Good Morning!

Another beautiful sunrise from West Ocean City overlooking Ocean City. Moday's always suck but I hope this helps get the day started right.

Daily Times Hires Color Blind Production Manager

Was it just me, or did everyone else get a black and white Comic Section today? You know they print these things way in advance, right?

Today's Wildlife Photo

Foal Rescue (click on any picture to enlarge)

I've stated this in the past and I'll state it once again. There are only a hand full of unbelievable moments and or things you can easily say were the very best moments of your life. My first would be the birth of my children, WOW!

The second in my lifetime was the experience Jennifer and I had last year traveling around the Country rescuing foals that were headed to slaughter.

So everyone is aware, the Thoroughbred Industry has a law in which you must have live contact breeding and no, (AI) artificial insemination. When a very expensive mare has her foal she goes back into heat again within 7 days. This means they separate the mother and foal usually within 48 hours and a nurse mare is brought in to take over nursing this new and very expensive foal. There's also usually an agreement that while this nurse mare foal is nursing the new foal, they allow it to breed once again with another stud there at the farm, which is usually another very expensive horse.

Ultimately the nurse mare is delivering a perfectly healthy and fine foal but that foal is actually considered a "junk foal." These foals are usually brought to slaughter as the Italians, the French and the Canadians enjoy foal meat similar to American's enjoying veal. So these foals are sold to slaughter houses and even the Garment Industry gets involved and they buy the hide. Especially a paint horse hide. They'll actually pay some $50.00 more for the colored hide and they use them for shoes and or purses.

When Jennifer and I learned of this we immediately bought a brand new truck and a new horse trailer and started traveling to wherever these foals were located and we started buying them up by thew dozen. With Jennifer's background as a Vet. Tech. at the Salisbury Zoo for so many years, this was a perfect way to make good use of our new Ranch in Delmar. So we bought a ton of foals paying $50.00 more than the meat market would pay and we brought these little guys home.

As you can see from the pictures, they were anywhere from 1 day old to 2 months old and completely helpless. I'll tell you as well, it would cost us around $150.00 a day in mares milk formula alone just to keep these guys fed properly and healthy. It was the best money I had ever spent in my entire life!

When you see the photos of our horses, these are rescue foals. We adopted out some 35 foals last year and if we receive calls again from any of the farms we purchased from last year we'll be right back in business getting more foals. I'll close this story on this note. Although we have no proof, we believe Jim Rapp and or Employees of the Salisbury Zoo called the State of Delaware on us trying to cease what we were doing, claiming we didn't have proper health certificates to take these animals from State to State and or into the State of Delaware. If you know me well enough, I told the State to go to hell and sue me. They never did.

I have received a ton of e-mail messages asking me to please produce more horse pictures, so here they are.

More Fond Memories

Two Ways To Cool Off

Little Big Man and Ghost use the pond to cool off from all this heat. The post below is another way to cool off.

Only 4 More Months Away!

Not that long ago Ghost was wondering where the heater was.