Belle is doing just fine after her surgery, Friday. She is not only eating her gruel now, but is looking forward to it. I'm feeding her 4 times a day, until she can eat hay again, which should be Thursday. The soaked pellets aren't very bulky & she finishes them in about 10 minutes. Then she starts eye balling the hay everyone else is eating. She spends most of the day, checking the ground to see if any little pieces of hay might have been overlooked.
Justin has finally decided going in his little squeeze pen, isn't worth the hassle, & will stand for me to put his fly mask on & take it off.
Tula is still going in her squeeze to have her mask put on & taken off. You can see her thinking about standing & letting me touch her head without being contained. But she just can't do it yet. That's OK, every day I see a little progress, so we're at least headed in the right direction.
Remington is making progress too. We haven't really messed with him too much, we've been letting him get settled in . But he is such a mellow fellow, I'm not sure he needs time to settle in. He's very curious & watches everything we do. Belle has been spending the day in Tula's pen & that is where the "squeeze" is. So we haven't been taking his mask off & on every day. Thursday we should be back to normal with Belle out 24/7, & then we can start taking his fly mask off.
We think he might have a problem. The last time he was in the squeeze, I checked him to see if he had the right equipment to be gelded. He has absolutely nothing behind his sheath, not even a pouch. We talked to the Vet Friday about him, & she suggested making sure he had no external female parts & that he could drop. He has no extra parts, & drops like he should, he just looks like he's already been gelded. We know the BLM doesn't geld their jacks, so the next step will be to have a blood test to check his testosterone level. Unfortunately we can't let him out with the rest of the donkeys until we know what's going on. An intact jack would be dangerous for the geldings & the girls might think he was cute enough to "date" & we'd end up with a cute fuzzy little baby. The surgery to geld one that hasn't descended is pretty involved from what I've heard. But it would have to be done, otherwise he would be a jack, with all the bad traits they can have.
When I checked him, he almost fell on the ground..........guess he'd never had anyone get that familiar with him before........!!!! Ha!
Justin has finally decided going in his little squeeze pen, isn't worth the hassle, & will stand for me to put his fly mask on & take it off.
Tula is still going in her squeeze to have her mask put on & taken off. You can see her thinking about standing & letting me touch her head without being contained. But she just can't do it yet. That's OK, every day I see a little progress, so we're at least headed in the right direction.
Remington is making progress too. We haven't really messed with him too much, we've been letting him get settled in . But he is such a mellow fellow, I'm not sure he needs time to settle in. He's very curious & watches everything we do. Belle has been spending the day in Tula's pen & that is where the "squeeze" is. So we haven't been taking his mask off & on every day. Thursday we should be back to normal with Belle out 24/7, & then we can start taking his fly mask off.
We think he might have a problem. The last time he was in the squeeze, I checked him to see if he had the right equipment to be gelded. He has absolutely nothing behind his sheath, not even a pouch. We talked to the Vet Friday about him, & she suggested making sure he had no external female parts & that he could drop. He has no extra parts, & drops like he should, he just looks like he's already been gelded. We know the BLM doesn't geld their jacks, so the next step will be to have a blood test to check his testosterone level. Unfortunately we can't let him out with the rest of the donkeys until we know what's going on. An intact jack would be dangerous for the geldings & the girls might think he was cute enough to "date" & we'd end up with a cute fuzzy little baby. The surgery to geld one that hasn't descended is pretty involved from what I've heard. But it would have to be done, otherwise he would be a jack, with all the bad traits they can have.
When I checked him, he almost fell on the ground..........guess he'd never had anyone get that familiar with him before........!!!! Ha!
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