Monday, June 25, 2012

June 25th - 8:30pm

Back to work after a very fun weekend! Rode Buck, Justinian, Pastrocito, Herodes, Lion, Jour and Twilight. A pretty simple day riding wise after everyone had Sunday off. Had to move quickly though to leave the afternoon open for foal branding!! Which I don't think anyone was actually excited for but trying to at least sound optimistic about it. Mostly I stayed out of the way and did my treatments/whatever else needed to be done while the guys handled the foals. Rodrigo stayed over into the afternoon to help and thank goodness he did as it was a little wild. First each group of foals had to be brought out, tied up and sedated. Which wouldn't have been bad if the foals didn't only know us as crazy creatures who make them go places they don't want to and stick plastic on their heads (nylon halters). And the sedative had to be given IV. After that Martin took DNA sample and implanted the micro chip so he can register his foals and enter them in the data base. Which is actually a really cool idea. I have never dealt with micro chipping horses but it definitely seems like a good idea. No more horses ending up places and no one having any idea about who they are. One scan of their neck and you know. Very interesting. And I like that, at least in our case, the owner could do it himself. Definitely something to look into. After the micro chipping came the branding. And here it is hot branding. Metal shaped into numbers and stuck in a fire. Definitely not fun stuff. Each foal got branded at least twice. A number on the left that is the year they were born. Today that was a #1. Then a number on the right that is what number the foal is. With the two foals at Baral branded as #1 and #2 we did 3-15 today. So those last 5 foals got three brands. And Martin doesn't do the hip brands that mark the horses as Sillio Argentino (Argentine Saddle Horses) or they'd have gotten a nice round 4 brands. Im not sure any of the foals were exactly well behaved for the process despite the sedation but some were still better than others. The fighters were still fighting and the ones that gave in pretty quickly since arriving here gave in pretty easily again. They're different temperments are interesting. Makes me wonder which type makes the best competition horses/which Id like the best. The ones who fight some or give in quickly or whatever. After the branding the foals were left to wake up some before being put back in their stalls. Some of the foals just flat out laid down which was kind of amusing. One even had to be branded laying down as he just gave up and laid down while they were doing the micro chip. Needless to say he was one of the easiest to do.
So as always life at Rancho Pampa is nothing but interesting. Riding the crew again tomorrow morning and then who knows what!

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