Ranch Things

Highboy says that no human injury will prevent him from preparing for his horse trial, he'll just jump himself around the round pen in anticipation of next weekend.

While I'm still struggling with a pinched nerve in my left shoulder,  I have high hopes that acupuncture appointments this week will resolve the issue sufficiently that I can still take Highboy to Cheyenne next weekend for his first horse trial of the season at The Event at Archer.  Since I can't ride at the moment, I gave Highboy a chance to play in the round pen.  He was sedate and quiet walking to the round pen (possibly the result of being roommates with Note for a week while I have all the fencing around the barn redone, more on that later).  Once I set up the barrels and his favorite jump he proceeded to lope around like a quite civilized animal and hop over the barrels with real grace and beautiful bascule. 

I thought this still was interesting, and an excellent illustration of why horses need to be very sound to do jumping.  Check out the hyperextension on his right front fetlock as he lands from this 3' vertical jump.  Horses are designed to have this joint do this, but it shows how important it is to take good care of horse's legs, particularly tendons and ligaments, as they are the structures the body uses to absorb this kind of impact.

In other news, one of my client's horses, Cimmaron, is happily regrowing his summer mustache.  It disappears every winter as he rubs it off searching for the last bits of hay in his paddock, but reappears every spring when he gets to go out to pasture to graze.

The other big news on the ranch this week is the fencing project.  The wooden posts that were supporting my continuous metal panel fencing were rotting out and needed replacement.  Not wanting to rent an auger to do the whole thing myself, I contacted at least four different fencing companies to come out and look at the job, who then proceeded to not return any calls, texts, or emails.  It made no sense to me as I was perfectly clear in saying, "If this isn't a job you want to do, please just tell me so I don't waste time waiting on an estimate that may never arrive.  But if this is something you're interested in I'm happy to schedule the work."

I disassembled the fencing that was on the east side, laying the metal panels on their sides and leaving room for the bobcat to remove the rotten wood posts.  To our surprise, the posts ended up not being rotten, and they were in the ground quite a ways.  However, the holes they had been placed in were too large, which is why they were so wiggly and not secure for holding horses.  I was able to pull one out by hand, and the bobcat plucked the rest out of the ground like candles from a birthday cake.

I finally got in touch and got the job scheduled with Altitude Fence and Deck.  Not only did he give me an easy to understand estimate on the phone, but after some initial arrival time confusion he actually showed up to do the job.  He has a bobcat (can I tell you how much I now want to buy a bobcat??) that has a fence pounder attachment for the front.  The wooden posts are sharpened on one end like a pencil, and the bobcat merely drives them into the ground.  No auger, no holes, no tedious dirt-packing around every post.  It was awesome, efficient, and fast.

This photo is of the bobcat driving a pointed wooden post into the ground.

He also offered to clear out the paddocks around the barn, using a bucket attachment on the bobcat to scrape to the hard dirt base .  This removed years of cow manure from the time prior to us moving here, as well as anything my horses have left.  Now we have a giant manure mountain in the middle of the large paddock, but that will be removed later this weekend to the manure pile. 

This photo is of manure mountain, currently located inside the largest paddock, soon to be relocated to the manure pile.

I should have some help this weekend with reassembling the metal panels and fixing them to the new wooden posts, and then things will be looking dapper around here.  A big project, but one that needed to be done.