Yesterday, Thursday, was my Sunday. Me and the Hubby went over to the M-in-L's in the morning to do the chores, walk dogs (our Basset, Bubba is kind of particular about where he'll poop), feed chickens, make sure the miniature horses have water. Most of the girls have babies now: Pest (yes, that's her registered name - she kind of named herself), Star Baby (black/brown with a little white star on her forehead), Ima (no clue about the name), B.B. (for Black Beauty), Beauty, Molly. B.B., Beauty, and Molly (her's born yesterday) all have red colts, Star Baby's is starting to turn from the Charcoal color it was born with to the Black/brown of her mother, Ima's might be her washed out, off-white color, and Pest's is a Pinto like her, but mostly black/brown.
The gestation period for a horse is 11 months (and as a human female, that just makes me cringe). We've been watching a horse for a while, as she kept getting bigger and bigger. Her registered name is Fancy Girl, but we've always called her C.B. (Cookie's Baby). The M-in-L calls her a buckskin (sorry, don't know horse colors), she has a tan body, with a black mane, tail and legs. Well, yesterday, I was walking Bubba in the hay field (you know, you can put cheap chain leashes together, then wrap one around your waist and have your hands free!), and Randy was just outside the hayfield, walking down the pasture. I lost him when I turned and went back to the front yard, so I (well, me and Bubba) went back out to the pasture. I found him on the opposite side (the M-in-L's place is roughly in thirds - hay field, middle opposite). He yelled at me to get my cel phone, because he had forgotten his (and he almost never forgets). So I go back to the truck and get my phone. I take it out to him and C.B. is rolling on the ground, but nothings coming out. Randy says he went to look for her when he didn't see her. He calls his Mom (who was going to give blood), but he doesn't have the vet's phone number, it's in his phone. So I walk quickly back to the house and call the vet. We think she's having problems, but we don't know, John, the F-in-L, was the horse guy.
We get a rope around C.B. and get her to lay down (she tromped on my foot in so doing). I'm holding her head down, and stroking her neck. It took a while, but the Vet pulled out the colt - dead. He says it's head was cocked to the side, and when she was rolling around in pain, broke it's neck. He said she had been in labor for hours. He gave her a sedative, a pain shot, and a penicillin shot. And he left. Poor thing, she started to chew off the afterbirth, and was licking the colt. That made me cry.
"Honey, he's dead," I said. Of course saying that doesn't make it any easier - and she is a horse.
Randy got out the trackhoe and buried the colt and the afterbirth, the M-in-L has coyotes pretty bad. And that was all before 11AM. Later on, in the early evening, we moved her to the barn. She was still having some problems walking, the colt's cocked head had pinched a nerve on her right side. But she'll be safe.
The vet said we needed to get her bred as soon as possible, to keep her from having fertility problems. Me and the Hubby just looked at each other, it didn't seem right.
We don't consider her livestock.
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