A Day in the Life of an Arabian Breeder - Coping

Since Lindsay is normally my stall cleaner and feeds and waters the Arabian horses, the whole routine here has been thrown upside with her injury. Because we are on small acreage, the horses live in stalls and go out for exercise during the day but with Lindsay laid up and my time spent mostly watching over her, that's made for a change in their regular routine.

There's no way I can feed, water, clean stalls and turnout all those horses and keep watch over Lindsay as well. So to deal with the situation, I've turned all of the horses out around the clock except for the yearling colt, Andy, who is on stall rest and the mare and foal. Since we are in the territory of a mountain lion, the foal is safer in her stall at night.

With this arrangement I can go out, feed and water horses in the early morning, then head back into the house to take care of Lindsay's medications and get her breakfast. I stay with her long enough to cool down since our temps have been in the 80s and then head back out and work on the yard.

I work on the yard until I heat up again. Then head back to the house to check how Lindsay is doing and see if I can go anything for her. That's pretty much how the day goes. I switch off between working in the yard and in the barns, checking on Lindsay and doing laundry etc.

By the time you add in the stuff that happens when you have this many horses, I need to be three people. It's been something of a soap opera out there in my fields.

I'm still trying to get through the stalls for the first go round since Lindsay's accident. Granted I've been taking advantage of my time cleaning to fix all the mats that have been pushed up with accrued shavings underneath and doing minor repairs but I still can't believe it's taking me this long.

Them there's the problem with having the horses turned out 24/7 that comes mostly with feeding them in a herd situation. They are not really used to competing for their food since they're normally feed in their stalls. That's caused some problems and a number of horses are now sporting bites and other scrapes acquired in squabbling over food. So part of my time is spent checking for injuries and tending to the ones that need care.

I actually gave up on poor Patriot getting a far share of food. The yearling colt dropped so much weight in just a couple of days that he's now back in the barn for meals. He's one of Lindsay's favorites (because he's Aana's) and she wouldn't be pleased if she saw how he looks right now. I know I'm not!

Then there's Suede who just couldn't resist the band of Legs's daughters living in the field next to him. The other boys he was turned out with wouldn't let him anywhere near the fence if there was a mare around. So Suede took things into his own hands........um hooves. The two year old colt got down on his belly and crawled under the fence in the now dry creek bed. I found him running amongst the girls when I went to feed that evening.

Now I have to figure out if he managed to breed any of them. There was no evidence that he attempted to breed any of them. Usually the first timers can get excited and jump on the wrong parts leaving traces of semen on sides, shoulder, hips and necks. None of the mares that are in heat (three of the eight) had any such smudges but that doesn't mean anything.

When I found Suede, the mares were keeping him on the fringes of the herd. The colt looked pretty submissive but also didn't want to be caught. It took me a few minutes and some help from Dave to get him to turn and face me. Once he did that haltering him was a breeze. But with this incident Suede now is also living in the barn.

I'm going to have to call the vet and see what our course of action will be with the mares. I sure hate to have to ultra sound all of them and frankly I'm not positive which three I saw showing signs of heat. I'm pretty sure about Faith.......or was sit Rose and then Dancer or was it Rhapsody.......from there I don't have a clue. What I know for sure is I don't want any unexpected pregnancies because this darn colt figured out how to go under the fence. Who a thunk??

At this rate, I'm worried about what tomorrow might bring. And not getting to ride is making me crabby!

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