Posts Tagged ‘pasture grazing’
Finding Fun
I wish I could say it’s all fun and games having a new “teen” pup that has found himself in an unfamiliar environment. At times Asher behaves like a big goof, but he is also a product of having needed to fend for himself to find food to eat in his earliest days. Left unchecked, he quickly resorts to searching for anything edible. Asher’s body is long and that means that when he stands on his hind legs, he is tall.
Nothing on our counters is safe from his reach, and at this point, he has not learned any self-control that would keep him from taking ill-advised risks to reach potentially edible rewards. We are being tested on every decision we make. To free ourselves from being constantly on guard, we have to think ahead and put up timely barriers to confine Asher to a safe space when we can’t be giving our full attention to his activities.
Still, there has been plenty of fun to be had.
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He is proving to be a good on-leash walker and only chewed through the leash one time while Cyndie was distracted with digging up invasive garlic mustard plants. He played well on the zip line in the backyard and rolled around in smelly leaves on one of our walks.
While on the phone to register ourselves as the owners who adopted Ash, Cyndie learned the paperwork indicated the dog was given his name because he was found on Ash Road. Ash R. I like that we will be going with the name, Asher.
The other names most often used yesterday were, Down and No.
Cyndie made great progress in teaching Asher to stay until she says he can release. We want to teach him that we go through the door first and then he can follow, and that exercise will go much more smoothly when he understands and obeys the “Stay!” command from which we could proceed.
Meanwhile, the horses are having fun because we have been opening up the hay field to them again during the daytime.
They had been confined to the paddocks for a few weeks awaiting the fields to get dryer and the grass to get taller. On the occasion of their first tall grass on Monday, they barely stepped through the gate before stopping to graze. Yesterday, I noticed they were walking a little further in, but it wasn’t all about grazing. They showed an interest in taking some serious naps in the grass under the bright sunshine.
My presence with the chainsaw didn’t ruffle them one bit. I needed to cut up a large dead limb that had fallen from the ailing willow tree in the small paddock. While I had the saw out, there were three fallen trees across trails in the woods and one other leaner in the woods between the house and the shop that I was able to clean up. Then it was time to unload new hay bales and stack them in the hay shed.
It was fun to get some productive work done between the sessions of fun with Mr. Hey-Play-With-Me-Some-More.
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Summer Progress
The last few days have felt very much like classic summer days. I guess it is right on schedule as we now find ourselves in the Independence Day holiday weekend. Cyndie headed up to the lake with her mom yesterday and I stayed home to tend to our animals. We weren’t successful in securing coverage allowing us both to be away over the 4th of July weekend this year.
One classic sign of summer for us is the sight of our field converted into hay bales.
This year, Brad, who grazes cattle on our neighbor’s land, had his guy cut our hay field when cutting fields adjacent to us. A win-win for everyone as we wanted our field cut and hoped someone could use the hay, it was conveniently located for them to cut and bale, and it gives Brad a little more hay supply than he would have otherwise had.
Meanwhile, our horses have the back pasture for grazing. Yesterday evening, Delilah and I wandered out into the pasture to pull some weeds and the herd showed up to munch nearby.
The sound of the methodical biting of mouthfuls of grass as the horses torque their heads to break the blades and chew is a wonderful summer soundtrack backed up with songbirds, and the calls of frogs and crickets. It provides a soothing, meditative mood that nurtures my soul.
In contrast, serving up pans of manufactured nutritional feed pellets in the dry, dusty surface under the barn overhang can be a little irritating when things don’t go smoothly. I wish I didn’t so frequently find fault with the conditions as being either too wet and muddy or too dry and dusty. The days between those two states are way too few.
Since we allow the horses some autonomy –usually temporarily separating them into two groups of two– they are able to wander over and check out what the other horse was served, triggering a back and forth movement that foils the soothing sounds of contented munching we so enjoy.
Of the four horses, Light is the most prone to stepping into her feed pan, often tipping it rapidly and spilling the contents. In attempt to avoid them trying to eat the spillage out of the sand, which is not good for their gut, we have tried serving Light’s pan on a rubber mat.
I think we’re gonna need to use a bigger mat.
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Relative Something 