Much needed pre-winter upgrade from the sad conduit cradle cover we hacked together with leftover materials to welded tube steel. He’s getting pretty damn good at welding. I love how neat and orderly the barn looks when we start doing the winter fill up.
No idea how stabled horses do it, Mike had to wait a whole two hours for the repairs to finish and dinner to be served and he was hangry chasing Gunnar the whole time 😑
There are a lot of post-daylight savings naps happening. Also compulsive baking and purging of closets.
I like to pretend I speak Spanish, so I talk to the farm animals in Spanish. Which means that the goats have learned that when I yell, “¡Mis Cabritas!” They should come over to me. I’m not sure if they have associated it with food or attention. But it works, and it’s fairly new - I’ve been calling them like that for years, but they’ve only learned it within the last two weeks.
And I love it! I love seeing them run up to me, trusting and adorable. It makes me feel a little bad when I use it so I can grab them for science tho. I had to get fecal samples tonight and in order to do that accurately, I have to lock them up in separate stalls, which they don’t enjoy. But it’s for their health and we don’t do this very often, so I guess we’ll all have to grin and bear it.
But in happier news …. I met TWO foals this weekend!!! They were both terribly fluffy, nippy, funny, nippy and their tails were like … fox tails. They looked like poofy pipe cleaners and were SO short and soft to the touch. Here’s some pictures!!!!
The first picture and the video is of a rotten little 4-month-old mini horse colt. He both wanted attention and wanted to eat flesh, so it was a difficult balance between reaching in to pet him and not getting nipped. The other mini horse visible in the video is his mother.
The rest of the pictures are of a (less than) 2-month-old draft filly. She wasn’t quite as nippy or fluffy, but she was still so stinking cute! Also, don’t worry too much about the balding spots. Like a lot of mammal babies (even human babies! Sometimes you have to keep mittens and socks on human babies 24/7 for a while so they don’t scratch themselves with their little nails!) she is still sensitive to both heat and stimuli, so she rubs herself a lot. The farmer who owns her attached a soft brush to the wall, so she can better help herself. I love little miss legs, lol. Her mom is in the back of pictures 6 and 7
(Stuff I learned these past few days. Sad, but true stories for these little guys. But happily, they and their mothers are all getting adopted, and the rescue legally binds the new owners to inform them of any new movements of the horses and offers a very easy return if something was to happen. So things are looking up!)
So the farm we went to is a horse rescue, and a very well-run one (a lot of horse rescues are fakes and nasty). The mini-horse mama was originally going to be sold to a private (ew!) big cat owner. Apparently, since mini-horses are overbred and under-wanted (like most horses), they’re pretty nice, cheap and fat solutions to the people who can’t get easy meat for their exotic pets. No word on whether she was going to be live food or not. In any case, she was probably kept with a stallion because the owner didn’t care, and she and another (still pregnant) mini mare arrived at the rescue. But they’re healthy and fine now - my mother and I even cleaned their yard!
The draft girls duo have a similar story. The mother was (probably, she didn’t have papers) a brood mare, and was reaching the end of her fertile days. What happens often with older horses (or ferals) in such an overbred horse country like ours, is that they are sold to a collector of sorts who then passes them around for six or so months until they can be sold to a country that will eat them, like Canada or Mexico, or to a pet food factory. And since they sell by the pound, it helps to get the mares pregnant, so they’re heavier. Luckily, this lovely lady was picked up by the rescue and almost immediately had her baby. So all’s good for this pair!
The reason horse meat cannot be commercially sold for human consumption is because, basically, the American government decided it was too hard to check up and inspect many horse-owning properties to see if they were well taken care of, let alone clean enough to be eaten by people. I’m not really against horse meat, I don’t think I’d eat it myself, but I’d much rather America sell horse meat and thus heavily keep track of and protect horses, than the current system.
So yeah, the horse industry, a lot like pretty much any animal industry, is pretty fucked up. The racetracks are a big reason behind this - as is a lack of proper animal education. So please don’t support racetracks and remember to really consider your property’s capabilities when you’re getting a new animal.
Horses, as much as the wild mustang and/or brumby sounds cool, are like any other feral animal - they can’t survive well in the wild, and ruin the ecosystem for the real native animals and other life forms. You will never see a truly healthy wild horse, and that’s a goddamn shame. So don’t dump them either.
Its been about three months since I adopted a Ponyta colt and male Lotad. So this is how they are doing and I've been meaning to talk about them.
I got the two Pokémon from @adventures-on-foster-island . These two Pokémon needed somewhere to call home and I adopted the two together. Lotad is a flowering variant which is rare but often mistaken as sickness in grass type Pokémon. As someone who owns their own little pod of Lotad I hoped to integrate the lil guy into it.
Lotad after being carefully watched has responded well to changing homes and being introduced to my Lotad pod. After a few weeks I got a few bits of paper and let him choose his name. I have a Gardevoir called Ophelia who is my translator. His name is now Kaj. He gets along well with the pod. Some members aren't bothered with him but aren't separating him from the others or anything. He gets along the most with flowers. Flowers is a Lotad of mine who loves flowers. So its common to find him and Kaj together which is great as Kaj has a friend but also Flowers has a tendency to go out of the water for too long sitting with plants. He has been feeding well and he has even had a dip at the river. Now you can find him lazing about in the pond or taking a nice swim down the river.
Clurichaurn's update.
Clurichaurn is the name Raven came up with. He's a young male Ponyta who had a bad start in life, and has integrated into the herd fairly well. The herd's adults are all boys and the youngest Ponyta bar Clurichaurn, Diana who is the only girl of the herd. Cluri is often seen at the outskirts of the woods with Diana and Tor who is a Mudbray. I'm really impressed with him and how he's gotten use to the herd. He has had no health issues or anything, though displaying some hesitancy towards some of the further north woods at first, but he seems to no longer be anxious of the area. He does go to new places with his herd and he looks like he feels safe with them. Galarian Ponyta don't like very open spaces unless they are going for a quick sprint. If you ever wish to spot Cluri then look for the smallest Ponyta who's near the front.
Pleasant surprise this morning. Our sheep cookie gave birth to an oreo cookie today. We haven't been able to tell if they are a boy or girl yet but still happy to see another lamb from such a good mom. Still debating on a name so if anyone has a suggestion comment on this post. I'll update more of this cutie later!
I’m on Year 3 in my main farm in the game Stardew Valley. This is a Standard Farm map which I named “Stardust Farm.”
I currently have four save games in my SDV: this main farm which is the very first one I made, another single-player farm with a Forest Farm map, a co-op (multiplayer) shared money Four-Corners Farm map which I play with some people I met in SDV Discord server, and a co-op separate money Four-Corners Farm map which I played with three other members of Stardew Valley Philippines FB group (though this farm is really inactive now).
I really love game and I’ve been playing it for hours every day when I’m not working. I was finally able to upgrade my farmhouse up to the third upgrade: I now have a kitchen, a nursery, an empty room which I transformed into a library/study, and a cellar.
I decided to marry Leah into this save game, and you can see here that she has her art room connected to the bedroom.
I actually want to marry Abigail because she’s the bachelorette I really like, however my friendship with her is not enough to ask her to marry my character. Leah is one of the eligible marriage candidates that I have the highest friendship with (Harvey is the other one). I decided to marry Leah rather than Harvey because when I checked the benefits of marriage with her, it was better for me than the benefits with Harvey (for one, Leah sometimes gives my character coffee).
Aside from that, I usually marry girl characters in my games (like in The Sims 4) because girls are cute and it’s way of living out my queerness even just in games.
Anyway, I’d probably divorce Leah so I can marry Abigail. Haha! I’m just waiting for the baby that Leah and I adopted. I currently have 8 hearts friendship with Abigail, and once that reaches to 10 hearts, I’ll marry Abigail.
I’m almost done with the Community Center! I have finished almost all the bundles, aside from the Fish Tank. I only lack the catfish in the River Fish Bundle, and the Tilapia in the Ocean Fish Bundle. Oh man.
It’s Fall in my farm right now. I’m finally envisioning what my farm would look like once it’s completed.
Oh well, this is supposed to be a short gaming update about my farmhouse, but I ended up rambling. GTG, I’m going farming again.
Our baby chickens and turkeys are two weeks old today. Grow babies grow!
The turkeys have been sprouting WINGS real fast, though they can’t do much with them yet, and have figured out the roosting bar. They would like to EXPLORE, but they are still too little, so we continue to confine them, and they spend a lot of time looking wistfully out the window.
The chicks are learning about roosting as well. They mostly still sleep together on the ground under their heat lamp, on warm nights and cool ones, but during the day I’ll often find them on the edges of the wooden box, or surprisingly high up on the ladder. They can even fly a little! They are very cheepy all the time, and not particularly happy about me coming around.
Both types of birds got a chunk of sod the other day, to explore and play with and eat bits of grass. I think they enjoyed them; I’ll replace with fresh soon.
Sadly, we lost another chick yesterday/the night before. One of the brown leghorns. I don’t know why, just that I found her splayed and dead in the morning, in the middle of the sleeping area, though nothing was visibly wrong with her. She’ll go to our snake guy, so this isn’t entirely a waste, but I’m still bummed about it. Up until now we’d only lost the one that we had to put down the first day (maybe shipping trauma - 50 birds in a small box is a lot - or deformity, we’re not sure, but his legs didn’t work right and he was struggling to breathe evenly) so I thought we were doing well, and the older they get the sturdier they are, so I was surprised to lose one for no known reason on day 14. Still, we have more than we ordered, as we started with about 54, so we’re still ahead on actual future birds. See, if you order more than a few birds, they chuck a couple extra in the box at the hatchery, to cover expected losses. So we are still doing a little better than the expected loss, or so I tell myself. I am making a point to check on them a little more often - I’m home anyway, after all - to see if I can spot any problems as they arise.
Also in new life: 5 baby bunnies born two days ago! From my girl Poppy. She’s reliable and a good mother, even if she doesn’t have the biggest litters. She’ll have one more before taking a summer break. Blossom is due any day, /if/ she’s pregnant. I failed to immediately make a note of whether I actually bred her or not, and promptly forgot, but at least I remembered to write down the “add nest box” reminder for myself afterwards.
There are four buns in the tractor, ready for processing any day, and another litter waiting to take their place. I need to build another tractor! They really enjoy grazing, and though it must slow my growth rates down some, it also saves on storebought feed. And mowing.
I have been noticing a trend of smaller-than-ideal litter sizes lately. Mostly 5 or 6, when I’d like to be seeing 8-10, ideally. Is this inbreeding depression? All my current rabbits are related, more or less closely, but is it enough to cause that, or do I just have a line of small litter size does? I believe this will be helped when I bring in an outside buck for crossbreeding. I may get an AmChin from a local guy, though idk if his rabbits have the stats I really want (growth rate, heat tolerance, litter size, breedback rate) bc he doesn’t seem to track that, really. Or I may keep looking for another source, for a NZ or Cali buck. Not a lot of $ for that these days, but I’ll make it work.
