The Honest Courtesan

Horses are, in many ways, quite fragile creatures; there are so many ways to throw their health off-balance that it’s difficult to keep track of them all.  Last week I extended the paddock fence to enclose the north lawn, which means lots of lush, sweet grass for the animals to graze on; of course Shiloh doesn’t have the horse sense (sorry about that) to pace herself (sorry about that one too) in order to avoid colic, and that meant a bloated, gassy pony whining until she managed to poop, and then immediately going back and gorging some more.  She seems to have mostly adjusted now, but for a few days there I got rather tired of her complaining loudly all afternoon, every afternoon.  So I decided to force her to exercise in order to get things moving, and the quickest, easiest way to accomplish this was to annoy her into running away from me.  So for several days, I would periodically chase her, waving my arms as though they were tentacles and shouting, “RUN! FLEE! RUN!” and “Come back, I want to eat you!”  Naturally it worked, and I have the piles of pony manure to prove it.  Eventually she seems to have figured out that she didn’t need to stuff herself into sickness like an American at Thanksgiving, so I can probably skip the Demogorgon impressions for now.  But I must admit that I laughed like a hyena every time I did it for a few days there; sometimes it’s good to have a proper adult excuse for behaving like an imbecile.

Oh, and by the by, I lied in the second sentence; I’m not really sorry at all. 

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Last week, I ran the barbed wire for the west side of the paddock extension, then on Saturday I ran the two lowest strands of the north side, taking them from the fence I’m phasing out.  Then yesterday I ran two more strands before moving the gate, pulling off the pig-panels and running the top strand of the new fence.  And as I expected, Jonathan was out there tasting all the new plants before I was even done, so I pulled my phone out of my back pocket and took a number of shots.  If you look closely, you can see that I hadn’t yet pulled out the old T-posts, but I did so not long afterward.  Shiloh was more cautious than Jonathan; she contented herself with standing barely past the old fence-line, nibbling the lush grass that I’ve intentionally left uncut this year because I knew I’d be doing this and wanted to let them have as much as they wanted.  And though Cicero doesn’t eat grass, he seemed delighted at all the new smells, and when it gets hot this summer he’ll have plenty of shade to nap in.

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Whenever I first close up the nursery for the year and force the new pullets to join the flock, they’re typically a bit reticent; this year was no exception.  Though I kicked them out almost two weeks ago, they spend all their time close to each other, typically hiding among the feed cans and only occasionally venturing out of the henhouse.  But this past weekend that finally changed; they’ve started to venture out to scratch in the dirt, and though they still stick close to each other (as you can see), they’re getting braver about being near the big hens.  For the most part, the hens (even the previously-troublesome blues) are leaving them alone; the only aggressive one is the oldest of the Ameraucanas, and she’s too old, fat, and slow to actually catch them.  Within a few weeks, even that will stop, and in about two more months we should start seeing some eggs from the young ‘uns.  Then next spring we’ll start the whole thing over again with three new chicks whom I’ll have to protect from the now-grown leghorns.

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The last time I expanded the paddock, I thought for sure I’d at last given them enough room to have plenty of grass, but nope; within a month the new section was clipped as close as the rest. So I recently decided to expand it again, this time to the entire north lawn; in addition to the grass there being the most lush and green of any near the house, it also includes most of my apple trees so the animals will be able to enjoy fallen apples.  So on Saturday, Chekhov helped me set five new posts: two for the gate, one at the northwest corner of the house, and two more along what will be the northern fenceline.  I’ll run the bottom strands more closely together this time so I won’t need to Cicero-proof the bottom, and once the new fencing is in place we’ll move the gate from its current location to the area you can see at upper left in the picture below.  Then I’ll remove the old fence, and the paddock will stretch from the south side of the barn all the way around the house; I can recycle the current pig-panels into skirting to keep both Cicero and cold air out of the atrium basement.  So next winter it’ll be easier to keep the house and annex warm, and maybe at last the animals will finally have enough grazing area.

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One thing about living on a small farm is, whenever anybody has some animal they no longer want (for whatever reason), they immediately think of giving it to me.  Now, that’s not really a problem when they take the time to ask; I like having animals around, and it gives the place character.  But sometimes they don’t bother to ask; they just find the nearest farm, ranch, or whatever and dump the animal there (which was how we ended up with Orville here and several dogs in Oklahoma).  This time, it was a goose and I was asked; last week Yellowbird texted to ask whether we could take it because the owners couldn’t protect it from coyotes which had started coming around.  So I said “sure”, and here she is.  So far she’s mostly just waddling around; she can duck under the gates (no pun intended) and spends most of her time either in the paddock or the west side of the house, hunting bugs in the grass (at least, I think that’s what she’s doing).  She seems cautious of the other animals right now, so she’s mostly keeping to herself, but yesterday I saw her pretty close to Jonathan so I guess she’s getting used to them.  Now if I can only figure out how to get her to consistently take a little poultry feed every evening, it’ll be nice to occasionally have a goose egg rather than chicken eggs with my bacon; I had one Friday and it was the size of three large hen eggs by itself, with a slightly richer flavor.

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