Friday, October 21, 2011

A Horse Of Course

Reed

Earlier this week, Rhiannon's dream came true.  A horse of her own! Reed is 27 years old and is retiring at our place.  Reed is the horse Rhiannon learned to ride on, so having him here is pretty special for us.  He's a good boy, and Rhiannon is having the time of her life.


Checking each other out.

The cows weren't quite sure what to think.

They look like they are saying - WHAT is that?!

Beamer our watch cat supervises.


Thursday, February 03, 2011

Getting your nails done takes on a whole new meaning when you are a cow

Finally getting around to posting about Dorothy's pedicure - from last October.  Her feet were not terrible, but did need trimming.  We called some friends who have a farm, and our local cooperative extension office to get some names of reputable cow hoof trimmers.

We found a guy not to far from us, he said he usually got $12 per cow on a dairy, but would need to charge us around $100.  Turns out he had to sort of go by our place to take his daughter to a college open house so he only charged us $60.  He came by in the morning and dropped off his equipment (which looked to me like a torture device), then in the afternoon he came back and trimmed her hoofs.

I was all nervous about it.  But it went very quickly and very well.  Dorothy came right over when we called - the hoof trimmer was impressed.  Brad grabbed her halter (he had a bucket of grain and a couple of cow cookies), and she walked right out the gate and into the machine without batting an eye.  We fed her corn cobs while she got her nails done, she was very good...didn't struggle, and only "did what cows do when they get nervous" a few times.