Our Morning Routine

On weekend mornings when Herb is home, we have a nice little routine.  We feed the chickens and let them out of their coop, feed the cats, and then mix the other animals' food.  Then we carry it down the hill and head for the back pasture.  Brandy sees us coming and walks along with us on her side of the fence.

When we get to the back pasture, one of us puts Angel's halter on her.  She's so nice, she puts her head right into the halter!  The other one divides the food between two rubber pans.  Brandy gets one pan in her field while Angel gets led outside her field to eat.  While one of us holds Angel's lead rope, the other one dumps Sara's food in the old bathtub and bangs the can on the gate, calling "Sara!  Sara!"

Pretty soon Sara appears, either from behind the cabin or back in the trees by the pond.  She's finally figured out that her food is in the tub; this allows her to eat in peace by preventing Angel from doing the usual horse thing of "I'm sure your food is better than mine, so I'm going to run you off and eat yours!  Oops!  Now you're eating the food I WAS eating, so maybe it's better, after all.  I'm going to run you off again and go back to my old food!"

All the animals are getting their food mixed with Diatomaceous Earth now.  It's a floury-looking substance that is made of ground shells.  Its edges are microscopically tiny, but also very sharp, and while they don't hurt the insides of humans, animals or earthworms, they cut parasites up and kill them!  So it's an organic wormer that has no toxicity to the animals or land and is fairly cheap.  The only caveat is that the animals have to eat it every day.  Sara gets just enough grain to mix with her half-cup of DE.  Here, she just finished her breakfast.  What does she think of DE?

If you can see Sara's tongue slurping up every last bit, you can tell she doesn't mind DE at all!  I was delighted to finally get this picture!  Sara has such a funny, long tongue which is also as quick as lightning.  Once you see it, it's too late!  I wish you could hear her heavy breathing as she devours her breakfast, but you'd think you were getting an obscene phone call!  Take my word for it, she doesn't mind having "dirt" mixed into her food!