★ taming the wild wild west ★ ─── discussion thread

[lameloserlexi]

@lovestruck

Ah, good question!

They own a pretty big farm, so about 400 cattle, 20 horses/mules, 15 chickens, and about 10 pigs. Cattle is what the family make money off of, the chicken and pigs are for personal food supply. The mules are for driving heavy wagons and horses include the family horses.

[lovestruck]

alright thank you!
I’ll finish up my post tonight then!

[lovestruck]

@hamlet- ah I’m so sorry for messing up Zephie’s pronouns I’m so stupid

[Skyet]

Here's a quick 101 of horses:

- horses' don't need to be ridden every day. Other forms of exercise, such as pasture time, lunging/round penning, etc.
- lunging involves using a headcollar or bridle and longline/rope and working a horse in a circle. Round penning is similar. Sometimes people will free lunge which means no equipment.
- grooming:
- horse feed varies and is a lot different back then than it is now. Often times, horses would have received just pasture, hay and a grain ration (oats or barley). However, oats are a quick release feed and can make horses 'hot'.
- treat wise, carrots, potatoes, apples, sugar lumps, etc. can all be fed
- horses gaits: walk, trot, canter, gallop. Some breeds, such as gaited breeds have a gait known often as racking (similar to trot). These breeds were bred to be smooth to ride and go for long distances. Horses can gallop up to 40 mph, (some breeds are recorded up to 45-46 mph).
- 'heavy horses' are breeds such as Shire, Clydesdale, Percheron, etc. and these breeds would have ploughed/done heavy work. They can also be ridden too. At this time period, most horses would have done multiple jobs (unless they were specifically riding horses) such as being able to be ridden and pull a cart/be driven.

I'll add as needed.

[lovestruck]

ooh ok! I thought horses had to be exercised daily for like an hour and I was like- how- how do people even do this?
Idk whatever I read online was wrong
so uhm
I guess they’ll exercise some of them by riding, and then turn the rest out in the pasture for a bit in intervals or something

I.. also have no idea how to take care of cows either


ooh idk what season it is canonically but what if there was like a calf birth or smthn aa

[Skyet]

Yeah, tbh it does depend on the school of thought. Nowadays, many people will ride at least three to six times a week, maybe have one day devoted to lunging or groundwork and the others off if their horse is on pasture or has access to it. I mean, back then, horses would likely have worked nearly every day, as they were used for just about everything.

Both dairy and beef are similar in their care. Most of the time they'd have been out at pasture, maybe fed silage/hay during the winter. Nowadays, it is basically the same though most herds will also have a ration of some sort. Dairy cattle are milked twice a day, sometimes three depending on their yield. They are usually in-milk up to 300 days a year, with 60-80 dry days before they calf. Usually, with beef cattle, they'll calf in either in spring or autumn, and dairy can calf all year round.

Sheep would've been on pasture too, and during winter also receiving silage/hay if there wasn't enough pasture. Lambing is obviously springtime with shearing usually beginning end of May/beginning of June dependant on climate.

Pigs at this time would've been fed scraps from the table and whatnot, maybe given by-product from crops too. But they will destroy any land they are on when rooting it up for roots. Farrowing (pigs being born) too can take place all year. Chickens too would receive scraps alongside their grain, and chickens lay eggs on a roughly nine-day cycle (lay for seven then not lay for two).

Normally animals would be worked around harvest, weather, etc. if the farm was also arable. The farm I lamb for begins calving their beef cattle at the beginning of March and lambing at the beginning of April so the two slightly overlap but calving is generally over with. We usually have our 200 head of sheep all lambed by May. Sowing crops also begins during April.

[Skyet]

sorry to double post, but just wanna say that if anyone wanna tries to be a potential suitor to Kajsa i think it would be an interesting mini-plot

[LittleCrow67]

If anyone has any characters open my gang-member character Arthur is north of camp scoping out possible thieving targets

[palmawesome]

@Crow - Do you want Ally to come and find him? Maybe just like ask questions, get bored, and leave or something like that??

[LittleCrow67]

sure if you want to