Preparing for Winter

It is now still so dark at 7:00 am that I've changed the feeding schedule, moving it to the afternoon. No sense in trying to bring mares in while it is still dark, I'd probably bring the wrong one in. These mares do kind of look alike you know. The 2 that get grain are Jenis and Eliza but both are gaining so well it is hard to pick them out from the others in the dark. Both stallions and the 4 weanlings are the other horses that are fed grain a couple times a day. All of the horses have hay or grass in front of them at all times.
The morning was spent at the Berean office, click HERE to read about that. This afternoon Eliza and Jenis were brought in to grain and groom. They had obviously found a good spot to roll and both were quite muddy. By the time the mud was knocked off and the water tank filled they had both finished their grain. The 3 pictures below are of Jenis.

 We would like to see her stay at the weight she is in the pictures above but when we brought her back from Middle Grove we had noticed she had lost some. 

Looking at her today, I think she is back to a good weight. Below is Eliza the first year we bought her. 

When she is nursing a foal she drops weight terribly. We thought this year would be different as she had been fed a lot extra through the pregnancy and even more when the colt was born but she lost more this year even than last. Below she is pictured still in good flesh, her 2016 colt is a couple weeks old in the picture. 

 Below is Eliza taken a couple days ago.This is not the best conformation picture but shows how her back bone sticks up a bit. She still has a ways to go to gain all of her weight back but is making progress. 

Rosalie was taken out and teased by Evan. She got a short cycle shot on Monday and is suppose to be ready to cover on Friday but she is still emphatically screaming "no". Rhoda is coming in tomorrow to ride her and help get a video of her filly for the new owner. She is such a pretty mare and absolutely HUGE. Unfortunately she rubbed out a big chunk of her mane when she was at Middle Grove. Rhoda wants to take her to the fair in March, sure hope her mane grows back quickly and I really hope we get her pregnant. 

Rhoda is going to stop and pick up Caspian and Capricho's health certificate for traveling to Virginia. They are suppose to leave a week from today for their new home.

These two colts were weaned together and are sharing the same paddock, I'm glad they will be traveling together to their new home.  Capricho is out of the Thoroughbred mare Sheena by Valiant and Caspian is out of Ayanna by Evan. 

Mark came home early from work today so we could work more on splitting wood. We have split wood piled up all over. I'm starting to think Mark may believe this is going to be a hard winter and is determined to be prepared.