Chrome's Monthly Progress Report

Note: To see previous progress reports please click here. This months progress report and future ones can be found under the new Progress Report label.

Sorry I didn't get a new picture. This is from yesterday.

Date: 6-19-10
Age: 13 months
Height: 14hh (4ft 8in/56in/142cm/1.4224m)
Height Gain: Half an inch.
Weight: Approx 620lbs (281.2kg)
Weight Gain: I'm beginning to think weight tapes just aren't very accurate for growing horses. I doubt very much that his weight hasn't changed. Weight tapes just don't really take into account the horse's height, bone size and growth. Chrome is in a narrow bodied, long legged stage so that's probably why it's saying he hasn't gained any weight. I don't care though because he looks good to me. :)
Progress: I'm now feeding Chrome beet pulp with his Safechoice and I saw a difference almost immediately. He's still getting a little over half a square bale of hay a day, but we've finally found a source of good quality round bales so soon he'll have free choice grass hay which will make him happy. He's gotten to where he's stretching his giraffe neck up to eat oak leaves out of the trees!! I know oak can be bad for horses so we're going to trim the lower limbs and I'm sure he'll stop when he has a round bale to munch on twenty four, seven. Other than that he's doing great. I didn't do anymore walking, clicker training or hoof work. Bad me. Between the heat index of 107F every day and my work schedule I just haven't felt like doing anything. I did hose him off though as you saw in yesterday's post. :)
Goals: My goal for this month is to start walking him again and to keep working on hosing him off and fly spraying him. I forgot to mention that I fly sprayed him the other day while he was eating . . . without a halter!!! I'm not going to give myself anything else to work on for now until it cools off some. It's miserable. We haven't had rain in weeks and the tiny bit we got today just evaporated. I love summer, but not droughts.

Sorry I don't have any pictures to share today. I've been focusing on editing the ones I have instead of taking new ones lol. Later!!

Bath Time

Judi asked what kind of snake was in the picture I posted yesterday. It is a speckled King snake. They aren't poisonous and actually eat poisonous snakes so we never kill them. Here is a website that shows several different kinds of King snake if you're interested. So if you ever see one of these please don't kill them. :)

My second bit of news is that we've hatched out our first turkeys! My family had turkeys when I was a kid but we always bought them already hatched out from a hatchery or feed store. These turkeys that we've actually hatched out came from eggs we got from one of my husband's coworkers. They are soooo cute!

Newly hatched turkey on the right and a chick on the left.

Aren't they cute?!

Learning to walk is hard work. :)

And some really exciting news! I hosed Chrome off for the first time last night (not a full bath, just cooling him off some since the heat index has been 105F to 107F lately). I just did his chest to see what he thought of it and although he wasn't too happy he didn't fight me. I hosed him off again this morning because he just sweats standing out in the pasture doing nothing. I need to hang his fan so he can really cool off. He did really well! In the pictures below please excuse my appearance. I usually wear ugly, ratty clothes when I'm working with the animals because I can't afford for them to ruin my nice clothes. :)

Not sure if he's telling him to back off or just saying hi lol. Zep was slowly creeping closer to me. :)


First I sprayed his feet. I don't have a sprayer because Chrome chewed up my hose and we had to chop the end off. We haven't put an end back on it to hook the sprayer up to lol.

Then I sprayed his chest. He doesn't look happy, but he was pretty calm. I think it was just really cold.

I let him sniff the stream of water . . .

. . . and he stuck his nose in it, spraying water everywhere. He liked playing with it. :) He'll be a water baby in no time.

Then I started spraying his side. He hunched up a bit, but didn't try to get away.

The water was cold on his back but I could tell he was enjoying it. He quickly realized water feels good on a hot summer day. I wish they had a pond to play in.

He's even resting his hoof here. :)

Such a good boy.

He even started to relax.

His head shot back up when I got his haunches! He wasn't even scared (notice the slack in the rope at all times). The cold just startled him. :) I think he'll learn to really enjoy being hosed off soon. All of my horses, no matter how much they hated water when I got them, learned to love being hosed off in the summer, so much so that they would come up to me when I filled their water trough and asked to be hosed off. :) Chrome will probably be that way, especially since he showed an interest in playing with it. :)

Well, I guess that's all I have to report today. Oh well, I was offered an assistant manager's position at my second job that I've only been at for a month. :)

In A Hurry

Last night I edited close to three hundred pictures!! I still have probably 500+ to edit. I need to stop taking pictures lol. Unfortunately when I upload from my digital camera it puts them on my computer really big, like 3000 pixels, so I have to shrink them all or I'd eat up all the space on my computer and blogger account lol. This morning I read blogs and got them from 200+ to about 160. Sheesh. It was hot so I don't really feel guilty for being on the computer all morning.

My husband went to the doctor and they said he has bronchitis again, so he's on medicine for that. Not much else has been happening. Below are a few of the photos I edited. The ones at the bottom are of a snake I found in my feed shed, so if you're squeamish about snakes don't scroll all the way down.

Also check out yesterday's post because I just edited the one I'd already posted so it won't show up new in your Google Reader (if that's what you use). :) Later!