Animals Rescued from Flooding in North Texas

I found a post on a blog describing one of the Humane Society of North Texas rescues. Hermine wreaked even more havoc north of us in the Dallas area last week and rescuers had their hands full.

http://challenge.aspcapro.org/profiles/blog/show?id=5376260%3ABlogPost%3A13110

Check out this great photo showing a group of the Tunis sheep being saved. What fantastic temperaments, that's why I love them!

Live Streaming of the AMHR Nationals

Once again this year Flanders Video Productions is hosting the live streaming of the American Miniature Horse NATIONAL show in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The show ends Sunday, September 19th.

http://www.flandersvideoproductions.com/Show1.htm

I wish we could be there this year! It is always a great week of fun with friends and beautiful horses!

Rain from Hermine

We have been receiving a lot of rain from tropical storm Hermine. Not as much as many areas nearby though which is a good thing since we have so much fresh dirt and gravel that might wash away. Some areas received 8 inches a day, I doubt we have gotten 4 over the last 4 days. We can't tell for sure because we pulled the post up that held up the rain gauge.

It looks like we have a foot left before the water enters the overflow pipe.

Happy horses

The horses put on quite a show after being cooped up for several days while we had work being done. I caught a little of the action.

Happy sheep

We finally decided to try giving the Tunis free choice hay. We used 4 cattle panels to contain the hay and will be able to push them closer together as the bale gets eaten.

Fall cleaning...

We are so pleased with how the pasture near the barn looked we got out and worked the last two days cleaning up old piles of lumber and increasing the size of our implement and trailer storage area. Thankfully we had fantastic weather!

I guess I am a homewrecker though... all the critters below (plus some) were in the woodpile we moved.

What a difference!

Graves Excavation finished up the tank and wow, they did a GREAT job. Besides putting in an overflow pipe, they created a great spillway. They also smoothed out some areas were rain had eroded big ditches behind the barn and turnout pens. 

Bob planted rye grass on the fresh dirt.

The llamas watched all the goings on from a safe distance.

The horses finally settled in for some grazing after a quick romp around the pasture bucking and kicking after being penned up for three days.

More progress on the dirt work

More work on the dam on the second day, it is hard to see but there is a huge drop off behind that tree. The spillway has been moved to the near side and the terrace improved to control run off. We had a shower last night and again this morning so I'm not sure if anything will be done today.

Here is a photo of one Blaze's mother, we call her MamaLama. In the background you can see the upper part of the big tank, with the improved dam it should raise the level of the water with the next heavy rain.

King of the Bale

The minis are getting bored waiting for the pastures to be re-fenced.

This is Bella Donna playing king of the bale.

What happened to August?

Well, it just flew by, I guess, since I didn't even have time to post on the blog.
We have been fairly busy around the farm while trying to stay cool in a record breaking hot summer with loads of 100+ degree days. But we did have a fair amount of rain so the pastures held up better than normal and hay is more plentiful. In the photos below you will see we still have green grass (weeds).

We have been trying to make some improvements about the farm, grading the gravel drive was way overdue and while the dozer man was out we asked him about repairing the dam of our biggest stock tank. He got right on the project of putting an overflow pipe in the dam and creating a new spillway that will stop the erosion on the back side.

Here is the tank on Monday of this week.

Yesterday it looked like this.

I can't wait to see it this evening. I will try to get an "after" photo tonight.

Of course to do the project we had to pen the horses up and pull up the cross fencing. I guess it will be a good time to revisit the layout of the pastures.

The llamas are loving a bit of extra freedom to visit the other areas of the farm. This is Blaze down near the front gate. Doesn't she look regal, I just love their attitudes.