spring, baby time, feeding ponehs and parasites.

The last few weeks of pregnancy are the hardest. I am so ready to have this baby.

I'm officially at 38 weeks and we are on baby time, makes it hard to plan things.
Tax lady: how is Monday the 19th for you?
Me: should be okay, unless I am in labor, because then I would be busy
Tax Lady : oooookay would Tuesday be better?
Me: maybe? But if I don't show it's because of the Baby, cause I am going to be tooooo busy to remember to call you.

It was pretty easy to be well behaved when the weather was crap, like yeah I really want to slog around outside in the freezing rain and mud, wahoo!. Well, spring has sprung. It is in the mid 70s with a light breeze, the flowers are coming out and I want to ride so very badly.

My dragon baby is very wiggly, I am still enjoying having him in my belly but at the same time I feel like we are both getting impatient. I'm trying to do all the things now that I won't be able to do later, like take long baths, read books and waste time online.

You can vote here on when baby is born, Joe is convinced it will be the 21st, I really don't know.

Otherwise not much going on that other people would be interested in. I had horrible stomach flu last Friday and a 9 month (!) pregnant, puking woman is the saddest thing ever. Jeep tried to break and I had to take it in to the shop to get Ujoints replaced, glad Joe is much more sensitive to weird car noise then I am, I tend to just turn the music louder which isn't the best plan. We went yesterday to visit friends (they fed me steak, delish!) and skyped with other friends and family :) It was fun to show off my belly to my parents, and really great to see them although I find Skype a little weird.

Critters are good, although maybe more clingy then normal. Sadie is always watching me. Probably because I am always eating.

Another thing that interests probably only me is figuring out this feeding thing. Ponehs have pretty much free choice grass hay, meaning I am their hay slave and bring them more about the time they run out of the previous feeding. Joy looks good (although hairy, muddy and disgusting) Poppy is slightly ribby and Little Horse is skinny again. Picked up more Triple Crown senior, since it is simplest to have all three eating the same grain, TC SR. doesn't make Joy a spooky mess, it is palatable, easily digestible and fairly high calorie. Only issue is it takes Joy a minute to snarfle her smaller amount of food, Poppy takes a normal amount of time and Little Horse is the slowest eater ever. So I separate them and fuss. I have Little up to three pounds of TC SR and oats and this happens daily.

Little Horse: nomnom, what's that? oh it's the dog,  nibble nibble, oh what's over there? hmmmm, nibble nibble
Me: Just eat your damn food!
Little Horse: but you put oil in it and now it has a funny texture
Me: just eat your damn food!
Little Horse: I don't really like it when there is more then one pound of oats per two pound of TC
Me: just eat it!
Little Horse: I think I will stand over here instead, eventually you will let Joy back in and then we can share it.

This is with food she likes, food she doesn't like she paws at and when it doesn't magically turn into something tastier she will dump it all over the ground.

I had fecals done on Joy and Little in preparation for spring dewoming (they got hit last with Equimax in December) Joy had a very low count and Little had an enormous count, more then four times higher then Joy's! I feel awful because I had gotten Little's numbers down and then figured we were good to go with a more normal deworming schedule. I think because she had such an awful parasite problem when she was a foal (I am seriously doubting if her dam was ever dewormed) that her gut doesn't work properly in getting rid of them, I know young horses often have a harder time with parasites but she is different. So the new plan is hitting her with dewormer every other month and looking into treating her for ulcers this summer, I just don't think her tummy works right.

Silly high maintenance beasties. Mine are pretty easy to keep though still, I think my mom is right and horse people just like to fuss.

fencing, baby and me.

Ponehs have been staying in mostly, I got the section of fence repaired and thought all was well until I tried letting them into the second paddock this morning (slightly drier in there, freakin mud!) and Little Horse and Joy were both out within minutes. So Joe gets to help me figure out the fence this weekend, I give up, they can stay in the front paddock and I will search for somewhat less muddy places to put down hay.

 Joy is being a spaz spaz spaz, spooking at invisble monsters and overreacting to e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g. She got into grain during her Grand Wander About on Tuesday, I am not sure what it is about grain that turns into a monster but it is like having two different horses, total Jekyll and Hyde, one is high strung, over reactive, unfocused and quite frankly dangerous. The other is smart, notices everything, quick on her feet and fun. One vet I talked to thought she might be prone to ulcers and the grain irritated her stomach, especially since she has a similar reaction on antibiotics but no way of knowing  for sure without scoping her. Easiest right now to just to keep her on a high forage, low starch diet and avoid the crazies.

It has been kind of a baby-centric week, Monday was Tour the Birth Center Day, since Joe had to work (boo) my dear friend Melissa accompanied me. It turned out to be quite funny, we got lost trying to figure out where we were supposed to get in the stupid building, got sent to the 9th floor then got sent back to the 2nd, found the auditorium and giggled in the back through the powerpoint presentation, toured the Midwife Ghetto (honestly, it's totally set apart from the mainstream birth area, I guess so the nasty natural birthers don't upset the general population.) But the Ghetto is nice, lots of tubs to labor in which sounds wonderful as I adore baths. Then we went and ate yummy Thai food, baby likes Thai food, and strangely enough mushrooms.

Yesterday was my appointment with my Midwife, she is super cool. I ask "are you sure the baby is not freakishly large" and she assures me he is normal size, I go "but you'd tell me if he was freakishly large, right?" and she reassures me that she would tell me and says something nice about my measurements being all good. Just the kind of person you want around when you are worrying about everything. I have gotten kind of huge in the belly area, and feel a lot like sleeping all the time, grocery shopping was a lot of work. Also stopped by the fabric store and scored some nice brightly coloured flannel to make baby blanket, diaper wipes and general baby cleaners, they will be awesome and so much better then the wimpy swaddling blankets you can buy. (thanks for the idea Mom!)

I need to go be "productive" since all I have done so far today is eat yummy food, visit with Melissa and feed critters. I guess by "productive" I mean watch TrueBlood and make baby blankets, whatevs, it works.

November, really?

Getting on to winter, the feel in the air has changed.

Had a good Halloween, went to a party as The Green Fairy, funnily enough the corset didn't fit three day later so my timing was good. The picture was taken at 1am, so I am more then a little faded but my makeup looked really good.

We are heading up to the bridge tomorrow to visit with family and friends who are driving down from the Upper Peninsula. Should be fun, going to be camping at a friend's cabin in the woods, I am so excited to see my mom and sister. Joe is heading out for work next week and it might be just me and the critters, which is ok but I will miss him. He will be missing the ultrasound as well which really bums me out.

Ponehs are getting fuzzy, Joy is pretty fat. I should take some recent pictures. I put Baby and Poppy on Triple Crown Lite which they seem to like, Joy is getting TC Senior since it lower in starch and I need to wait and see how she does on it. Just been trailriding lately, which is relaxing but I feel a little guilty since I am not working on anything special, but then I go "oh yeah, I'm pregnant and this is just fine"  I do need to improve her "dressage under distraction" before next show season though.

I need to go to bed, we are going to have an early start tomorrow.
So not the most exciting post ever.

I have a yearling!

I forgot to make a post about Dancer, she is now just over a year old.


The little filly I got last year as a companion for Joy is now a yearling, I missed her birthday so she gets her own blog post! She was a freebie, Arab, registered, and has a very sweet temperament. Overall I am very pleased with her, She had a huge parasite load when I got her and it took some time to get her healthy. But she is looking great now. She has a very interesting temperament, really calm and inquisitive.

Baby Dancer

Big girl Dancer

The Ladies

Hey!

The big things to getting her gut healthy were a good rotational deworming with frequent fecal checks, probiotics, a good diet with appropriate vitamin/mineral supplementation.  I fed Triple Crown Growth when she needed extra calories this winter and she gets Glanzen Complete as a supplement, in addition to the kelp and herbs both the horses get. Her first fecal was positive 1200 Stongyles eggs per gram and 100 roundworm egg per gram! She mildly colicked and pooped worms out after her first dewoming, which was a half dose of pyrantel pamoate. I put her on monthly rotational deworming for the first six months with periodic fecal checks. I feel the addition of a good quality mineral supplement helped a lot as well.

Had a great trail ride on Joy  day before yesterday, she was little hot but we had a lot of fun. yesterday we were to busy visiting friends to ride. I will have plenty of time to ride this week though, hopefully the weather will stay good :)