Category: Animals

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Ashton Anna Horses

AshtonAnna Pet the Baby Mustang

AshtonAnna’s baby mustang is a female, but doesn’t have a name as of yet.

We realize that this baby mustang doesn’t know what to think about humans, except for what her mother teaches her… which is going to be “scared as beans.” So we’re trying to get the baby as used to us as possible. The hardest part about this is going to be trying to touch the baby since her mother is so protective.

This morning, Anna went out early to feed the horses, and try to the baby used to humans (at least a little bit). So Anna patiently sat in the middle of their paddock – “just being there.”

AshtonAnna's Mustang

After a while, the baby lied down and fell asleep. Aspen, the mom, got hungry, so she went into that little shelter (where her food is) to eat.

Anna sneaked over to the baby and pet it for at least five minutes. I snuck out with the camera to take some pictures. (Mocha even came out to meet the new baby.)

AshtonAnna's Mustang
AshtonAnna's Mustang

Unfortunately, my camera was too noisy, and Aspen remembered about her baby. She walked over to us snorting (in fear) to wake up the baby.

AshtonAnna's Mustang
(That right there is probably the closest Aspen has ever gotten to a human on her own volition.)

This time she didn’t forget to take the baby with her when she went back to eat.
AshtonAnna's Mustang

Overall a great experience for the baby and Anna!

AshtonAnna

Categories
Animals Ashton Anna Horses Ranch

AshtonAnna’s Baby Mustang

What a crazy morning.

(Let me first introduce the latest additions to our “ranch.” Anna purchased two wild mustang mares (females) at auction. Here they are:

Wild Mustangs
Nevada and Aspen.

After purchasing the mustangs Anna was reading through the pamphlet they gave her, and it said there was always a possibility of a wild mare being pregnant.)

Now that you have met the mustangs, here’s this morning’s story:

The first thing Anna tells me in the morning is it looks like the coyotes ran off with our chickens. She couldn’t find them anywhere. So we both went looking for them, and found them a good 70 yards from their coop on the north side of our house.

After we brought the chickens back to their almost franticly lonely duck (poor guy), we decided to take a walk down our driveway to see how our newly-planted, baby trees are doing. We’re about half-way down our driveway and Anna says. “What is that?!?!”

Remaining as calm as possible, I look over into the pen and see this:

Wild Mustangs
What is that in front of aspen? No way, it’s a baby! Enjoy the pics of mini-aspen:

Wild Mustangs
Wild Mustangs
Wild Mustangs
Wild Mustangs
Wild Mustangs

I’m sure there will be more to come from AshtonAnna’s Ranch.
-AshtonAnna

UPDATE: This just in: the new foal is a female (filly)!
We’ll be choosing her name tomorrow.

Categories
Animals Mocha

Mocha Catches a Bigger Snake

Mocha vs Snake…

Round 2…
Fight!

Mocha was sitting on my desk looking out the window as she normally does every day. It was still nice and cool outside, so I opened the window so Mocha could stick her head out… The second the window opened: Mocha jumped out of it, landed 10 feet down, sprinted 20 feet into the bushes and a second later came out with a snake:

Ashanna's Mocha gets a snake
As you can see the snake was about as long as Mocha is!
Ashanna's Mocha walks around with the snake
Then she took the snake under our porch to play with it.
Ashanna's Mocha takes the snake inside

After I took that last picture, I brought Mocha inside so the snake could return to it’s life in the hopes of getting large enough to help Mocha and Rosco in the quest to remove all gophers from our land.

And since I’m posting about Mocha, here are some picture of Mocha being adorable:

Ashanna's Mocha sleeps belly up
Ashanna's Mocha hangs out with the wireless router
Ashanna's Mocha sleeps with the computer cords

Hahaha, what a spoiled cat.
-AshAnna

Categories
Animals Montana Ranch Summer

July 4th 2008

This was a great Fourth of July. This was the first time in at least three years that I was not out at Camp Cherry Valley (CCV). We also had Mike Hedge from LA visiting us. Mike is a (very good) photographer, and he took more than 900 pictures while he was here. Here is what we did on the Fourth of July through Mike Hedge’s lenses:

AshAnna

Here’s some pictures of our house:
AshAnna
AshAnna
(I brought these green urchin shells home from CCV)
AshAnna

Here are some of our Animals:
AshAnna
AshAnna
AshAnna
AshAnna
AshAnna

Our House:
AshAnna
AshAnna

Time for Breakfast:
AshAnna
AshAnna

Time to head out…
AshAnna

To the Lake:
AshAnna
AshAnna
AshAnna
AshAnna
AshAnna
AshAnna

We took a break and visited the Stanfield’s for a boat and some more photos:
AshAnna
AshAnna
AshAnna
AshAnna

Then Back to the lake:
AshAnna
For some water skiing:
AshAnna
AshAnna
AshAnna
AshAnna

We met up with the Grub-Clubbers at Pizza Hut…
AshAnna

And went off to do some Sparklers and Fireworks!
AshAnna
AshAnna
AshAnna
AshAnna
AshAnna
AshAnna
AshAnna
AshAnna
AshAnna

Happy Fourth,
AshAnna

Categories
Animals Ranch Snow

Snow in June

So after our slightly rainy day on the 9th, we woke up to snow on the 10th. By the end of 16 hours of non-stop snowing, we had four inches of snow on the ground… and it didn’t go away for until half way through the 12th.

ashanna's snow
ashanna's snow
ashanna's snow
ashanna's snow

Here are some of our animals in the snow:
ashanna's snow
ashanna's snow

We also had a bunch of birds taking shelter on our front porch.
Here’s a sparrow that Anna caught mid-chirp:
ashanna's snow

Here’s what we’re 80% sure is a hawk:
ashanna's snow
He is so fluffed up he looks almost like an owl.

UPDATE 7/6/08:

The picture is of an American Kestrel, the smallest North American raptor. I believe it is a female because the wings are rusty and not blue grey.
~Ian

Enjoy,
Ashanna