Good grief it's like being 6 years old and waiting for Christmas, as we all anxiously await the office/store being done. Suzanne is making plans to get her office furniture out of storage as soon as she can and finding someone to unload it.
John has been painting baseboards, to be put up now that the floor is done. Mike has the electricity done although the A/C still isn't in and operational. He's been working on the plumbing, so now the commode works and the sink. We have a porta potty, but this will be much better for visitors. The hot water heater isn't cooperating and so far doesn't want to work. I'm sure Mike will change it's mind when he comes back. LOL
The last big project will be putting the shelves in the store room and rounding up all our supplies and equipment to fill them up. Haven't bought the shelves yet, but we pretty much know what we want.
The donkeys have almost complete access to Burroland now. We haven't had rain, so all the yummy weeds are just about gone. The only time they are in their pens is to eat twice a day and if we have tours coming.
Tours started up the 1st of Sept and we've already had quite a few. It didn't take even one complete tour for the donkeys to see the red solo cups and figure out it was "showtime" again after a 3 month layoff. Tours will really pick up when the winter visitors come back probably late Oct.. Many of them come out here every year to see the donkeys.
This was the day they got to go into Burroland after being on just the 10 acres for awhile, so they didn't have access to the mesquite beans.
Cochise was front and center when I "sneaked" over to open the gate. I don't even know where he came from all of a sudden, he was there.
Although he was first the others weren't far behind.
This is Debra, one of our volunteers. I think she was picking up poo, but had to take time out to visit with Muchacho. In rescue you aren't suppose to have favorites, BUT, she seems to have a thing for the old guy and he really enjoys her attention.
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This is Kris and Waylon, the newest boys enjoying being out and about. Counting the legs it looks like there is someone else behind Kris......!!! LOL Kris needs to lose some weight, you can see the fat pockets on his sides.
We had a medical problem with him and he had to stay in his pen for days, had the vet out twice. Since he is heavy it's pretty much a fact that he has fatty liver disease, which isn't unusual for donkeys. Add to that, our abundance of greenery because of the rain we've had. One very prevalent plant is pigweed. Some donkeys won't eat it, some will. The one's that do eat it, become addicted to it and will not eat anything else. It's high in carbs, 16% protein, good source of lysine which is good and high in nitrates which is bad.
When they are fat if something changes their eating habits they can develop hyperlipdemia which we've dealt with over the years. Eating pigweed exclusively rather than hay by an already fat donkey isn't a good idea.
We ended up giving him Karo syrup 3-5 times a day. Big shot of sugar to make his body think he had plenty of sugar and didn't need to release fat into the blood stream, which can be fatal.
It took about 5 days for him to start eating on his own again. Whew.......!!! The survival rate is about 50%, so we were lucky. We've only lost one over the years and she was carrying a 10 month old foal. That was our first one and we've learned enough to save the others since then.
This is little miss Buttercup with her dad Marvin Sandoval. She's not very big but she holds her own with the big guys.
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