Animals

Happy Manure Year!!

You might remember me discussing equine parasites over the past few months. Much to my horror, I found bot eggs on the Bigs' and Little's front legs this past autumn. Dr. Becky advised me to wait until after a good freeze and then we would de-worm our equine friends.

Well, we have had a month of quite cold temperatures,

so yesterday was D-Day (de-wormer day).

Neither the Bigs nor the Littles were impressed with the taste...

nasty stuff!

But they took their medicine like good soldiers.

And now the challenge for me is keeping their manure cleaned up and disposing of it in a safe location...away from canine mouths...especially that of Indie, Dr. Becky's Aussie Shepherd.

(in case you are new here, Dr. Becky is Hubbs sister and our vet...

and lives next door to our farm.)

Why??.....you ask?

To answer that we have to turn back the hands of time....

about two years.

First of all, I must tell you of a veterinary phenomenon.

Apparently, dogs of herding breeds with white feet

(figure that one out!)

are susceptible to a severe reaction to Ivermectin and similar drugs.

Two years ago, Indie became severely ill and lapsed into a coma-like state for several weeks. She was rushed to an emergency center a couple of states away from us where she was treated and kept for several days. She returned home in a semi-comatose state and required several weeks of constant care. With tons of love and loving care from Dr. Becky, Indie pulled through this terrible ordeal. She is smart and loving and Dr. Becky's constant companion.

Needless to say, now whenever it is time to de-worm, we take great pains to assure that Indie will not be exposed to the worming medications. This necessitates removing all manure for 3 to 4 days and taking it as far away as possible.

We load our muck buckets in the gator and head out to the furthest corner of our land...

across the road from Dr. Becky's barn,

beyond our arena,

way back into the woods,

as far as we can go,

to an area we call the Field of Dreams.

This is a several acre field that we allow a neighboring dairy farmer to plant with corn for his cows. This field is surrounded by woods and has no water running through it...making it the best place to dump 3 days worth of manure. After all, it will serve to fertilize the corn field...and be far away from Indie's romping.

Back home with empty gator, I stop by Dr. Becky's barn to say hello to Sid and Ava...

As you can see, we still have no snow. The funny thing is, there has been snow to the north, south, east and west of us....but none here. We might just be the only area in the country that has not yet had snow! Winter continues to leave its mark on us,though, with cold temperatures and short days.

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Animals