Along with my Spring Fest adventure, my April highlight was a first place win in the area livestock judging contest. I’ve always wanted to be a part of a winning livestock judging team, and now I can say I was the coach for one.
We were unable to stay for the awards ceremony, so never officially heard our name called, but heard the story later. When a team that normally won was announced as second place, the room fell silent. And when our chapter’s name was called, they said you could hear a pin drop as the question was asked, “Who? Who is this who won?”
So our team will be competing in the state livestock judging contest on May 21 up at the Purdue University Animal Science Research and Education Center. The top ten teams there travel to national shows.
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On March 30, our first Clydesdale foal was born.
He had a rough start. The birth went well, but the mother was a first timer who didn’t let him nurse right away. The vet had to force colostrum (the first milk a mother gives, it contains essential nutrients and antibodies, and if a newborn doesn’t get colostrum, he’s in big trouble) into him, but that wasn’t enough. We also had to add two bags of plasma to his blood because his antibody numbers were too low.
He made it through that, and then he had some further problems that were beyond us. We took him up to the vet school at Purdue, and they were able to take care of him.
So things were sketchy there for a while, but he made it through, and now he’s a happy foal.
I took the picture below this morning while feeding. He’s nibbling on grown-up grain.
What a beautiful day it was, especially since we have this little guy around.
The Kiwi Hoosier 