Daisy's expanded pen/pasture!

Expansion, pasture :)

Today we worked on setting up the pasture for Daisy. In the evenings she gets turned out, but we have to keep an eye on her since she has access to alot of stuff. Like the other evening she tried to hijack a Heineken bottle from the recycle bin on the porch!

but the last couple evenings she's put herself up in her pen! its so awesome. Today though she started right in on braying & starting to paw when she realized we were still at the house & not at work. so out she came, she just cruised the property all day until about 3PM, grazing, napping, grazing, napping.

she even did the coolest thing ever! she walked over to where i have a donkey poo compost pile in the corner, backed her butt up to it & topped it off!! I love that they have their 'poo' spots. so she saved me one less pile to scoop!!

She also kept following me around chasing the wagon full of fence supplies & tools. I caught her playing with the bag of zip ties & flinging my box of insulators LOL. It was a chore to keep her outta my stuff!

so 1/3 of the hot wire on the perimeter fence is poly rope ( recycled from a year ago), then I ran outta that so the rest had to be the old fashioned metal wire. Not really too worried about her hurting herself on that stuff since its just at the top of a physical fence. Just enough to keep her from climbing over ( yes she has climbed 4' tall horse fence successfully~!). I put on tons of streamer things so she can see it easily. Installed all the horseguard insulators on the t posts. Those things are awesome, made very well!! The horseguard fence is going to be the separating fence to keep her outta the backyard. right now I'm only doing two strands, eventually going to put up one more so it keeps the dogs out too.

the other modification is that the spot on the shed where she made her 'window' is now going to be a doorway. Seems fitting since she chewed off about half of the siding. So the rest of the remaining siding came off, then we dug holes to put concrete with anchors for the supports we're going to install. Not sure if it actually needs it, but I'd rather have them than not.

set both anchors, and set the post for the new gate. Its actually going to be pretty cool, when she's allowed out ( pretty much ALL the time) the gate will be in the 'closed' position, meaning she can't get into the back yard. When we need to pen her up - the gate will swing inwards to close off the new doorway on the shed!! so rather than have two gates we have one that does both jobs!

here are some fun pics of Daisy today.

pallets, pallets, pallets

I love this stuff.
example of a gate

I'm planning on making a pallet fence to keep the chickens out of the garden

and I seriously might make a pallet shed for hay storage, or even make one out in the pasture as another shelter for Daisy.
this one obviously isnt done yet

OCD pawing

I discussed Daisy's pawing behavior with my trimmer this morning. Donkeys do paw naturally, but Daisy is doing it in an OCD manner. We actually watched her paw when tied ( standing on rubber mats) and watched her body language. She literally paws to get relaxation, her head will droop, her tongue will stick out the bottom of her lips a bit & her whole body will relax. So she's definitely doing it as a vice to ease some sort of frustration.

the problem is that she's wearing down her toes too much, if I dont figure out a way to help curb the behavior there is a good chance she'll actually hurt herself. If she grinds down her toes & gets into the hoof wall theres the chance for infections, she'll most likely end up lame or in the worst case scenario dead :(

So the plan at the moment is to get her onto pasture. I'm not sure how this is going to all work out with her food intake ( since she is on a diet), but everything in the pasture is pretty dry & dead, with maybe on little patch of green grass. I just happened to order fencing last week - because i wanted the option of having a safe area for her. She gets turned out right now but I have to keep an eye on her since there's 'stuff' around the barn & the back of the house. My fence should be here tomorrow, ideally I would like to get it up as soon as possible. This weekend I went and got some metal posts for gates, and 2 bags of concrete to set them in.

All I need now are gates! Planning on possibly making some from pallets - I've been wanting to recycle pallets forever & now is my chance. I think I'll have a strand of hot wire over the top on the ones that she'll have access to, just to keep her from eating them. LOL.

Another immediate idea was a pair of boots from her, but my trimmer talked to two other donk people & they're pretty sure she would figure out how to get them off. The other idea is to shoe her front feet, I put a request out to a farrier I spoke with earlier this year. So I don't really know anything about that yet. It least that would keep the wear down & let those toes grow out a bit.

I personally only see Daisy paw in the evenings before dinner. So there are some ideas there - feed her earlier, or feed her a meal in the afternoon if possible. Today I gave her a pound of hay @ lunch time, but I spread it all over her pen, so she would have to walk around to get to each little pile.

the other issue is pawing while tied, we have to figure out what type of correction should be used to stop that part of the issue.

the last idea is a buddy, right now I just dont have the capital to go out & buy another donkey. And from what I've found there isn't too many out there!
A donkey rescue up north may be getting in a couple more donks - so i sent out an email to foster one. It would be really nice to see her have a friend, if she still has pawing after the environment change, she'll definitely need a friend, if it isn't a donk she might get a goat or a sheep. I'd prefer a donk though so she can get some good socializing in.

I'll keep ya posted!

Hoof progress

9.19.09 Trim

Daisy was a bit of a butt head a couple times, but we took lots of breaks & got the job done. She's really come a long way already with her hooves. I think they're looking great!!

so here's some pics of her feet after her trim!