the Ranch Blog

I happened to snap this picture as I was out taking pictures of my colts for registration. These two fillies would probably be my picks of the 08 colt crop. They’re both extremely gentle. We can walk up to them in the pasture and scratch them. They also have the right color, breeding and conformation to work for most any purpose.

We recently hit a situation in which we needed to wean a colt at 60 days. I was actually a little nervous about doing this. At 60 days a colt needs a lot of nutrition to keep growing but isn’t really old enough to process normal feed. After a little research, I found out that the best feed to try to get him on would be special milk pellets designed for weaning colts early. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get my hands on any of them, and most people I spoke with about weaning this colt were pretty sure it’d be hard to get him to eat the pellets anyway. I ended up purchasing some multi-species milk replacer. This colt drank the milk like crazy from the evening of his weaning. He’d drink about 2-3 gallons every four hours and still want more. He actually gained a bit of weight as I was weaning him and held up to the stresses of it really well. Below is a video I took of him drinking his milk.

Hi Amanda

I just wanted to thank you for selling Kip to us. We took her to the mountains the weekend for three days, and she was absolutely wonderful! We went across raging rivers, up steep hills, and back down again, across steep narrow trails, and she never took a misstep! She is so level headed, and takes care of me! Nothing bothers her - we crossed lots of rivers and streams, and even crossed a bridge over two very fast moving streams. I am extremely impressed with her, and you can know that she has a home for life. I’ve attached a few pictures for you. She’s definitely gotten more friendly and we’ve made a “cookie monster” out of her. It was well worth the wait to get her. Thanks again!

Michelle

Michelle & Kip on a six mile Saturday afternoon ride.

Michelle & Kip enjoying some quality time together.

Michelle & Kip getting a drink at one of the quieter streams they crossed.

Our yearlings were being so sweet today that I just had to snap a picture. We had a beautiful day today. It was clear, still and sunny and about 55 degrees. The horses loved the warm weather.

Hosting your own website is cheap and easy. I host my ranch site through aplus.net. They have a fairly easy to use console and they’re cheap. I paid a little less than $100 for a year of hosting and two free domain registrations. Aplus’s support staff are available by telephone and live online chat pretty much 24/7, and they seem to have pretty good turnaround for support requests. I think just about anyone would be able to get a basic site up using aplus’s administrative tools.

Father’s Day this year our young trainer killed our horse. He beat heck out of her and the sheriff and DA are of no help. Horses are expressly excluded from thge Texas penal code cruelty section. I need a horse attorney that can help us on contingency.

This category is dedicated to any and all questions about how to create or maintain a horse-related Web site. My husband and I both grew up on ranches raising horses and cattle. I left the farm when I turned 18 to attend college and after a bit of trial and error decided to major in computer science and mathematics. I have now returned to the family farm where my husband and I have set up our own little ranching operation, and I pursue a career in Web site development as a Web systems developer for a fortune 1000 clothing retailer. Feel free to ask questions or post comments on how things should be done on the Web in this category. I’ll do my best to answer questions or, if I can’t answer, point you in the direction of someone who can.

I’m not sure the powers that be have thought things out very well when it comes to the recent legislation impinging on our rights as horse breeders to sell horses for slaughter when necessary. It seems to me that this legislation will actually lead to more inhumane treatment of horses. There’s no longer anywhere to take a mare who’s too old to breed or a gelding who comes up lame or a maverick horse who’s dangerous to be around. Now, apparently we’re supposed to just feed these horses until they die, but very few people will have the resources to provide for an animal that can no longer function. All this legislation will do is cause breeders and horse owners to turn these animals out and wait for them to die while depressing the horse market as a whole. I wouldn’t exactly call this humane. Luckily some of the slaughter houses are now able to run but as I understand it, they are still not able to process horse meat for human consumption. How is it humane to slaughter horses but not humane to package the meat for people to eat? This doesn’t make much sense to me.

This is the first official post of the Ranch Blog.  This opens this category for discussion.  Feel free to post any comments or questions.