Strange Feeding Habits
Valentine has a very strange habit. Back when we first got him, we noticed that he had a tendency to dump all his food on the ground. He dropped any treats you tried to feed him, he dropped his hay on the ground and he swished his oats out of the feeder onto the dirt. Now that we’ve had him a while, we understand some of these tendencies. He hardly ever drops treats on the ground now; we think it was because he was still getting to know us so he was a bit hesitant taking food from us. Not so now – watch the fingers, or they’ll get sucked in too! The hay ends up on the ground mostly because the flakes stick together. He tries to pull some out, he gets more than he expected and shakes it, so the excess falls onto the floor. (Sometimes it ends up on the wrong side of the stall door because the hay feeder is right next to the door. We’ll come out in the morning to find a veritable haystack outside his door – poor thing!)
But the funniest thing is the oats. When he first came to us, every time we fed him, he would violently swish the oats sideways out of the feeder. The first time we fed him we put on-feed dewormer on the oats, so that was alarming – half the oats with the medication went swishing onto the floor (ahh, the good old days!). There were never any oats on the ground when we came up to the barn the next morning, though, so either he’s half anteater and sucked every last grain up, or the mice took care of it. I always hoped it was mice because horses can colic if they ingest sand (or dirt, in our case) with their food.
As it turns out though, Valentine doesn’t really like to eat his oats off the ground. After a while, we finally figured out that he only swishes his food out if we are bothering him while he eats. Don’t pet him; don’t groom him; don’t stand near him; don’t even talk to him from outside the stall. So now we know – just leave him alone, and he’ll eat like a normal horse.
and two other horse-related books
A few posts ago (
Last night I was in the sound room of our church helping push buttons to keep the Christmas program on track when suddenly I got a whiff of a familiar scent. I mostly detected the smell of ammonia but also a hint of day-old horse manure. But I wasn’t wearing barn clothes or my barn shoes. Oh man, I think I walked through the barn in these shoes. How embarrassing. I mean I live in the country and all and many of the people we know have horses but still, I’d prefer to not smell like horse excrement all the time. I’m hoping I haven’t doomed yet another pair of shoes to barn duties. I have a pair of Justin cowboy boots I use for horse stuff…riding, working in the barn and pasture. They hold up well and offer better protection than old sneakers. Once I tried to clean them up to wear out somewhere. Nothing fancy but more than a trip to the feed store, if you know what I mean. Soap and water and boot shine make them look almost new but they still reeked of ammonia. I suppose it soaks into the rubber sole or leather.
