Bring Them Home

Now that Karin is off work I had arranged to meet her at 10:00 am to drop off Jewel and her colt, Lisa and Tory at Middle Grove and bring back Star, Sangria and Galena.  Jewel has her ultrasound scheduled for June 12th so hers is a quick trip out there of just 12 days.  Lisa and Tori both were covered a few days ago so they can stay for at least 3 weeks.  Sangria looks pregnant and would be due Aug 12th, if she is pregnant but since she had colic surgery years ago her belly always looks big.  I have an appointment on Monday at 3:00 pm with the vet clinic anyway so I'll see if I can bring Sangria in at the same time.  Star had to come home as she is due June 22nd and Galena needs to be here to be bred. Karin took the pictures below.  This group of Galena, Lola and Soul with their foals were grazing under the trees. Off to the left are the Gypsy mare Irish, Isla the Warlander, Giselle, Roxanne's filly and Ivan, Tatiana's colt.

 All of the foals came right up to us. Below is Soul's colt.

 Lola's filly left, Galena's filly right.

 The yearlings came up for attention also. We were really glad, this gave us a chance to fly spray them all down.

 Soul's colt in front of Lola and Galena's fillies.

We hiked up to find the rest of the herd, checked them all over gave each one attention haltered Sangria and Star before heading back to Galena to halter her. We had a couple problems and ended up hiking up and down the hills for 3 hours. The amount of rain has caused the lower land to be a swamp area and Sangria didn't want to get her feet wet! Galena's filly would follow for a little while then run back to the other foals. I ended up loading Star and Sangria into the trailer then getting another halter and lead rope and  hiking back up the hill to help Karin. I didn't have my phone with me on the first trip up so didn't get pictures of all the other mares.  Below Irish, Ivan, Isla and Giselle are letting Karin fly spray them.

Karin led Galena and I led Lola for the second trip down to the trailer and this time not only did the foals come along but the 3 yearlings and Irish followed us all the way back to the trailer. Once Galena and her filly were loaded Lola and her filly were put back in the summer pasture. Lola  ended up taking those 4 plus her filly back to the herd.  There is an abundance of grass and grazing in this pasture yet and we are so short of hay that it is worth bringing mares and foals out even if it is just a short time. We talked about getting a round pen up on the flat area which would make it much easier to load foals. Most of the time we can drive to that area, put the mares and foals in the round pen then load from there instead of trying to haul them all the way down to the road. It will need to dry up a lot before that would work but it is something to think about. I'll look around to see if I can find a used round pen somewhere.  On the way home we stopped at Bs for a late lunch and water each of us drinking 3 full big glasses of water.  We were both so thirsty.  Star was put in the field with Roxanne. Sangria wasn't happy by herself so put in the pond pasture with the mares and foals.  Right now I have 21 horses here and the rest at Middle grove (I think about 22 there) This is an older video taken 3 years ago. Ribbon is in it along with a few others now gone.
This evening Joan is hosting a cook out for the young group and she invited us over for dinner too. It was nice not to have to cook.