Orphan Foal Season Prep at Chilly Pepper-Miracle Mustang
Our friends at Chilly Pepper – Miracle Mustang Equine Rescue are preparing for the orphan foal season. If you’ve ever wondered what it takes to be a rescue that specializes in critical, injured, neonatal or orphaned foals, read the excerpt from their newsletter and see where your contributions go:
As we prepare for the upcoming orphan foal season, I wanted to share with y’all what is happening. As far as the financials go, here are some of the places your donations are going: (Bless your generous and beautiful hearts)
Monthly board for the 40+ wild horses is $1000.
“Our” portion of the total hay bill is $2100 per month
So the total monthly bill “just for feed and board” is at $3100
The other $4000 being spent on hay is being generously donated by the amazing folks at WIN. She donates the $4000 every single month.
ALL of the wild ones need their hoofers done, and this will be approximately $750 for the use of the facility and the trims.
For shots and worming it will be approximately $50 per horse, which will be $2,000 +
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Cowboy’s gelding and vet visit was $480 (This also included vaccines for Cicero)
We have another vet bill coming up for one of the slaughter orphans, Cicero, and he appears to be chryptorchid. (This is where one testicle is possibly up inside his abdomen and requires a much bigger surgery.) He had an appointment but they could not find his 2nd testicle. The estimated cost for this is between $ 280 up to around $800. We are praying it is closer to the $280
We just ordered Kerosene for the nursery. (The nursery is on it’s own private tank, solely for feeding the nursery heater.)
This was an expense of $428.38 However, without controlling the temperature and providing the necessary heat, the babies will die. This is a huge reason why often folks can rescue an orphan baby and then when they leave it in the barn overnight, doesn’t make it. These fragile babies can not regulate their body temperatures for some time. They need the temperature stable at all times or it can be deadly.
We also will be purchasing hay at Chilly Pepper – Miracle Mustang in the next week or so, which will be about $620 for the load.
There are so many expenses that we don’t think about when we want to “save the horses from slaughter”. However, this is what we are looking at this coming month, and the expected expenses are at approximately $9,000 give or take, and this does not include the $4000 +/- costs to get the two horses to Colorado. We also had expenses somewhere close to $500 when we lost the mare and had to help end her suffering that are not included in the above figures. We are hoping that Cicero will drop, so that cost will be reduced. However, his behavior and the fact that there are females on the property make it necessary to get this done in a timely manner. We also have 2 additional colts in the mix who need to be rounded up and gelded. So again, there will be even more expenses.
The good thing is that the shots and hoofers are not a monthly expense, and we hope and pray that all these horses have their forever homes before we have to do this again. But after the shots and hoofers, the bare monthly minimum costs at this time are $3100 plus whatever expenses there are to re-home these horse kids when we find the right place for them.
I am working on the end of the year tax receipts for those wonderful donations you made in the year 2015. Unfortunately, Matt and I had agreed to transport wild and special needs kids to Texas, and due to the fact we had to load the whole sanctuary, the trip was delayed and so I am later than I would like to be with the end of year receipts. Thank you for your patience with this.
We have started gentling the two little girls so we can get them halter trained and placed. THANK YOU FOR ALL YOU DO TO MAKE THIS POSSIBLE.
This is such a busy time as we clean out and prep the nursery and start to stock it up with much needed supplies. From what we are told the roundups in WA and OR are scheduled to start in March and that will bring more orphans, not to mention the wild kids in NV and the babies that will come this year from the wild ones we are caring for.
Our wish list for the babies is:
Baby Wipes
Vaseline
Thermometers
Yellow Goat Nipples
Plastic Gloves (for cleaning up)
Foal Lac Powder
Foal Lac Pellets
BioSponge
Mineral Oil (We usually go through multiple gallons)
ProBiotics (Equine specific)
Soft Grass Hay
Soft Cotton Lead Ropes
Antibiotic Creams for wounds
French Clay (by Walter Badet) – EVERY BARN SHOULD HAVE THIS
(Heals infections – even mountain lion attacks and rattle snake bites)
Corner black rubber water buckets
Round rubber feeders for grain and munchies for the babies.
You can go to Youcaring – https://www.youcaring.com/let-em-run-foundation-for-55-wild-horses-orphaned-foals-415297 to help us save these horses. Call 530 474-5197 if you are interested in visiting or adopting one of these beautiful horses.
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