(I won't tell anyone else, but I already suspected this from what the Farmers' Almanac and my critters were showing me.)
Hey Julie friend! U R only 45 miles away from us. What are your critters showing you and how?
Our ponies started "hairing up" in August - but for this time of year their winter coats are VERY, VERY light this year. Nothing like last year at this time. Everyone keeps saying it's going to be a "hard, long, cold" winter and ours aren't showing it - for the first time in years. Even Cat, our farrier, was surprised yesterday by how light the coats are on all of the senior mares - usually the first ones to hair up heavily.
The only two that have appreciably thicker/longer coats are Bit and Kechi and I feel more because of their issues than because of indices of winter...
Some of our birds are getting a bit fluffier, but again, rather on the slow side.
I have lots of acorns on the ground - the squirrels are jumping tree to tree (I think I've identified at least 3 different ones) but they don't seem to be too industrious. Usually, by now, a lot of the acorns are gone. Of course, some of that may have been due to "Mathew" beating the trees right out of their produce? Not sure...
Working on a couple of pics I took yesterday. Hmm, going thru pics, I don't have any good representations from previous years - in same time frame on same ponies. Maybe Cheri, doing her pics now and will post. These ponies will hair up more going into winter and they should be heavier coated before really severe weather hits in January/February, but it's surprising to see how "light" they are when it's already November and they started growing coats clear back in July/Aug and were so miserable in the heat wave we were having then.
**********
Holly - how is Sassy doing now?
Our 3 mares still have udders - which surprised me UNTIL I realized that 2 of the mares are sidling up to the round pen where the babies are and allowing them to nurse. That is more KoKo than GG - Koal is still "crying" for his mom, too, where as the fillies, even Jynx, have stopped. Kechi also still has a bit of an udder BUT she didn't get her feed stopped which would have significantly reduced the udder size faster.
