 'keets a-singing

Well, OK, there's a zebra finch in there, too.

7 roosters crowing

Generally crowing at 4:00 am

6 dogs 'n cats a-fighting

Well, maybe we're exaggerating the fighting part a little.
From left: Loki, Angel, Ginger and Orion, the cat.
Not pictured: Callie and Magic (both cats)

5 po-o-nies


Pic on right (from left to right): Bella, Ricky, Bonnie, Cody, Lyssa

4 Pekin ducks

There's also the boy mallard, but his character was cut during the edit.

3 silly guineas

Best alarms for alerting us to coyotes and stray cats ever.
The guinea at the top is a pearl, the other is a lavendar.
Both of them, and the third, are boys.

2 goats a'buttin'

And they do use those horns - especially Lucy on the right (that's Rowdy, her son, on the left).

And an iguana in a pear tree

Technically Fafnir is in a crabapple tree here, but there IS a pear tree right next to this one that she also hangs out in.

Wishing you and your beasties a holiday full of peace and love and, most importantly, warm beds and warm laps for all.

Christmas Duck

No, it's not what's for dinner! I thought I'd share some pictures of happy ducks getting their Christmas wish: a pond full of water. Recent rains are slowly filling the reservoirs again. The duck's pond gets a lot of runoff, so has been quicker to fill than some of the other ponds in the area.

As a reminder, this is what the pond looked like during the drought (and, in fact, the water level got much lower than this).

And here is the pond today, along with the little flock splashing away.

Also, today, I opened up one of the pastures for the horses that they hadn't been in since last May. There isn't much green grass in the pasture right now as if was hit pretty hard by the drought. I'm hoping it recovers in spring. Meanwhile, the horses can play in a new area for a few weeks.

The beasties were clearly excited about getting to go into the pasture. They followed me from the barn down to the gate and crowded around while I fiddled with the chain latch, butting my arm with their heads trying to get me to hurry up. Then they raced inside, kicking up their heels. Really, the pasture is only about 3 acres, and they've had free run of about 9 other acres for the last couple of months, but they acted like they'd been pent up in a stall for weeks.

All in all, a grand day watching the ducks and horses enjoying themselves so much. I felt a little bit like Santa Claus with presents for all.

Here's Mud in Your Eye. And Mane. And Tail...

I promised this week there'd be pictures of the herd masquerading as shaggy mountain ponies, thinking I'd snap a few shots of them in their winter coats. Then we got rain. And more rain. Not Thai-flood amounts of rain, but a deluge measured in inches with more coming as I write this. What a lovely sight!

In addition to the rain (edited after looking outside to add sleet and wet snow!), cold weather is moving in. And the horses love it. So much that they're skidding around in the mud and making their own wallows. So instead of the long-, thick-haired mountain pony impersonators I'd planned, we have little horses impersonating mud monsters instead. Definitely not the beasties at their besties.


Ricky

Bella

Cody

Bonnie

Lyssa

This is one of the stalls given over to grass bagged from one of the pastures.

I still need about 10 more bales of hay to get everyone through the winter, goats included. I generally buy coastal bermuda as I supplement with (too much) grain and pelleted feed. Right now, I feed my own blend of alfalfa/timothy pellets (the wild rabbits love me to throw a handful or two of these their way, too), rolled oats, sweet feed (which has yummy molasses mixed in) and a special pelleted concoction for older horses who can't digest hay easily. After my older mare, Lyssa, had an episode of choke (a blockage in the esophagus), the vet suggested the special pelleted mix, which is easily digested. When Bella went through two episodes of colic recently, I added it to the mix for everyone. The horses hate it and won't eat it out of the bag as it's meant to be consumed, but it goes down readily with all the other goodies.

Then, of course, they also get apples, carrots, alfalfa cubes and peppermint-flavored treats. Keeping them fed isn't the problem; it's keeping them from getting too fat -- a battle I fear I'm losing with my miniature gelding, Cody.

Some gratuitous shots of the dogs in the rain.

Loki

Ginger

Angel

And the cats waiting for lunch.

Callie (l) and Orion (r)

 

Horses Have to Eat Too, Right?

All my horses tend to be chow hounds. In late spring and summer they live strictly off pasture and a daily treat of fruit or carrots. In fall and winter, I supplement with grain in differing proportions depending on how much green grass and hay is available. The grain ration is never enough for my guys.
And that can be a problem, both physically and behaviorally.

Cody puts on weight easily. Already this fall he's a fat little butterball, which is a problem because miniatures are especially prone to diabetes. Yet he's only getting a bit of grain right now to counter the pasture they're on where the drought's sucked much of the nutrition right out of the dead grass.

Cody pretending to be slim - he was too vain to have a new picture taken.

When I'm distributing their grain, Bonita follows me from feed bowl to feed bowl, trying to snatch a mouthfull from each. Because she's the baby of the herd at just a year old, I put feed in her bowl last. Eventually she'll learn patience. Her mother, Bella, did.

Bonita checking out the "treat wagon"

After being Hah!'ed at enough and told "Not your bowl!" a hundred times, Bella figured out it takes me as long to put grain in everyone's bowls as it does for her to walk once slowly around the outside of the barn. She learned to self-regulate! So now I don't dawdle when I feed because I want to be sure there's food in her bowl by the time she comes back in.

Bella had colic recently and I stayed up with her during the night walking her a bit and rubbing her tummy and generally worrying over her. A fair percentage of horses die each year from severe cases of colic, so it always requires a sharp eye to be sure it's not developing beyond a simple, mild case. Luckily, Bella responded well to pain meds and being fussed over. It took her a couple of days to come back 100% but once the crisis point was past, I was grateful.

Bella, feeling much better thank you.

So much to worry about with the horses seems to be over what they're eating or how they're eating it. May I just ask how horses survive and thrive in the wild? Do we over-coddle?

Of course, my little beasties love to be coddled.

Speaking of which, Ricky showed up Saturday morning with this mysterious coiffure.

Reminds me of those mysterious crop circles that appear overnight.

Hmmm... isn't it Queen Mab of the Faeries who comes in the night to braid horses' manes? Or perhaps it's the little girl who lives on the other side of the pasture.

~~~

No guest post for Wednesday, but I do have a story about a very naughty lizard. Plus, I've got a meme in my back pocket that I haven't forgotten about...

Fall Flora and Fauna

Despite the summer drought, a few native plants and animals seem to be abundant this fall. Where there was a drastic decrease in the number of hummingbirds and dragonflies, there was a marked increase in the number of rabbits and, surprisingly, bumblebees. I missed seeing some of the rarer birds, such as the painted buntings, from seasons past, but I saw -- and heard -- far more owls.

Painted bunting photo taken last year

Rainfall appears to be on the increase now and, coupled with an extra-long Indian summer and mild October, we at last have new, tender grass popping up. We did flirt briefly with one overnight temp near freezing, but today we'll be close to 90 degrees (32C), with cooling but still mild temps forecast for the next week or so. As long as the new growth has time to establish so it's ready to come back strong in the spring, I'll be happy.

Here's a guy I rarely see in the flesh, although I often, literally, stumble across the snout holes they leave where they dig up tasty bugs. I've also found a couple of armadillo dens under the trees.



Another coyote wandering through as seen from my office window. What do YOU see from YOUR office window, hmm?



Buffalo Bur (aka Solanum rostratum) has a lovely flower but large burs and spinehairs on its stem make it particularly noxious. It didn't seem to mind the drought at all.

 

I think this is frostweed. Large and showy when there's a lot of it clumped together. Kind of sad-looking when there's just a few stray branches here and there.



Goldenrod. If you look at it as a weed, you won't like it because it's hard to kill out.



This is a beautiful stand of huge old oaks. Those are carports under the trees. I would love there to be more oaks on the property than there are but am happy with the few specimens that lend their grace about the place.



Can you spot the cat in the dying boxwood hedge? Poor Magic isn't usually so exposed in his hidey hole.



This is Cody popping in to say Hi!



The herd hanging around my detached garage. Note the empty hanging baskets where flowers usually grow. Oh, and that "window" is just a bit of screen surrounded by shutters and a couple of non-working lights to give that long white expanse a more homey feel.

Ricky, sporting some serious rocker bangs.

Ginger (l) and Loki (r) acting nice and happy right before launching into ...

  

Killer Death Match 5000.
They really do love each other.



And, as my 'dillo friend is clearly saying, I believe we're done here.

Hay Season

The temperatures have finally moderated and we had some decent rainfall this weekend. Yay! The much-needed rain will help with the fire danger and start the long journey back to full ponds, lakes and reservoirs.

The drought damage, though, will extend well beyond this season. Warm-season grass that should be matured and going to seed now to produce new grass in the spring withered long ago.  The rain is too late to help our native Bermuda and too early to jumpstart the cool-season grasses. Still, it’s more than welcome.

The horses have munched through the pastures with the best grass. There are three other pastures they can graze but the grass in those is sparse and poor. I’d put off mowing them – that is until last week. The first pasture I’ve tackled is 8 acres I bought off a neighbor who moved a couple of years ago. The neighbor used to run a couple of cows and a horse on it, but it hasn’t been mown often. I did give it a rough mow last year and was pleased with the amount of good grass in it. I had expected a good crop this year, too.

Yep, gotta mow around all those trees up ahead.

It’s fenced, but it’s old fencing: a combination of rusted barbed wire and even rustier field fence. The steel T-posts holding the fence up are weary-looking but solid for the most part. The mid-posts and corner-posts, though, are wood, and many of them either were burnt by a grass fire a dozen years ago or are simply decaying.

My plan was to string an electric fence inside the perimeter to keep the horses away from the rusting fence line. In normal soil, the extremely lightweight, fiberglass posts are easy to set. The ones I bought even have a convenient ridge built in that you step on to drive the post about a foot into the ground. This, however, isn’t normal soil. No way I could set the new posts into ground as hard as concrete. So I mowed the acreage and let the horses into the pasture, hoping that the game of finding a few blades of grass amid the weeds will keep them entertained enough they don’t go rubbing their backsides against the fence to give themselves a good scratch and wind up getting cut on the rusty barbs.

I’m not sure the ground will be softened enough after this bout of rain to drive in the posts. So far, the horses are behaving themselves and thoroughly enjoying being in a pasture they’ve not had access to before.

The brush pile is waiting for a calm day just after a rain to be burned and buried. It's been waiting now for nearly a year.

A couple of the acres have a lot of trees on them. I’ve tried to leave as many seedling native pears as I can in a small grove but that means tedious mowing to get around them. It takes me, on average, about an hour to mow an acre. The cut grass has to dry for a couple of days before being baled – or bagged, which is what I do since I don’t have expensive baling equipment. I use a large grass sweeper that collects the grass but doesn’t bag it. I still have to circle back around and hand bag all the hay.  To mow, rake and stuff 50 bags of hay takes me the better part of 5 days.

It's a John Deere with a 5-foot drag-behind mower (aka brush hog)

The brush hog in action!

Fifty bags of poor-quality hay will last maybe 2 months if I s-t-r-e-t-c-h it out. I’ll mix it with a like amount of good-quality, purchased hay; add in 3 or 4 dozen bags of leaves (they’ll be dropping soon enough!); and supplement with plenty of grain. Goats and horses will do fine.

Once the ground dries out, I’ll tackle the other two pastures and bag up maybe another 30 bags of hay. Whoo! It’s a good workout. The best thing? Just look at the sunsets after a long day’s work!