An early applicant. Brought his own stick to the interview. Strong candidate.
🚨 In search of a friendly half-sized farm animal… and I can’t believe this is a real sentence. 🚨
I’m officially in the market for a miniature donkey, mini horse, mini Highland cow, or really anything that’s half-sized, reasonably friendly, and doesn’t cost more than a used Honda.
Here’s how we got here…
Apparently nobody gave my fiancée the birds and the bees talk while she was becoming an animal vet tech at Oregon State.
We have a year-and-a-half-old male horse. I think they call it a colt. She wanted to pasture him with our four-year-old Rocky Mountain mare.
Then, sometime this week, a light bulb finally came on.
“…Wait… they’ll make MORE horses.”
Yes. That’s generally how the horse business has managed to survive for the last few thousand years.
Now I’m learning that if you own Rocky Mountain Horses, you can’t just let nature do its thing. Apparently you need paperwork, inspections, bloodlines, approvals, and enough signatures to refinance a house before they’re allowed to become parents.
So now the mission is finding the young guy a pasture buddy.
Which raises another question…
Why does a miniature donkey cost more than my 2009 Honda Element?
It’s adorable, sure.
But at the end of the day it’s basically a lawn ornament with opinions and a feed bill.
And when do I get a pasture buddy?
I’d love a retired guy named Gary who lives under my deck, wanders out around sunset with a folding chair, tells me I’m doing a decent job pretending to be an adult, then disappears back into the woods. I’d feed him hot dogs and Mountain Dew. Way cheaper than horse feed.
Anyway…
If you know of an affordable mini donkey, mini horse, mini Highland cow, or some other socially acceptable pasture companion, let me know.
Because I’m apparently scheduling lifelong friendships for horses that haven’t even moved in yet.
This farm has become one long episode of, “Well… I didn’t see THAT coming.”
Dispatches like this one are being collected in What The F(arm): Sixty Dispatches from an Unqualified Ohio Farmer — $40, half of which turns straight into hay for the horses, the mini donkey, and the baby goats. The presses roll when 100 people pre-order.