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Carpenter Bees and other downsides to spring

Carpenter Bees and other downsides to spring

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Spring flowers

It’s been in the 70s and low 80’s all week, a sure sign that spring is on the way. I love spring but there a few things I’m not looking forward to. The first has got to be carpenter bees. I mentioned carpenter bees last year when I noticed how much damage they were doing to our wooden barn and wood-sided house. Upon further inspection this year, we quickly realized that carpenter bees have destroyed a significant number of important beams in the old barn in the pasture. We’re going to have to replace those this year or risk losing the barn. It’s that serious. You’ll recall that carpenter bees don’t just drill large holes in wood, they burrow up to 10 feet into the wood. We treated the burrows we could reach last year with Sevin dust and sealed up a good many of them with expanding foam. Yeah, wood filler would have been better but we had a LOT of holes. The expanding foam seemed more economical.  And easier.

Walking around outside today, I can tell you I must not have made too big an impact on the carpenter bee population because they are everywhere! I’m not sure what to do about the ones in the air besides what some call “carpenter bee tennis,” but I’m back to treating the holes I can find with Sevin dust. I’m worried about places I can’t see or easily get to like 25 feet up in the rafters of the barn, under our deck or behind the wood siding of our house. Stupid carpenter bees.

Another related downside to spring is wasps. Our barn serves as an ideal wasp nest host, with crevices all over, including lots of hidden ones. Last year there were days where we just didn’t want to hang out at the barn much due to all the aggressive wasps. I made some wasp traps with nectar attractant, the kind that is easy to get into but hard to get out of, but the wasps totally ignored it. We diligently knocked down or treated wasp nests as we found them and there were no incidents with our horses. But now I’m back on wasp patrol. Any suggestions are welcome.

Flies – they’re coming soon. I’ve seen some but when you have horses, you’ll have flies and lots of them. We were successful last year with fly parasites from Arbico Organics (there are lots of companies that sell them). Have you seen these? You subscribe to a monthly service that sends fly parasite larvae. They hatch and destroy flies in some kind of gruesome way. We were skeptical but proved last year they really do work. We wrote last May about what fly treatment methods we were trying. It’s time to think about what we’re going to use this year.

Thorns and other weeds – We’re excited about the grass growing. Our horses seem seriously tired of dry hay and I don’t blame them. But the return of grass means the weeds and thorn bushes are also returning. Time to get out into the pasture to uproot the thorn vines. We also need to stay on top of keeping the pasture trimmed/bush-hogged. Apparently, if you don’t keep your grass trimmed, the weeds choke out the good stuff.

Snakes – Mikki wrote last year about a snake that visited our barn and freaked us all out. I hate snakes! They creep me out. Yes I know, they provide the valuable service of getting rid of mice and rats but I’d still rather have barn cats.

Other than those things, we’re VERY MUCH looking forward to spring. I’ll take warm weather with these downsides any day over 20 degrees and windy.

Goat recovery horses

Goat recovery horses

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Goat recovery with horses

Who knew you could use horses when trying to recover escaped goats? I may have mentioned this but in addition to two horses, we also have two goats. We have an old male named Joey and a young female named Hanna. It’s in the upper 70’s and low 80’s this week so I thought I’d let Joey out to chomp on some grass. We put him on a long dog leash attached to an “anchor” hammered deep into the lawn. This gets him out for some fresh air and recreation and since he eats lots of grass, it keeps that section neatly trimmed. In fact, there is a visible circle in the lawn where everything inside the circle is neatly trimmed and everything outside needs mowing. We have three of these anchors so we can move the goats around or put both out at the same time. I didn’t really have time (caution…irony approaching) to put Hanna, our smaller girl goat, outside so I brought her a handful of hay. As I was putting it down in their pen, the little bugger bolted out of the partially opened gate and ran around the yard. Great. To make matters worse, Hanna is afraid of me, for some completely unknown reason. I’m as gentle as can be with her but she runs from me and runs TO Mikki. So I first try gently walking up to her, speaking softly. Doesn’t work. I grabbed some hay for bait. Doesn’t work. I try and slowly sneak up on her. No deal…I get within 6 feet and she bolts. Uggg. Then, mad, I chase after her. She’s too fast and nimble for me. Stupid fast goat. Oh, and as she runs around she’s bleating in a way that sounds remarkably like a woman screaming for her life. I swear the police are going to show up one day.

Our horses actually helped. A few times Hanna evaded me by ducking under the fence and heading for the pasture. I had to stop to open the gate and this slowed me down. The horses chewed mouthfuls of hay while watching me running around the pasture. They seemed amused. I imagine all the farm animals talking when we’re not around, like like in the movie Babe. Oh, the laughs they probably had over this race. I convinced Hanna to head back to the lawn and the horses seemed to help me corral her. I’m not sure I could have done it without them, actually. Unwitting help, I suspect. But it was appreciated just the same. I eventually did capture her; she fell for the old “food dish in the cage” routine.

So if you have goats and they get out, maybe your horse(s) will help in the recovery effort!

Horses Stretch?

Horses Stretch?

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I just got back from letting the horses out and saw something funny I want to share. In the year plus we’ve owned a horse, I have never seen a horse do what Moonshine just did. As she walked out into the pasture, she crossed her two front legs and leaned far back for a few seconds. She stretched! I didn’t realize horses did that. Sorry if this is a boring revelation to those of you who have been around horses for a long time but it’s a first for me. Sorry, no picture.

Have you seen horses stretch?

Purina Horse Owners Workshop

Purina Horse Owners Workshop

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Purina Horse Owners WorkshopLast week we attended a Purina Horse Owners Workshop presentation at one of our local feed stores here in east Tennessee. Purina seems to put these on annually and we attended a similar presentation last year at a different feed store. The objective for Purina is obvious: convince us to buy Purina brand horse feed. Even though we expected part of the event to be a sales presentation, we were interested in the opportunity to listen in on a question-and-answer session by cowboy and “horse whisperer” Sam Powell.

Sam has been the speaker for both presentations we’ve been to so far and I’m always impressed with his common-sense approach to horses. He advocates observing how horses deal with leadership in nature as an effective means of communicating to your horse that you are the herd leader. His most important point is that with horses, there is always a leader. Every time you meet, a leader is decided. If it’s just you and your horse, and you don’t take the leadership role, he will. There are many ways to subtly show him you’re in charge. For example, Sam suggests that you never just let your horses in and out of the barn – as we do (he says “they’re not cows”). He says to halter your horse each time and lead him in and out. When you’re letting him out, lead him out, remove the halter, then walk away. Your horse should not walk away until you do. When you let him in, lead him to the stall, stop at the door and allow him to walk in while still holding the lead rope. He will turn around to face you; then you can remove the halter and lead rope. (An added benefit to this method is that it makes it much easier to trailer a horse if he’s used to entering a space alone after you’ve stopped in the doorway.)

Sam offers lots of good advice every year. If you have the opportunity to hear him speak, we highly advise it. Check out his schedule at www.asksampowell.com (2019 EDIT: that website is dead so I removed the link. Here is a nice Sam Powell biography, though.).

Purina Horse Owners WorkshopOh, and an excellent barbecue dinner was provided at no charge to participants but you have to RSVP. This year supper included barbecued chicken and all the fixings, as well as a delicious desert. Tasty and filling (thanks Purina, Critter Country and other sponsors!). Product samples and literature were available and enough door prizes were given out that it seems almost everyone won something. Purina handed out special buy-two-get-one-free coupons and other discounts to entice us to buy their brand of feed. So when next year rolls around, if we get news of another Horse Owners Workshop, we’ll definitely be signing up again. It was time well spent.

We’ll write later about how we’ve been using Omolene 100, Purina’s sweet oat blend for “active pleasure horses”. For now, I’ll say we’ve been very pleased with it, even though it is a tad more expensive than the feed store mix. More about all that later.

Have you been to one of these presentations yet? What was your impression?

By the way, we have no connection with Purina or Critter Country and were not paid anything to say nice things about them.

For more information and to see if they have a Horse Owners Workshop near you, visit the Purina website.

Close call with a flying hoof

Close call with a flying hoof

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Our horses next to the fence

It was a beautiful spring day in east Tennessee so Mikki and I decided to do our chores early while the sun was up and the air was warm. Our horses heard us up at the barn and decided to see if we were offering treats. After forking manure, I headed outside the gate to great our horses and offer up a small treat. Moonshine is a sweety and enjoys a good rub and hug. She’s also bossy. Valentine was standing nearby as I was rubbing Moonshine’s back. And in the blink of an eye, Valentine bolted as Moonshine nipped at him, turned her back and went to kick him. Where was I, you ask? At this point RIGHT BEHIND HER! Fortunately, I had quickly jumped back and was only hit on my hand. I had a leather glove on and it startled me more than it hurt but the thought of what could have happened made me thankful I received only a tap on the hand. I’ve seen what a horse kick can do and know how powerful these beasts can be. When Moonshine’s hoof hit my hand, it was in the air right in front of my heart. I’m not trying to be overly dramatic but I could have easily broken a few ribs.

Moral of the story? Well, I’m not sure. I guess it’s to always pay attention, especially when there are two horses near each other. At the time my position didn’t seem particularly vulnerable but with an almost 10:1 weight ratio, standing anywhere near a horse can be dangerous.

Honey, get me a hammer and the camera

Honey, get me a hammer and the camera

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Take a look at this picture and tell me if you see anything wrong with it

Manure in the feed bucket

That’s not feed in the feed bucket. Now I understand the science and physics of why it happened, but I just don’t know why any creature would allow itself to poop in their feed dish/bucket. I can understand it a little more with our goats but I guess I figured horses were a little, I don’t know…SMARTER. This was from Mikki’s fancy show horse, Valentine, by the way. My beautiful racehorse, Moonshine, who leaves dainty piles of manure in the corners for me, would never do such a thing as this.

We’re still alive

We’re still alive

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Just a quick note to tell you we’re still alive. We haven’t posted these past few days because Mikki and I have been extremely busy working on a video project for our church. That project consumed pretty much all of our free time but it ended tonight. Despite moping around the pasture looking for yummy fresh grass that isn’t there, Valentine and Moonshine are fine, too. Weather’s been warm in east Tennessee. Green grass can’t be too far off. Give us a day or two and we’ll catch up. As always, thanks for reading and checking back for new posts!

Are panthers stalking my horses?

Are panthers stalking my horses?

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Cheetah paw

Serious title, funny story. It was nice and warm outside yesterday so I thought I’d work on the stalls before dark. I took a load of manure out to the pasture and rolled our wheelbarrow back to the barn where I saw hoof marks in front of the stalls. Interesting. I then noticed what appeared to be a large animal paw print. I couldn’t decide if it looked more like a wolf or a large cat but either way, it was right in front of our horse stalls and that had me worried. Did some predator track a deer to my barn and notice a bigger meal? How do I protect my horses from large predators inside their stalls? Wolves and panthers are very rare in east Tennessee but old-timers and a wildlife official I know here have told me stories of how panthers once roamed this land, less than 100 years ago. Did a few survive? I called Mikki over to see what she thought. After studying the paw prints she said, “It doesn’t quite look like a paw print. It almost looks like a boot print, but smaller.” She’s the smart one, mind you. I inspected my boot and sure enough, the heel matched the “paw print.” Dang, that’s embarrassing. The hoof prints I thought were from a deer? I rested the wheelbarrow in that spot.

Even funnier is what almost happened. I was going to call my wildlife official friend to come take a look. I can only imagine him telling me to head out to the pasture so he could follow the tracks to see where they lead. “Keep your eyes peeled…the tracks stopped right where you’re standing. It’s probably watching us this very minute!” he’d probably say with a chuckle.

No, the only black panther that stalks our horses (and us) is our small black cat, Simon, who loves to dart across the lawn as we finish our night chores. So enjoy a giggle on me and let this be a lesson to us all.

Cheetah photo above by Joshua J. Cotten on Unsplash

This week at OFH

This week at OFH

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It’s been a few days since I’ve posted anything, for which I apologize. It was time to upgrade my PC and let’s just say it didn’t go well. 600 miles of driving (we live in the middle of nowhere and have to drive to Atlanta for computer parts) and 30 or so hours later, I’m finally up and running again. But it’s not like our little horse farm has been neglected this whole time, so let me catch up.

Photo by Jarosław Kwoczała on Unsplash

I (Bill) am a cold-weather sissy, I’ll admit it. I have been complaining for weeks at all the 30 degree days (Fahrenheit) and 18 degree nights, frozen hoses, frozen buckets, poopsicles, and multi-layer clothing. I’m tired of it. It seems global warming hasn’t quite made it to east Tennessee because the last month, in particular, has been very cold. But then a ray of hope appeared in the way of a weather forecast for relatively warm weather for at least the next week. In fact, sitting here I can see the thermometer and it shows the outside temperature at 73 degrees. We did barn work late last night without all the extra coats. This is nice! Come on spring!

East Tennessee Temperature Trends

We’re out of pasture hay. Those round bales I mentioned are long gone and I’m afraid the horses are considering eating the moldy parts they bypassed the first time. We’re tossing out square bales for them to eat, which is dwindling our supply. I’m looking forward to the grass growing again. Someone pointed out that horses are supposed to roam and forage for food and not eat as much in winter. Someone else suggested that the opposite is true, that horses need lots of food in winter to store as heat-generating fat (stored in their rump, I hear). Both make sense to me but we’re probably going to look for another round bale or two to hold us over until the grass starts to grow again.

I briefly saddled Moonshine up and hopped on, mostly to test my new saddle. But it’s been too cold to ride and train until now. If the weather is decent this weekend, perhaps we’ll take our horses for a walk.

As we move ahead towards Spring, we’re starting to make a list of things we need to do to get ready for warmer weather and projects we need to get working on. Our list includes:

  • Replace barbed wire fence near the barn with a wooden fence. We have the wood for this but we’re going to need a hole digger, preferably powered. This Tennessee clay is very difficult to shovel by hand.
  • Come up with a manure management system. I’ve been talking about it for a while and would like to try the aerated compost approach. More on that soon.
  • Bring in a truckload of sand for the pasture barn entrance. It’s a clay and mud mess back there. In the comments of our post “Turning out two horses by yourself“, Becky and Ryan suggested crushed limestone or sand, claiming good results.
  • Eradicate thorn bushes in the pasture.
  • Test orchard grass in a small section of pasture. I want to temporarily fence off a small section of pasture (about 1/4 acre) to plant some orchard grass. It’ll be a nice treat for the horses when the grass has grown in.
  • Treat the wood on the barn. Our barn is mostly wood and I’m guessing we need to occasionally treat it for protection against the weather.
  • Fix up the old barn. We’re going to purchase 8-10 round bales at the end of summer and this is where we want to store them. I’d rather fix it up now before the snakes wake up.
  • Install more lights in the barn.

I’m sure there will be more projects but that’s a pretty good list for now. What’s on your list? So that’s what’s going on around here this week. More soon!

Turning out two horses by yourself

Turning out two horses by yourself

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I’m told we baby our horses by letting them into the barn each night for a meal and sleep. That may be true but we feel safer knowing they’re not out in the dark pasture, far from sight. I’m more confident in the structural integrity of the barn than I am of the fence, especially given our latest fence incident. Of course, when you bring your horses in for the night, you also have to let them out in the morning. Mikki and I are fortunate enough to not have to leave the house for work each day, usually, so letting them out in the morning is pretty simple. With carrots in my back pocket, I head for the fence and Mikki opens the stall doors. This works great, as the presence of treats is made known by my calling out “carrots, come and get em!”. Alas, the lure of carrots is all the motivation they need to move along. But occasionally our routine is altered when Mikki has to leave for a work assignment or when she’s sick. In this case, I head up to the barn alone, open the stall doors one at a time and wait 20 minutes while both horses mosey along, investigating every little piece of hay along the way, sniffing me up and down for snacks. Then, just when I get one out and open the stall for the other, the first horse turns around and wants to check out the other horse’s stall. Great. But after much experimentation, I think I have finally discovered the solution.

It turns out horses are smart but not necessarily brilliant. They seem to really like routine, though. When I go to the barn to let them out, they don’t hear my voice down at the gate. So as simple as it seems, one day I went to the gate first, called out “carrots! Come and get em!” and then ran around to the inside stall doors, opened them one at a time and marveled as both horses made a beeline for the fence. I closed the gates inside the barn, ran back to the fence and finished the routine to their satisfaction (except for the whole “eating of fingers” thing). The next day I figured they would have figured out the trick by now but they didn’t. I’ve tried it five or six times now and it’s worked every time. I’m a visual person so here’s a diagram of our barn to help imagine the scenario:

Our barn layout

Now we know we should teach our horses to leave their stalls without treats but it’s so much easier this way and I can’t see any harm in it. Does it look silly running around the barn like that? Yeah. Add this to the list of things that make me feel like a goofy horse owner (Geek light?) but I’m sticking with what works, even in the absence of style.

If you let your horses out each day like us, what’s your routine like?