Farm Interrupted

After a week away from the farm, it's good to be back. Animal Planet got old pretty quickly. Even very good hotels do not serve fresh eggs and real cream for your coffee. My only entertainment, besides a tour of the lovely Tech campus by one of my colleagues and an evening spent with the Treasurer of our rescue (a veterinary student at the University- Hi Beth!), was TV. In a moment of self-discovery, I realized that my tolerance for television has somewhat diminished over the past few years. I averaged about five minutes of presidential politics before clasping my hands tightly to my ears and singing "lalalalalalala!!!" I needed brain bleach. Time to tune out the media until after the election.

I also deeply missed my animals and my best friend and companion in life. Tom did a great job of keeping everything running. All the animals are fat and happy and we have had no more geriatric losses. We also avoided any impact from the very impressive Hurricane Ike, which did us a huge favor by hitting the Gulf rather than the east coast. Our sympathies go out to the folks in south Texas, though. It appears that Josephine is breaking up into an unorganized storm, the grass is growing from all the rain we got from Hanna, and we may actually get a small second cutting of hay, which would be nice to have this year. The calves are leading like perfect ladies and Rosebud, the mini Jersey cow, appears to be in heat. The Coer di bue, Cream Sausage and Egg Yolk tomatoes are doing really well. The fields have become lush again, so our metabolically challenged horses are muzzled (again).

That last sentence probably needs some explanation. Horses, like people, need to regulate their blood sugar in order to prevent damage to their capillaries and organs. Some horses, like some people (diabetics), have problems doing this. They generally fall into two groups: horses that are insulin-resistant and horses that have Cushing's syndrome, or changes or tumors in their pituitary glands. A very common result of both conditions is laminitis, or the inflammation of the layers of a horse's hoof. Laminitis is very painful and can cause permanent changes that will lame horses for life, or destroy their quality of life. This is the same disorder that Barbaro could not overcome.

One of the ways to combat the problem is to control what a horse eats, the same way you would deal with diabetes in people. Horses eat a lot of carbohydrates in grass and feed. Carbohydrates are easily broken down into sugars by their bodies, so it's important to restrict them. We do that by putting grazing muzzles on our horses. The muzzles allow them to eat some grass without overdoing it. Our metabolically- challenged guys also eat low-carbohydrate feed along with supplements and medication. These measures keep them healthy and happy for years.

In the picture above, Wonder and Star are shown with grazing muzzles. Both of these horses have Cushing's disease (a tumor on the pituitary) and both have suffered hoof and foot damage. Wonder was treated promptly, so his damage was minimal. Star was not so fortunate and has more severe problems. But the continued control of the conditions that landed them at White Bird means that both horses have a high quality of life. They are, incidentally, each others' best friends in the whole world and spend much of the day playing with each other. Ulysses has recently joined them, so they have formed their own little herd of three out of the larger herd in their field.

The masks on these horses, by the way, protect their eyes from insects. These two horses also have an eye disorder called equine recurrent uveitis, so the masks also help to shade their eyes and protect them from wind and dust.

It's been said that "all politics are local" and I truly believe that. We can't control everything in the world or in this country, but there are many things that individuals can do. In our case, we try to make life better for horses that have no other options and we try to make the world slightly better by reducing our dependence on foreign and factory-farmed food. It's good to be back. For now, we'll just keep the TV turned off, try to grow better tomatoes and spend a whole lot of time in the barn cleaning stalls. The latter activity keeps us practiced in the skill of identifying manure, which is especially helpful during election season.