Saturday, January 22, 2011

This morning as I sat and drank my morning coffee I watched my boys at the trough. They're so fun to watch. Tonka was rather annoying with the "I'm not touching you" game while Cisco got a drink. Then he chewed on the edge of the trough for a while, yawned a lot, lifted a hind leg and switched his tail. (I think these were signs boredom and of pain - I didn't give him his special feed yesterday.) Scout tried to irritate Cisco by nosing and nibbling at his flank, then he gave up and they all stood and dozed in the sunshine. That's about all the horse interaction I got today, other than a quick hello as I fed.

Those of you familiar with rain rot or rain scald or whatever you want to call it, does this look pretty much like what you'd expect to see?


Are big lumps like this normal?


I worked outside for over 6 hours today and now that I'm inside, I'm getting more and more sore. There's a lot of moaning and groaning going on in this house right now.

The sun was shining all day, and I needed that so bad. I got my horse chores done and I decided it was time to tackle barn demolition again. So I started a fire. Which was tricky since it rained buckets all day yesterday. My little fire grew and grew I kept feeding it all day until it turned into a huge pile of embers as the sun went down.

Liam and John worked with me, and they got the lean-to part of the barn torn down, saving the good siding for me to build a shed with later.

Katia did a bunch of housework without being told (much) and helped throw a little wood on the fire. But you could see her girly squeamishness as she picked up the wood. She's deathly afraid of spiders. And maybe she doesn't like dirt as much as the rest of us do.

India spent the day mousing, which (as you can see) involves a lot of excavation:
Huckleberry was plumb tuckered out from being overseer all day. He also made sure he was available for company anytime I took a break for a minute to let the fire die down a bit.

It was a great day. Which we all needed. Some things don't need to be blogged, but this has been a very, very difficult week. Nobody's going to die or anything, so don't you worry. :)
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4 comments:

  1. Linda10:11 PM

    My horse, Red, gets it on his back (or at least I thought that's what he had), but it never had bumps like that. He just lost hair. Maybe Red didn't have rain rot after all. :/ I guess that's not very helpful, is it?

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  2. Anonymous3:50 AM

    Some sort of skin thing - I've had good luck with Listerine (for minor cares) or EqySS medicated spray and/or shampoo for more difficult cases. Sometimes it clears up by itself with air and sunlight.

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  3. Linda5:29 PM

    We had something similar on the cinch area...vet said it was a fungus and we used oily iodine on it and it seemed to work. It spreads with cinches and blankets so we had to wash in bleachy water and often.

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  4. Unknown10:18 PM

    I recommend Schreiner's Herbal Solution. I use it for any type of skin irritation or wound. Works great. We dealt with Rain Rot a lot on the west side. First of all it usually was along their spine, from dirt and dampness sitting up there and never getting cleaned off. Then tuffs of hair would come out with a simple ruffle of the hair. There were no scabs or any blood. Just hair would come out and baldness would be below.

    Here is a link for Schreiner's http://www.schreiners.com/FARM_SITE/Farm_wounds.htm

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