Forever Home Donkey Rescue

Night before last we caught another tom cat in the trap.  Heard him about 3am, went out covered him with a blanket & made plans to call the vet in the morning.  Unfortunately we didn't move the transfer operation from trap to crate to the spa room, & he escaped.  I would imagine that is the last we'll see of him for awhile.  Talked to a neighbor & she said all these cats are from a neighbor that moved out about 3 years ago & just left her cats to fend for themselves.  That's the same neighbor who's son threw rocks at our Forever Home sign out on the road, until it split in two.  I guess waiting for the school bus was boring. 

Snooky & his mom Hobo didn't show up yesterday morning for breakfast, but she came in later in the day.  We worried about Snooky & he finally showed up about dark.  Yesterday was really windy all day, & I guess he hunkered down somewhere to wait it out.  Hobo is still hanging around the yard & playing with the "kids".  It's amazing the difference in her before & after surgery. 

Yesterday afternoon when the wind was blowing like crazy John looked out & Quilla was chasing Sha'ba.  THAT IS "NOT" ALLOWED..........EVER......!!!!  I ran out & got in Quilla's face & then went to find my little man.  He was standing by the side of the house & ran when I got close to him.  He is blind in one eye & doesn't hear very well.  He finally let me get close enough to put my hands on him so he knew who it was,  & then followed me to his pen.  

Quilla is about the most un-confrontational animal on the property so we were really stymied on what was going on.  My best guess is, the wind was blowing & everyone was just standing around waiting for it to quit.  Either Quilla or Sha'ba moved & Quilla got into Sha'ba's space without Sha'ba  knowing it.  Sha'ba panicked & started running.  Since a lot of times they run when the wind blows, Quilla probably thought it was time to run, & took off too.  The more he ran the more Sha'ba ran, etc.  The wind is blowing again today, but everyone is behaving themselves, so far. 

 

John finally got the Ritchie waterer operational.  I didn't know if the donkeys would even drink out of it, but quite a few of them, especially BlackJack have decided it's a pretty good place to get a drink.

It's like a commode, they drink the water out, & it fills up again.  The little red circle is where you drain the "bowl" to clean it out, after you turn the water off inside the red cover.  Until the wind quits blowing it isn't going to do any good to clean it out, I'm afraid.  We'll still have buckets in all the pens, but this will give them access to fresh water all the time.

This is what we are doing with our extra corral panels right now.  Not very attractive, but this time of year, the donkeys love to strip bark & break limbs, guess the sap is running. 

This is what they do to the trees, we keep telling them there isn't going to be anything left to eat if they kill all the trees, but they just keep tearing them up.  Right now they are after the gray thorn.  We had some barbed wire around the salt cedar, in fact it's the barbed wire Wookie got caught on & had to go to the vet.  John caught BlackJack straining as hard as he could to reach the salt cedar.  That's when we decided we needed a plan B.  We've talked about putting a fence around the "woodsy" area north of the house, but haven't figured out what we could use that wouldn't look like a fence.  I'd love to use a split rail, but we figured it wouldn't last very long, they'd just add it to their diet.