Pregnant Cori getting her feet trimmed

Today is day 339 of Cori’s pregnancy, which means she is due tomorrow. I have expected this baby for a week now and all of us who are staying up all night watching her on the webcam are getting pretty darned tired.

Today Blaine, the farrier, came to trim the horse’s feet. Dahlia went first, no issues. Cori was next and the poor thing had an awful time picking up a foot for him. She is soooo pregnant and soooo heavy that she needed all four feet to hold her up.

Three year old Tara starts training this month so she got new shoes in the front.  I rarely put shoes on the horses since they are not working, bu since she is going into training, she will soon be working and therefore needs the extra protection. She did not like being shod, but for a three year old, she was not too badly behaved.

I really like my farrier a lot. He is good at his job, good with the horses, and a funny and nice guy as well. He and his son are going to help me get Tara into shape by teaching her to pull a work sled (Blaine and his boy have and train work horses). I also love Blaine’s accent.

I managed to capture a little video of Blaine working on the extremely pregnant Cori. Hope you enjoy it.

New foal coming any day now

Cori’s foal by Heinse 354 is due May 13, one week from today. But that mare is just about ready to foal. Last night I was watching the monitor and ran down to the barn at 2am, sure the baby was on its way. But, false alarm. Cori is staring to shuffle her back feet and move around as the baby positions itself. Must feel really awkward. So when will it happen? Not sure, but I have to believe the next night or so.

Meanwhile, setting up a camera in the new barn has been an adventure. My neighbor and ISP provider Edwin kindly came down and set up a radio that wirelessly gets a radio signal from the house. This brings the internet to the barn. He also set up an internet network camera for the foaling stall. One little problem though – the camera does not work in low light conditions and since the foal will be most likely born at night, this has been problematic.

Last night I tried something a bit different. I bought a little laptop webcam, but a really good one in low light – the Logitech Quickcam Pro 9000. Hooked that up to a teeny netbook computer and put it all up in the barn, taking my new internet connection and plugging it into the netbook. The netbook is perched on a shelf above the wash stall and the webcam is leaning over the top of the wash stall, peering down into the foaling stall. Pictures below. Click for a larger image.

The Logitech webcam is simply incredible. I cannot believe the quality of the image even in the low light. And there are a number of settings to make it even better.

I was able to use ustream.tv to stream the webcam image to the internet so I could watch it from my house last night. And you know, this worked really well! The image is pixelated – a limitation of ustream – but I may even been able to improve on that.  The point is, I am not able to see my mare in her stall. And anyone with an internet connection and any web browser would be able to see her too.

Let’s hope she has that baby tonight. I would like to get some decent sleep this week.

Scenes from the small farm

Our place is 15 acres in Christiansburg, VA. It is small compared to the 300 acres at Tanbark Acres, 65 miles south. But I like it nonetheless. And it is hard enough to work 15 acres thank you! We’ve been putting up a barn and fencing the pastures for what seems like an eternity, and we have a long way to go. This weekend we were able to fence one small paddock. The larger part of that paddock is getting close to being finished as well. I put some pictures up on flickr.

As a side note, we’re using electrobraid – an electrifed rope – as the fencing material. I like it very much and am quite pleased with it. My only gripe is that there is a lot of electrical splicing because I have so much cross fencing (and therefore a lot of gates, and the wiring has to run in trenches under the gates and be spliced back in on the other side).

A few weeks ago we had a little picnic in the back pasture. I am using that area for hay and a lot of folks never see that area. It is really lovely though. So I took a little video and posted it below. It is rather long, but is quite peaceful.

Ficus goes home

The new orphaned foal, Ficus, has found his nurse mare adoptive mom and the two of them headed for home at the big farm on April 21. Here is a quick video as they leave the hospital and get on the trailer, heading for Tanbark Acres.

Ficus, the new orphan foal, is doing better

In the last post I told of losing our mare Oeke last week due to complications from foalbirth. Her baby, a colt by Mintse 384, is still in the hospital at the Virginia Tech Equine facility. We have found a nurse mare for him and brought her in from Kentucky. It looks like he will be able to bond with her and the vet techs are working with them now to have him nurse from her.

Two days ago Ficus was taken in for surgery to repair an opening between his umbilicus and urethra. The opening never sealed properly and he was suffering from a lingering infection. This procedure is very common with male foals (I think this is the third such operation in our herd) and is fairly standard. Still, you worry. He recovered well though and we hope to bring him home next week.

We named the little guy Ficus. A ficus is a plant and one version is a rubber plant (ficus elastica). Seems to suit him since he keeps bouncing back. A tough start, but welcome to the world Ficus.

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