Footloose Farms

Emergency trip to the vet.

What a night!  DH and I decided to clean up the hay that the deer had stomped into the mud late last night (about 10:00 PM) while the kids were sleeping.  I had to open the two gates in one of the pastures for him to drive the truck through.  Chipper was in the pasture that we needed to get through and he met me at the gate.  He hadn’t eaten any of his hay and seemed agited.  He normally greets me with a soft nicker but this time he barely made a sound and kept pushing me around.  I petted him and tried to comfort him, not knowing what could be upsetting him.  But DH saw it as he drove through the first gate.  He rolled the window down and said, “Did you see the cut on his chest?”  Thinking Chipper might have scraped himself, I glanced down at his chest and couldn’t believe my eyes.  His right peck muscle was tore open with a huge flap of skin hanging down.  I grabbed the flashlight and could see a large puncture hole as far up as I could see.  I shined the flashlight around us to see if I could see what caused it and noticed the metal post that had been straight up and down holding Charges pen in place was now bent over.  I knew exactly what happened.  Chipper must have got to playing with Charge and rared up and came down on the post.  YEOW!!!!!  Well, this is a no-brainer.  We need to get him to the vet.  The thing that worried me the most was how far in the post had went.  Of course, the vets we normally use couldn’t be reached, so I called a specialist whom we haven’t seen in 7 years because he’s pretty expensive.  They just built a brand new facility that’s a lot closer to us, so that would be helpful. 

After examining Chipper, the vet said the post had only went about 4-5 inches in.  He washed and flushed it really well (thankfully it didn’t have any foreign matter in it!) then sewed layer after layer until he finally stapled the skin together.  He put a drain in it as he said it would drain a lot and probably have a lot of swelling for a few days.  I’ve seen a lot of animals stitched up and he did a fantastic job.  I believe Chipper was in the best hands we could offer him.  He was a trooper the entire time and even loaded extremely well considering he hadn’t stepped into a horse trailer since he was about 4 months old.  We got home about 2:30 AM and then had to get a pen put together for him.  I’m going to clean up the barn today so we can stall him if we get any moisture. 

We are all tired today and the horses are still upset.  I think they know we took someone last night but they haven’t quite figured out that everyone is here.  It’s amazing how, even though most of them are separated, they all consider themselves a herd. 

We went up the creek and retrieved our game camera yesterday.  Here are some photo’s: (I had the camera pointing downward for smaller game like bobcats, mountain lions, and such).

Hee Hee, I love this one.

It took me about 30 mintues to figure this one out.  Anyone want to take a guess? :o)

Untitled Comment

{ 10:01 , Tuesday, October 23, 2007 } { Posted by oldfashionedgirl }

Sorry about your horse!! I hope that he heals quickly!! I just wanted to stop by and say thanks for visiting my blog!! I agree that it is amazing to see what can be accomplished with so little land!! We've been able to do so much!! Where in Idaho are your 10 acres?? I might not be too far away from you!!! I'll be sure to post pictures when we have the garden in our pasture next year!!

Oh, I was going to ask have you ever thought of doing a passive solar house?? Our cousins have a house in Maine that is passive solar (all south facing windows + different building) and in the winter they even turned off their woodburning stove it was SO hot!! There are so many different websites and books that are SO interesting!! Anyway... I was just wondering since you wanted to have mostly south facing window in your new home!! Have a great day!

Blessings,
Alex