worries from the fat farm

i guess the only thing worse for me right now than an animal apparently dying of fat would be an animal dying of hungry. and i don't want to turn into one of those fat freak outs who basically restrict their animal's food intake to the point of chronic distress. i want that happy balance where they can be a bit chubby if food is important to them or if they happen to like being a bit of a well fed couch potato. all living creatures come in all different sizes, have different wants and needs...as an overweight human who gets a great deal of joy from not so great for me cookies..it would be pretty hypocritical if i insisted everyone else only gets to eat celery.

but...over weight or not. i am an active well padded person...so i think the balance point to this is...ensuring the chubby-loves keep moving enough to balance their intake and activity a bit better. gilbert has slimmed down a little..not from a strict diet but from fixing his feet so he got up and moved a bit more...joy and czar are tubby tuba's but they get up and move all around. esther is a bit of a challenge, she cooperates and goes out to the barn every day....but she just goes to where we make her and then lays around there again.
jelly the real chubster has lost a little bit of weight. she has always been a barn dog..but the addition of a low calorie kibble and letting her and mystic play in the house each morning and evening has helped her lose a couple of pounds.

and i know for a fact the reason 140 animals can all live here together in harmony and peace is because not a single one of them is ever worrying too much about if or when they are going to get to eat. no creature is ever really happy if they are tormented thinking about food.

so..i am not going to turn into a food/fat nazi...but i will ask that we limit the food challenged to one or two timbits on the weekend at the very most. and we will provide greater and more frequent exercise opportunities for our chubby couch potato's.

there will be some tough nuts...lucky adores eating but hates going for walks. but lucky is blind and has 2 confirmed tumors inside her so she can do whatever she wants. jelly will take another animal down over the fear of them eating her food so jelly can have a full food bowl with calorie reduced food....and she can spend her days out in the barn, moving around and her house time playing with puppies....plus she too had a highly aggressive cancer that i am sure will show up somewhere again...one day her extra padding might actually be a good thing for her. milton will probably turn into a bigger dick-head if i cut back his food too much..but with the better weather, he is spending more time climbing around out in the cat run which should help his acivity level improve.

on the whole most of our animals are well within normal and healthy limits...a few of the extreme elderly and frail are too thin...a few of the younger and heathier are too fat but the vast majority of them are fine in the middle somewhere and i am ok with that.

but the pot belly pigs have that tendency to be naturally fat and lazy..they like to eat and they like to sleep and we get in trouble if we don't make sure they do more than that. wilbur happens to like trucking around so we can encourage him to do that even more. mo and i talked about it last night...while the farm guys are still in the upper pasture...wilbur can explore the bottom field. when we move the big herd down..he can move up to the upper field and have that whole field to safely toddle around.

anyway...i will pay more attention to the too chub-a-lots and find a way to respectfully and effectively intervene before anybody's weight (except lucky's) gets too out of hand again.