We delivered them this afternoon, let them out of the trailer, & they disappeared into the brush, well they did after Zorro had a dust bath in the powder dust that covers most of the open area. He thought that was great. Maddie was too busy running around trying to see everything.
THIS IS WHAT MOST OF THE 20 ACRES LOOKS LIKE, THEY'LL HAVE TO MAKE TRAILS THRU IT.
Bill got some hay pellets. to "chum" them in with. We also took him a bell to use to call them in. He has a bale of hay, but I seriously doubt that he'll need to feed them. Maddie hit the ground with her head down chomping away. It's all native grass which shouldn't be really high in sugar & starch. Once they are there for awhile, they should eat more like a "wild" burro would & hopefully won't gain weight, they are both in pretty good shape right now.
On the way home Bill called our cell phone to ask a couple of questions. I asked if he'd seen them, & he said they kept coming thru the area by the house, & in fact Maddie was licking his arm, even as we spoke. She really picked him out when he was here last week, followed him all over the place, & tried to put her head on his shoulder.
Remember I said the road into their place was like a tank proving grounds? We checked the distance & the time today. It took us 15 minutes to go 1.4 miles, which works out to about 6mph. I don't recall us going that fast.........!!!! LOL At least we got the donkeys there without bouncing them around.
I was worried about how Chantilly would take Zorro not being here. She was pretty much bonded with him, although he didn't seem to return the thought. She came in with Tula's gang tonight, followed John into her pen, & seems to be just fine. Donkeys are "in the moment" animals, so they don't carry a lot of memory baggage around with them, at least that's what the experts say. But I would imagine they would recognize each other if they met again, I don't really know for sure. I know Ruger was very glad to see his momma Ruthie after being separated a week. And Ruthie latched onto her little boy & is busy mothering him & making sure the other donkeys don't get too close to him. He's about a year old & almost as big as she is, but I guess she's still going to take care of him.
Tomorrow morning we'll be taking Boaz into the vet clinic. Courtney will meet us there, we'll get him sedated, so she can work on his nasty front feet. They are cracked & split with quite a bit of damage to the coronets. I hope it isn't permanent, but it looks pretty bad. I'll probably have the vet look at his sarcoid on his leg & see what she thinks. I think most vets inject chemo drugs into the sarcoid to get rid of them. That can be quite expensive. There are a lot of old time home remedies too. It actually is smaller than it was when he came. A lot of times sarcoids will disappear spontaneously, the general opinion is, the immune system goes into hypermode & attacks them. If that is true, I think when he was gelded the 23rd of Dec, & he developed swelling on his belly, his immune system went after the infection from the gelding, & took a swipe at the sarcoid. Two times after he came here the whole thing turned into a bloody mess & shrank in size. But once I started giving him Tucoprim for the belly infection, we didn't see any more changes in the saracoid............SIGH.......!!!!!!!
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