The Longear bLog: Winter Wallop

Puget Sound was walloped with a winter storm this week. While not as severe as what I grew up with in Massachusetts, for this area, it was pretty major! We got 8 inches or so of snow, a nice thick layer of frozen rain on top and now it is warmer, raining, and slushy. The donkeys are hunkered down in their shelters, smart enough to not go out in the crunchy snow. As we thaw out, it will be interesting to see where all this water goes!

Along with the white stuff, I also had a neighbor's tree take down my power lines and damage my fence. Luckily for me I am not currently staying at my house but unfortunately for my neighbors, their power was cut!

On another note, there have been a couple of interesting, and kinda gross, observations of the donkeys recently. First, I was cleaning their paddocks recently and noticed something funny looking in Cody's poo. It was a worm. Yuck! Specifically an ascarid, or roundworm, which have a pretty long life cycle so I have to be really diligent about deworming them for a long while. I performed a fecal to see if I could identify any roundworm eggs but instead I found a bunch of strongyle eggs in all of their manure. Since they are so little I had to do a 5 day course of dewormer but, luckily for me, they really liked the dewormer - especially Vida, who would grab the tube with her teeth! She's kinda strange! After the five days of treatment I found another roundworm in the girls' poo so, definitely need to work on that!

My grandparents finally met my little herd and they were greeted with the girls urinating! It's been a strange phenomenon; when one of them goes, the other will follow and pee on the same spot. I am not sure what that is all about! I have never seen such a thing in horses so I don't know if it is some weird donkey thing...

The (great) grandparents seemed to enjoy meeting them otherwise! I had them feed them treats and they were all very well behaved.