Caving to Winter

I finally caved, or er Farm Girl did as she is doing mostly all the chores since I'm in a cast until the end of February.  What did we cave to?  The horses.  At present we are down to three, two minis and a full sized horse.  They have been staying out in the small pasture over winter but since our water pipe to the barn burst we have had to haul water to the barn for the sheep and all the way to the small pasture where it is further from the barn yet.  It always seemed a waste of time because if the horses didn't drink it right away, it would freeze over within fifteen minutes.  We are pretty certain they were getting their water intake from the snow which requires more metabolism to consume and burns more calories which in turn forces them to eat more hay which in turn costs me more money.  Or so we've concluded.   So we finally gave in and brought them inside.

Actually we just brought the minis inside.

There isn't a whole lot of stall space available but Farm Girl didn't want to bring Sierra inside, for whatever reason Sierra becomes very quiet and depressed indoors and prefers it outside.  So we moved her closer to the tiny little pasture not far from the barn.

There she will get her helping of hay all to herself and Farm Girl can monitor her fluid intake much better.  But she groomed her and did her feet before turning her back out.  We also did the lambs hooves.

And administered selenium shots to the younger lambs.  And we even had time to head for the hill and enjoy this rare winter day.