The Last Milk

Our little blind foal Cash is about to turn 6 months old, so we've been slowly weaning him off his mare milk replacer for the past several weeks.  He's enjoyed -- and thrived -- on this milk every day since he arrived here back in March at only 4 weeks of age.  It's basically powdered milk, but rich and creamy and ohhhh soooo tasty!  He would nicker and prance and get so excited every time we walked into his stall with the milk bucket.

And, if truth be told, he could get just a tad cranky if you showed up without that milk bucket!  If a horse could pout, he'd be pouting.

But today was the final day for milk, and we had the video camera rolling this morning as he slurped up every last bit he could find in the bucket.  Usually he'd drink the entire thing in 30 seconds, but today he went for over a minute and a half to get the job done.  It's as if he knew this was the last milk he'd ever get.  (I edited out a chunk of that at the beginning so the video wouldn't be so long.)  As you'll see, once he finished the bucket Alayne was holding, he came after me looking for more.  The reason he did this is because I've usually been the "milk man" since he arrived, so he figured I must have more somewhere.

So I get to be the one who shows up at 9:30 p.m. tonight to close up the barn without milk to offer.  Uh oh.  I think I'd better have a treat of some sort as a peace offering.

(After giving him his milk we took him out to pasture for the day, and foolishly I left my video camera behind in the barn ... because when I turned him loose, he trotted out a bit, stopped to listen for Lena and Nikki and Destiny, and then galloped across the pasture right towards them.  It was such an amazing sight, I just wish I had it on video for you to see!)

Comments

[Mary Young]

What a fiesty boy! You better be careful, he's gonna be searching for that bucket when you come to see him! it was so funny in video how he was after Steve for more milk!

[Nina]

Cash is a big boy now.....full of character and spunk!!! So glad you saved his life and that he is going to enjoy life at the ranch.

[maggie]

was that a cat meowing in the background??? poor cash is going to go through milk withdrawals...i know we never succeeded in getting our cats to go to just plain cat food bc milk was such a special treat and soooo much better tasting!
and i do like the radio feature, although your blog posts are so much fun bc you write very well! maybe a combination of writing and radio??

[Janet]

What an incredibly sweet, if not maybe-spoiled-a-little, horse. I bet he has a beautiful gait when he canters. Quarter horses have the cutest butts in the world.

[Shirley & James]

The videos are so much fun to watch and I'm glad you incorporate both still pictures and video. Cash is so sweet and now he has to grow up a bit--:)