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A New Baby Colt

Sandi acts as the breeding and babysitting facility for our babies as well as her brother and sister-in-law. This fella is from Dollie, one of Jeff and Leta's mares.  No name yet.

No horses were harmed in the making of this photo

This isn't a real pic, it is actually two pics taken with my iPhone while the horses were sleeping one morning recently.  I stitched them together using the iPhone app Auto Stitch, cropped and framed them with the app Photogene, and added the lightning with the app 101 Photo Effects.  Took all of 2 minutes.

Some iPhone 3G S Photos

Took a few shots yesterday while working around the house.  Got a fine pic of our vegetable garden showing how well the corn is doing, and another of the bunny that escaped from our neighbors kids. That bunny is going to be hard to catch. 

Our iPhone 3G S Warranty

On release day Sandi and I both got the new iPhone 3G S models and they are great.  Last week, after having the 3G S only 10 days or so, we were playing Scrabble together over WiFi in bed when all of a sudden the entire left one-third of her screen inexplicably went totally black. The next morning I called Apple and after doing a few standard checks, they agreed that she deserved a replacement 3G S, unless of course hers was dropped in water or otherwise the victim of abuse. I assured them that it was not, Sandi liked her iPhone too much and was too careful for that.

They said they could either send us a box and have us send it in and they would then send a replacement, total time of about 7-10 days. The alternative was to buy the one year AppleCare warranty extension for $69 and then they would just send us a replacement overnight and we could send ours back after receiving it. I popped for the $69 and now she has 719 days of warranty instead of a just a year. That may come in handy! 

The replacement 3G S arrived the other day and I dutifully swapped SIMs and restored it for her, making sure it was perfect. She loved it. Unfortunately, less than 4 hours later she dropped the SOB in the horse stock water tank, filled with 18" of murky water and horse spit.

So, now she has a phone with a voided extended warranty that covered it for about 240 minutes. The sound stopped working immediately and the screen shut down within 5 minutes. She didn't tell me right away; she took it in the house, lit the oven and warmed it up to 150 degrees. She gently wrapped her iPhone in a paper towel and placed it on the middle rack. WTF?  It's not a f'ing burrito! 

I won't go into the, er, discussions we had when she let me know what happened. She tried to calm me down by telling not to worry that she was 'drying it out' as we, er, discussed. That part didn't really help.

Suffice it to say I wasn't happy. I immediately ran into the house and when I rescued the iPhone from the Blue Star's oven it was miraculously working perfectly! 

It's been over 36 hours now and all is still well.  Since things are better now, I'll just post a pic of our big Percheron getting a bath.

Oh yeah, forgot to post a pic of our first hay cutting too.  We stacked 11 big round bales:

2nd New Foal This Year

I just realized that I didn't post a pic of the new colt born Sunday May 3. The photo below was taken when he was 7 days old.  His momma was a maiden mare and both baby and momma were challenged by the whole nursing thing.  Baby didn't know where the teat was or what to do with it, and momma didn't know how to try and encourage him to find it and use it. Momma was leaking milk but it didn't help him learn what to do. 

When he still hadn't nursed after 5 hours we had to give him some bottle milk that we had purchased earlier just in case this type of situation developed. Foals need to nurse right away because the first few hours of milk production contain colostrum; all the antibodies to start the foal's immune system. Without colostrum a foal will usually contract something in the first few days and not be able to fight off the illness.  

We were able to get him to bottle feed enough colostrum-rich milk to get him through the night and by morning he had perfected the action that most of us males have been doing at every opportunity since puberty.  Testing showed that even with our bottle-fed colostrum his antibody levels were still slightly below the low end of the desired range.  After consulting with the vet we decided not to take the additional step of a blood transfusion because there was only a small chance of him being exposed to and contracting anything given that we don't board other horses and we maintain a very clean environment.  I'm happy to say that after two weeks now, the little colt and momma are both doing very well.  

Spring has arrived in Delta

Moon over Elms

Great full moon last night

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We're expecting Zana to give us a baby pony this week followed by another from Punkin within 30 days or so. 

Skid Vicious has surgery

Sandi took her baby colt to have minor surgery done on his leg. He had a tendon issue that needed a slight tweak. All seems well and he is up and around only hours after waking.