Bill – Page 10 – Our First Horse

The round bale hay experiment – Part 4

April 1, 2009 Bill Comments 0 Comment

Been a little while since we talked about this but I have an update. Since we last wrote about our round bale experiment in February 2007 (yikes – over two years ago!), we bought a round bale feeder with cutouts for horses. We were told we could just buy the cow version but we liked how the horse version seemed to do a better job of keeping the horses separated and that’s important when four horses are eating off of the same bale. Whoever suggested to us that the round bale feeder would save us money in hay was absolutely right. After about a year I can honestly say this thing has probably paid for itself. The old method was to drop a round bale out in the pasture to let the horses feed freely on it. But they ended up walking and pooping all over the hay and of course they wanted nothing to do with it then. We’d lose about 20% of every bale this way. With the round bale feeder we lose almost nothing. I believe we paid about $100 for the galvanized version which came in three pieces we needed to bolt together. It’s surprisingly light, though it’s size makes it a little hard to maneuver. We usually flip it on it’s side and roll it to the next location (it’s muddy in the photo above because we rolled it through the mud) and then flop it down onto it’s legs over a round bale. I can do it myself but prefer having the help of another person.

As you know, we don’t have a tractor so moving round bales has been a challenge. What seems to be working for us it to load up our flat car-hauler trailer with four round bales and then as needed we back the trailer into the pasture and roll one off by hand. Surprisingly I can move one myself but I don’t have complete control because there is a bit of elevation where we feed hay. What’s worse, though, is when we need to drop a new round bale after it’s been raining. Our clay is slippery when wet. Backing a heavy car hauler and a heavy truck over wet clay is a great way to get stuck. And that’s just what happened last week. Understand that our truck is four wheel drive and supercharged but there was no moving that trailer once it was stuck in the mud. Fortunately for us, there were no more bales on the trailer so we just disconnected and left it there. I barely got out of there in the truck. So that’s our big challenge right now with this method of round bale delivery. What we really need is a 4×4 tractor. I’ve had lots of people tell me I don’t need 4 wheel drive on a tractor but a tractor I can only use when it hasn’t rained in the past 3 days is of little use. We get 70 or so inches of rain a year here.

Trailer stuck in mud

In summary, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND a round bale feeder!

Horse Houdini Chronicles, Chapter 2

March 31, 2009 Bill Comments 5 comments

That would be a good book name, huh? Last January, Mikki wrote about Valentine’s escape from his stall, which fortunately was an escape to the center aisle of our barn and not to the outside world. We have another Houdini and I bet you can guess which horse it is. You’ve probably read about Cash’s karate demonstration back in September, where he literally kicked a stall door from its hinges as we watched. Now he did this accidentally while rolling but he’s the one horse standing at gates and fences with a look on his face that says “I sure would rather be over there”. I went up to the barn to let the horses out one morning and found Cash rubbing his face on one of the stall gates. It’s shedding season so everyone is itchy. Well he continued to rub his face on the latch and while I was standing there, it flipped up. Another couple of rubs and I could see how it would unlock and open the gate. Fortunately (again) I was standing right there to see this or he might have had another run of the neighborhood.

When we moved here, the outside doors of the stalls were all nailed shut and I think I can see why now. Still, in an emergency, I want to be able to free the horses in a hurry without trying to find a hammer, which is why we loosened those nails. But it is clear I need to secure the latch on Cash’s stall door better. Poking around my workshop, I found a spring-loaded keeper I must have bought at the local horse tack auction last year. At the time I didn’t know how I’d use it but now I’m glad I bought it anyway. Ladies, this is a guy thing and although I probably collect a lot of junk, too, this time it worked out. You can see from the picture how we have it attached. The spring is pretty strong but not so strong I can’t open the door latch with a strong pull. It did, however, add a lot of resistance to the latch where Cash like to rub his face. You can see two holes to the left of the horseshoe part. That turned out to be a bad spot, as there wasn’t enough leverage for the spring-loaded keeper to hold the handle down.

Do you have a Houdini and if so, how do you cope?

Caught in the act – part 1

March 14, 2009 Bill Comments 6 comments

Photographic proof of one of my fence vandals is below. This is Moonshine checking out the grass on the wrong side of the fence. Valentine and Cash do it too, though Valentine is such a giraffe, he goes over the top of the fence instead of through it. The fence posts are starting to loosen from all of that horse weight pushing against them. Electrifying is in our future, I think.

New Farm Animals

March 12, 2009 Bill Comments 5 comments

It’s almost spring and we have some new animals to celebrate around here. Our kittens are getting bigger and are about ready for mousing duties. We caught one eating a small bird. Mikki pointed out that without barn cats we’d probably end up with barn snakes so cats it is.

We acquired a new goat when a goat momma in the area decided she wanted nothing to do with this little furball. The owners were going to kill the poor baby goat so Mikki rescued it and agreed to take on the responsibility of bottle feeding it for many weeks. She is pretty cute (and the goat, too). She doesn’t walk – she hops around, frolicking and prancing like a…well…like a kid.

Moonshine saw Maizy and had a cow (haha). So we let them sniff each other. Neither was impressed.

I don’t know where she gets all of the energy but it sure is fun watching her frolic.

Any new animals around your farm this year?

Shedding Season Begins

March 11, 2009 Bill Comments 7 comments

We’ve had some unseasonably warm temperatures here in east Tennessee lately and it seems to have kicked off the shedding season. Cash is the shaggiest horse we have and the poor thing is itching all over because of it. He’s scratching on trees, fence posts, stall doors and even humans. We spent some time brushing him the other day and practically made another horse! I will have to take some pictures of what he does when being scratched. There are a few spots that turn him to butter. You have to watch him because it looks like he’s about to fall over on you while in his scratching trance. I brushed him gently and then watched as he bit himself and tugged at his hide to take care of an itch. I don’t think I’m brushing too hard. What seems to work well is this glove brush we bought at a tack auction last year. It’s rubber with little nubs on it and it’s just perfect for brushing a shedding horse. It’s not too tough to rub the face, neck and belly with, too.

The other horses got a brushing but they are no where near as shaggy as poor Cash. Has the shedding season started at your place?

Snow! – Part 2 – Horse Play

January 21, 2009 Bill Comments 0 Comment

Cash frolicking in the snow The video I posted yesterday was just a little display of the snow with some scenes from our barn and pasture. Yesterday, Mikki and I brought cameras with us up to the barn to see how our horses reacted to the white stuff. After being cooped up all day the day before (we didn’t want them wet and cold), our horses were ready to leave the barn. I’m so glad we had cameras because Cash and Valentine in particular really seemed to enjoy the snow.

This video is also high definition and runs about 4 minutes. In it you’ll see just how dirty Cash looks against the pure white snow. Turns out his patches aren’t white, they’re tan! You’ll see Cash roll several times including once right in front of us. He romps and throws his head around. I loved seeing his beautiful long mane flowing and his “horn” snorts are pretty cute. Maybe we should have called him “Horatio”. That’s a common sound with him. At the end of the video I added a few slow motion sequences of him prancing around. Valentine got into the rolling and romping, too but he’s hard to see. The white of the snow blew out the exposure on the camera so much of Valentine’s fur detail is lost unless he’s right in front of the camera. Moonshine makes her authority known a few times and Romeo mostly stands around and eats.

Once again, you can view this video full size and I recommend it.

Didn’t that look fun!?

Snow! – Part 1

January 20, 2009 Bill Comments 0 Comment

Snow through the barn We don’t get a whole lot of snow in east Tennessee. Maybe once or twice a year we’ll get a dusting. Well starting yesterday it actually did snow – pretty much all day. And today the snow continued, albeit light flurries. In the three years or so we’ve been here, this is the most snow we’ve seen! I know you cold weather people will laugh but we warm weather southern people get excited when it sticks to the ground. Schools are closed, people stick up on milk and bread, etc. It’s kinda cozy, so long as the electric stays on.

I went outside and took a short video of some snowy scenery around the barn and pasture. This is part 1 of 2. After I shot and edited this video, Mikki and I let the horses out today and got some great video of them playing in it. I’ll post that probably tomorrow.

This is high definition video and it’s probably better seen in full screen mode. After you push play, there is a little icon in the bottom right corner of the video that will allow you to expand it to full screen. The video length is about 3 minutes and there is no music. Just snow falling, traffic in the background, the hum of the video recorder and occasional horsey sounds.

EDIT: I almost forgot – making an appearance in this short video are our new barn kittens, Daisy and Clover! They’ve never seen snow before and don’t seem to like it a whole lot.

Romeo gets a barn stall

January 19, 2009 Bill Comments 3 comments

Last week as very cold weather approached, Mikki and I got a hankering to knock off one of our outstanding barn projects. Although our barn is designed with room for five stalls, two of them were being used for storage. Since we built a hay loft over one, we’re able to store hay there instead of the other stall. Sure it’s more of a pain to get to but poor Romeo needed a stall. Romeo, being the most easy going horse we have, was chosen to be an “open staller”, meaning he got the run of the center aisle. When the weather is nice, that’s not a bad spot. You get lots of room and we kept the barn door open on one end so he could get water whenever he wanted. But when the wind blows, it blows right through the barn. Clearly we needed to do something. So last weekend Mikki and I cleaned out stall four for Romeo. He doesn’t have a fancy wood door like the others and he’s missing an outside window but he’s safe and protected from the wind.

Here is what it looked like before it was cleared out. What’s missing is all the hay bales. It doesn’t look like much but it took hours to find new homes for this stuff, pull exposed nails and clean all the loose hay off of the ground (it was old and nasty).

And here it is after. It was dark by the time we were done, hence the dark picture.

One more project off of the list!

Food aggression update

January 13, 2009 Bill Comments 6 comments

Thanks for all the suggestions in the comments on my last post about surprise food aggression. Separate hay stacks are the plan and I’m glad to see most of you seem to do that as well. One question though. Do you do as I do and drop the hay on the ground? I’ve heard we should try to keep it off of the dirt/mud/stone but does that mean I should buy four or five hay feeders (not round bale feeders but trough-style)? For now, it’s on the ground but I’m always looking for the better way.

Although that seems like this food aggression was an isolated incident, I always keep an eye on my position and as was noted in the comments, I am careful to not let myself get between two horses. I’m seen demeanor change in a flash. A common comment from those who have had horse accidents is “it happened so fast!” and we’d all be better for keeping that in mind.

Surprise Food Aggression

January 9, 2009 Bill Comments 10 comments

Yesterday I noticed some disturbing behavior as I let the horses out of the barn. We have a method of doing it that works pretty well for us, which has us releasing each horse mostly in the opposite order of herd position. In our herd, the order is:

1) Moonshine
2) Romeo
3) Valentine
4) Cash

At the moment, Romeo doesn’t have a stall (we hope to finish his new stall Saturday) so I take out a bale of hay and Romeo follows, without returning to the barn. Next goes Cash. He usually doesn’t want to leave the barn so he sniffs the ground, nibbles on stray pieces of hay, tries to get past me to explore the parts of the barn behind me, etc. But eventually he exits and then it’s Valentine’s turn. Valentine isn’t very aggressive at all but as he slowly exits the barn, it usually gives Cash enough momentum to leave too. Lastly it’s Moonshine, and she doesn’t stand for any lazy horsing around. By the time she gets to exit her stall I can tell she’s annoyed at having to wait so long for the others and each time she shoes them out to the hay.

Since each of the horses seems to have to fight for their position to enjoy the days ration of hay each and every day (even though the result is always the same – according to herd position), we split the hay ration into four equal parts, spaced well enough from each other so as to minimize sneak attacks. They play this little game that is not unlike musical chairs until I suppose they tire of chasing each other in circles and settle down to their own piles. On this particular day, I was putting out the hay and Mikki was letting out the horses. Figuring I had a few minutes before Cash would exit the barn, I gave the go-ahead signal to Mikki as I cut the twine on the bale. Romeo munched away as I carried Cash’s flakes to a location an ample distance from Romeo. But this time, Cash exits the barn right away and comes galloping up the hill to where I stand. This isn’t unusual. They’re often a little spunky after being in the barn all night and it was nice and cool out. But this time was different. Cash showed clear signs of agression – towards me! He came right at me, tried to push me aside and then spun around as if to kick me. Fortunately I was paying attention and yelled and jumped out of the way. I couldn’t believe it. I threw his hay down and he ran at me again. To be honest, it was a little intimidating…scary even. I am no match of a 1,000 pound horse.

So of course I’m wondering why he changed on this day; why he saw me as a threat to his food. Is it because he grows weary at constantly being on the bottom of the pecking order? I’m trying to think like a horse but I don’t know what I could have done to position myself as a challenger or as weak. He’s been fine since but I realize we’ll have to be especially careful to watch for this behavior going forward. It’s disheartening, though, because Cash has never been aggressive with us or the others.

Have you experienced this kind of food aggression?

Our First Horse

A family's experience with first-time horse ownership, since 2006.

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Author: Bill