Draft Horse Birthing Suite
About 3 weeks ago I posted about our Percheron Mares being pregnant. Touchy is due in April-ish and Belle is due in May-ish. I say "ish" because horse gestation varies in length and we don't know the breeding history on these two ladies. Also, babies come when they are ready and don't really care when their "due date" is.
We have an amazing barn on our property, which is honestly the primary reason we bought this property. The barn is originally a large tobacco barn (very common here in Kentucky). However, several years ago the barn was added onto. In the first part of the addition we have a large hallway with 6 standard size horse stalls. On top of the horse stalls is a large hay loft. In the second part of the addition there are several large hog pens (which we use as birth stalls for our sheep and goats), a built-in milking stanchion, and an area with three large feed troughs for horses or cattle. The part with the feed troughs opens to the large pasture and provides shade and covering for our large livestock as well. Once the rainy season is over and we get the barn cleaned out I will post pictures. It really is an awesome barn! However, we realized as birth approached and it is still quite wet and muddy in areas of our pasture that we needed to build a safe place for Touchy to have her baby. Standard size horse stalls are not big enough to accommodate birth, especially when we are talking about a draft horse!
As I've mentioned before money is tight, so we got creative to use what we had on hand to make us a birth stall. We sectioned off an area of our tobacco barn that is probably around 12'x24'. One side is against the anterior wall and another side is against the tool crib, so we only had to fence 2 sides of it. We didn't have a gate so rigged something up for now. We had a partial roll of fencing and some t-posts lying around, which made this project affordable as we didn't buy anything new for it. We used half a barrel as our waterer and then utilized another piece of the partial hay ring I posted about a few weeks ago as well. We set it up in the corner of the stall just as I did in my previous post.
Here is the almost final product. It was late when we finished and by the time we got the horse in it it was too late to snap a good pic. We rigged up some lighting though so hopefully we can get some good pics of Touchy enjoying her birthing suite later.
We have a 105' x 30' tobacco shed and each bay in it is 15' x 15'. We used one of those for a horse birthing area. It's now the pigs' area.
Great minds think alike! :)
So exciting! She has been progressing nicely. I cant wait to see her foal:)
Me either! I feel like I've been waiting forever. Well, I suppose 333 days IS a long time! ;)
Looks perfect, we get Pony pictures, right?
There will definitely be pictures when the foals are born. I expect Touchy to go any time this month. So it's just a waiting game at this point.
Never have seen a draft horse pony! I look forward to it. Like your steemit posts.
I like your etsy store too. I make tinctures, but not salves yet, working on it.
Thanks! :)
I make tinctures as well, but don't sell them online. I generally just make them for my family and some friends. I've found that it is easy to get in over my head and have too many irons in the fire. LOL
I know that feeling! We just bought land out in the country by a large lake, and I am fighting to get it ready for us to move. I like the tinctures, because they last effectively forever. I also supply my family, so I make large batches. It is hard to ship tinctures too, so I understand making salves. I also use formentations, and some poltices, but I make most of our medicines in herbal capsule form.
You have a nice store on Etsy, I have been thinking about that myself. I make jewelry (like they have in the jewelry store) and have lots of stock, but I am hurting for time.
Praying that Touchy has an easy delivery, and a healthy colt!