New Farrier

I took Friday off of work for our first new farrier appointment.  Thursday I almost had a heart attack as he texted and asked to reschedule (OMG no! It's a 3 hour drive, rescheduling is not good) for 5pm Friday instead of the morning.  Whew!  That would work just fine.  So while Daniel napped on Friday I met the farrier down at the boy's paddock.  His usual vehicle was in the shop so he was running a barebones operation.  I grabbed Haji first since his feet looked the worse.  Though over the few weeks he's been in Canby he's worn down the flares so they weren't as bad as they used to be.  I was surprised at how pushy he was!  What happened to our calm therapy horse?  Guess the old man needs some more ground work in his retirement to keep him nice and polite.

So all three boys had their feet done.  Cody needed his shoes reset but he apparently hadn't grown too much toe as the farrier didn't need to do any trimming, just some rasping after he reset the shoes.  Not the same shoes as before and he didn't shape them quite as intricately as our old farrier but I think they look okay.  This new farrier was really fast.  Granted the boys had worn their feet down pretty well so I'm sure that helped.  I think his work was a little less "pretty" than I'm used to but I think it'll work just fine.

We scheduled the next visit for 7 weeks out since 6 weeks + some pavement might be too quick.  The good news is that the farrier said he'd be just fine with fetching horses himself and trimming with me not being there (which is good since he'll be back on a Thursday).  He said he has a few clients he hasn't even met before.  Apparently this is fairly normal in these smaller farm towns.  He's a roper and teaches roping so I think he can handle the old men just fine.  I could always see if A could go down and help but just in case he can't it's nice to know this guy is okay with handling it on his own.  Works best for him I'm sure because he can show up whenever he can make it since he drives 90 minutes to get there.

So as you'll see in the one photo, Haji has some wounds on his legs.  I first noticed them on Friday, not sure when they showed up, seemed fairly fresh at that point.  Since they are so symmetrical and he re-opened them a few times over the weekend, I don't think he's falling down.  I think a wound from falling would be more uneven and less likely to recur several times.  Some research on the interwebs leads me to think he's just scraping them up by laying down.  Bedsores of sorts.  Since he's underweight and notoriously reacts poorly to bug bites, he probably has thinner skin than most.  So I smothered him in Swat all weekend to help keep the flies off.  Maybe Haji needs some legwarmers or knee pads.

The boys seem to have gotten their routine down pretty quickly.  After I feed in the morning they go and line up at the gate to the side yard.  We've only let them out there one weekend before but they were ready to go again.  Probably this next trip out we'll fence in a bit more (ran out of wire last time) and electrify the whole side yard so they can be turned out there more than just on the weekends if A wants.  The grass in the main yard is getting eaten down so it's nice to have another option for them to graze.

Since the boys like to chase Haji away from his food they usually get locked in the yard while Haji stays in the paddock to eat.  They do not approve of this arrangement.  But Haji has to eat so much more food and takes longer and needs to finish his food so that's how it'll have to go at least until they decide to leave him alone (yeah right).

Overall though, all 3 boys are getting along well.  The neighbors said they enjoy watching them.  They said at first Haji was kind of odd man out but every day they would get to be closer and closer friends.  Last weekend every time I went to see them they were all standing near each other and Haji was happily grazing.  Granted I didn't see him real often at his temporary home but when I was there it seemed like he stood pretty far off from the other horses or didn't graze as much.

And he's definitely gaining weight.  Slowly (which is good) but it's coming.  We're still trying to figure out the best way to get him to gain without having to feed him a billion pounds of food.  I might get a bag of beet pulp this week just to see if we mix it with feed if he'll eat it, he wasn't thrilled with beet pulp last time so I dunno (and it's kind of a pain since it needs to be soaked in water).  Who knows.  We're feeding about 12lbs of Nutrena Senior grain and MVP Pro-Weight supplement right now but I'm trying to get the farm store in town to carry Triple Crown Senior which has more fat and fiber.

So yeah, while it's hard to be so far away and be able to manage everything, I think things are going okay in our little long-distance horse-keeping adventure.