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Author: Bill

Avoid being kicked by a horse

Avoid being kicked by a horse

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As Mikki mentioned, Moonshine injured her hoof a little while ago and we’ve been treating it several times a day. Each treatment consists of cleaning out the wound, applying an antiseptic spray and then packing it with an antibiotic. The treatment calls for close personal contact with my horse’s left rear hoof, exactly the kind of position that leaves a human vulnerable to serious injury from a kicking horse.

Everytime I’m around a horse, I’m always especially careful around the rear legs, both beside them and behind them. I’ve read that you need to read the horse’s body language and pay attention while you’re walking around them. I’m not scared, mind you, but I am cautious. Part of it is because I’m new to horses, part is because previous injuries have taught me to be cautious around anything dangerous. And part of my nervousness is from the video below. I saw this video before we ever seriously considered buying a horse. And while it seems most people find it funny, it reminds me just how powerful horses are and just how quickly something can go wrong. Now even if you’re not planning on branding your own horses (I’m not), there is still a lesson to be learned here. WARNING: there is some audio, in which is an implied expletive. The video is 3 seconds long so it won’t take long to load:

Did you see how fast that horse was able to kick? We don’t get to see the damage (thankfully) but I’m sure at the very least it hurt alot.

So here are a few simple tips I’ve learned so far for avoiding injury when working horses’ legs and hooves:

  1. Spend a few minutes with the horse before touching its rump or legs. Even if you’ve had the horse for a while, you need to know what kind of mood it’s in, if it’s spooked, nervous or upset.
  2. When walking beside and around the horse gently pat and rub it as you go and notice any apprehension on the part of the horse.
  3. Don’t take your eyes off of the horse when walking closely to the rear end, in particular. Pay attention to its body language and what it’s doing with its feet.
  4. Don’t walk directly behind the horse. Give yourself at least an arm’s length of buffer room.
  5. Be mindful of things that could spook your horse. A barking dog down the road, a car driving by, other horses, you sneezing, an evil plastic bag blowing in the wind, a snake in her stall, etc. If you’re in the wrong spot when your horse is spooked, it takes a fraction of a second for the horse to react and that could mean serious injury or death.

I’m sure there are many more practical tips but these have so far kept us from being kicked.

Just like Gene and Roy

Just like Gene and Roy

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The Old West movie poster“I should have been a cowboy…just like Gene and Roy,” as the country song goes (Toby Keith). A few weeks ago we found ourselves in a little country diner in east Tennessee, seated at a table surrounded by memorabilia from the 1950’s and earlier. For 10 minutes while I waited for my lunch, I marvelled at all the old stuff, especially a poster about a Gene Autry western called “The Old West.” I knew who Gene Autry was and had seen his name all over the place out west but I don’t remember ever seeing any of his movies. Stick with me because this really is horse-related. I rented the movie on DVD and last night we sat back and took in scenes from a simpler time…1952, and sometime in the late 1800’s, as portrayed in the film. Now in westerns, horses play a major role and The Old West was no exception. The movie has horses in most of its scenes including Gene riding, a stagecoach race, bad guy chase scenes and even Champion, World’s Wonder Horse, helping Gene pick some wild horses for the big stagecoach race.

Seeing Gene Autry in this old western made me even more thrilled to have the privilege of owning a horse of my own and deepened my desire to strap on a saddle and go riding.

Here are some interesting notes about Gene Autry and horses:

  • There were 3 official “Champions,” Gene’s trademark horse. 3 other “Champions” were used for television appearances, touring and personal appearances while a few undocumented horses served as stunt doubles and stand-ins.
  • “Lindy Champion” made aviation history in 1940 by being the first horse to fly on an airplane from California to New York (for an appearance at the World’s Championship Rodeo at Madison Square Garden).
  • Lindy Champion was a registered Tennessee Walking Horse (just like Valentine!).
  • If you visit Graumann’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood, you’ll see “Touring Champion’s” hoof prints next to Gene Autry’s hand prints. Could this be the only horse hoof prints on the walk of fame?
  • According to geneautry.com, “Original Champion” could “untie knots, roll over and play dead, bow, shake his head ‘yes’ and ‘no,’ and come to Gene’s whistle.”
  • Although the original Champion lived to be only 17 years old, “Champion Jr.” lived to be 35 and “Champion 3” lived to be an amazing 41 years old, dying in 1990! Wow!
  • As an officer in the Army, Gene Autry was allowed to wear cowboy boots as part of his uniform. He was the only officer in World War II to be allowed this privilege, though I’m not sure if he wore them only for ceremonies or for day-to-day duties as well.

For more info on Champion, World’s Wonder Horse, check out:
http://www.geneautry.com/geneautry/champion/index.html

For more info on Gene Autry, America’s favorite singing cowboy, visit:
http://www.geneautry.com

And for more infomation on The Old West movie, visit:
http://www.geneautry.com/musicmovies/dvds/oldwest.html

No, you can’t sleep in on Saturday

No, you can’t sleep in on Saturday

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Sleeping in

I slept in today. It felt great and I really needed to catch up on my sleep. But when I woke up at noon I jumped out of bed and rushed to get my shoes on because I realized the horses had been in the barn since the night before and knew they must be out of hay and water by now. Sure enough, both horses were anxious to get out of the barn and graze and I felt bad for leaving them there so long without food and low on water. This reminded me that even if I stay up too late, I can’t sleep late.

Willie Nelson Against US Horse Slaughter

Willie Nelson Against US Horse Slaughter

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Eating horses?“It’s time for the cowboys to stand up for the horses”, country music legend Willie Nelson is reported to have said. There is a bill in Congress right now to ban the practice of slaughtering horses here in the U.S. as well as selling horses for slaughter elsewhere. The bill is being called The American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act, HR 503 for the House of Representatives and S 1915 for the Senate. Willie Nelson is lending his star-support through the Society for Animal Protective Legislation to encourage US citizens to get involved by calling their representatives.

So here’s the question I have for you today. Even though it’s not part of American culture to slaughter horses for food, should we outlaw it? I’ve been doing some reading on the subject today and there seems to be two issues here. The first is using horses as food, for human consumption or otherwise. Second is how well horses are treated prior to slaughter. People seem to either detest the practice of slaughtering and eating horses or …

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Summer Hay Expense

Summer Hay Expense

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Summer hay

One of the most important things we’re trying to do with this website is to identify the expenses involved with horse ownership so new horse owners know what to expect. I now know how much we’re spending on hay for our two horses during the summer months. Back on May 22nd of this year, we secured a load of hay that will last until tomorrow, August 22. Here are the facts:

Purchase date: 5/22/06
Quantity: 40 square bales (30 lbs. each)
Cost: $1 per bale/$40 total
Additional expense: $20 gasoline
Total cost without gas: $40
Total cost with gas: $60
Supply longevity: 93 days

Base on those figures, here’s how the hay cost breaks down:

Bales used per day: .43 or 2/5th’s total per day
Cost per day w/o gas: $.43 total or $.22 per horse
Cost per day w/gas: $.66 or $.33 per horse

So that’s pretty good! If only hay cost $1 per bale all year.

Now here’s a little background on this hay purchase. We live in east Tennessee and know someone whose mom has a farm and raises hay. She had some hay from the previous year that was dry and in good shape. Our friend feeds this hay to all of her horses including a pregnant mare who foaled this summer. The hay was $1 a bale partially because it was cut last year and they wanted to make room for the new cutting. We think that the price next time will be more like $2.50 for fresher hay but will detail that expense when we get to it. Our horses ate the older hay for 3 months and seemed fine with it. We didn’t find any mold and it held together nicely.

…

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Free high quality horse backgrounds/wallpaper

Free high quality horse backgrounds/wallpaper

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Horse backgrounds and wallpaperI just found a nice horse background/wallpaper photo I’m going to use on my PC desktop (also works on MAC and Linux) and thought I’d share. This site offers tons of free backgrounds but the horse one really caught my eye. You’ll have to suffer through some ads on the site but it’s understandable since the pics are free for personal use. They offer a variety of sizes for almost any common monitor or LCD screen including widescreen sizes. I have nothing to do with the site, just wanted to pass on something neat.

Here are the links:

Horse Background (InterfaceLIFT)

Horse Background search results (InterfactLIFT) – 6 total as of this post

Horses Are Herd Animals

Horses Are Herd Animals

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Horse herd
Photo by Vladimir Vujeva on Unsplash

When we bought Valentine in February 2006, I was pretty sure it would be a while before we’d consider buying another horse. Let’s get comfortable with learning about one horse before we go getting more, I thought. When I picked him up that frigid Valentine’s eve this year he was in a pasture with two or three other horses. When he arrived at our place, we had another gelding in the pasture from someone who was boarding here. Valentine and Blaze got along very well and everyone was happy. Several weeks later, the Blaze’s owner moved and took Blaze with him leaving Valentine all alone in the pasture. As Blaze was rolling away in a horse trailer, Valentine looked sad. I know we try to humanize horses and guess what they’re thinking and feeling but over the next few days, it seemed obvious Valentine was lonely. We’ve since learned that horses are herd animals, a hold-over from the days when they ran wild.

Some quick Internet research proved this point. According to Wikipedia, wild horse herds are really groups of small bands of three to twelve or more horses. Being a part of a group is an instinctive survival technique which provides safety in numbers and breeding opportunities. Our Valentine may not have been emotionally sad about Blaze leaving but it’s likely he was nervous about being in our pasture alone.

The way to remedy this situation? Well first off, we could have just lived with it. There are plenty of horse owners out there with only one horse. But as I said, we wanted another horse anyway. Short of buying another horse, I’ve heard of other herd animals being introduced into the pasture. Goats, llamas, cows, and mules, for instance. We have our reasons for not wanting to go that route so the next logical choice was to start looking for another horse…which we found. If you’ve been reading for a while, you’ve already suspected this, I’m sure.

I’ll tell the story of my new horse, my first horse actually, in a separate post.

Wikipedia source info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse_behavior

Getting A Room

Getting A Room

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Sharing a stall damangeHaving a boy horse and a girl horse is interesting, even if it’s a mare (can make baby horses) and a gelding (can’t make baby horses). They still go through most of the motions, especially her and it’s obvious to me she gets quite frustrated when our gelding doesn’t show as much interest as a stallion would. But still they flirt. They nibble eat other, posture and he’s sorta interested. When they’re near the barn I usually tell them to get a room. Well…this week they did that.

The night before it happened we were outside roasting marshmallows and I thought I heard banging in the barn. I went to investigate and I swear the horses were looking out of their stall, whistling, as if to say “nothing to see here, move along human”. I looked around and saw nothing. The next morning I get up, walk to the barn and notice troublemaker Valentine’s head poking out of Moonshine’s stall. When I got to the stall I saw her in the background, eyes wide open as if to say “I told him we’d get in trouble…IT WAS ALL HIM!”. That banging was apparently Valentine, our big gelding, kicking the boards between his stall and hers (see pic). Upon closer inspection, I can’t see how he got through there, as he’s wider than the opening.

So I let the horses out and we re-installed the boards, this time with screws.

Now as funny as this is, a few things have me concerned:

  1. I’ve heard horses shouldn’t be in the same stall, even if the stall is pretty large. They’re big, powerful and not graceful in small places.
  2. The displaced stall boards were laying on the ground with the nails poking up. Most of the nails were bent over so I imagine they stepped on them.
  3. Even with strong screws, if this 16.3 hand gelding wants to visit my mare, a few screws and a 3/4 inch wood slat isn’t going to stop him. I hope this isn’t a trend.

Oh, and to be fair I see how she encourages him so my mare isn’t the least bit innocent in this incident.

Carpenter Bees Attack!

Carpenter Bees Attack!

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Carpenter bee closeup

As a kid, I recall spring and summer brought lots of bees. I specifically remember these huge bees and how they would bore holes into our wooden fences. They never seemed to do any harm to me so I left them alone. Now that as grownups we’ve moved from the city to the country and spring is upon us, I started noticing these huge bees here in Tennessee. There have been a lot of them around our house and barn (both structures have wood siding) but since the bees haven’t been bothering us, I didn’t pay much attention. That is until I noticed the number of holes they were drilling into our house and barn.

Carpenter Bee Damage

These holes are BIG (almost dime size) and there are a lot of them. But I really paid attention after doing some research on the Internet. The one or two-inch deep hole we’re seeing is only a tiny part of the tunnel they bore. That tunnel takes a 90-degree turn and can continue anywhere from 4 inches to 10 feet, depending on how many bees use it. Obviously this kind of tunneling can cause serious structural damage. So now we’re on the hunt to kill carpenter bees. Here are some interesting things we’ve learned:

  • Females drill the holes and are the only ones with stingers.
  • Males are very aggressive but do not have stingers so they can do little harm.
  • Adult carpenter bees “overwinter” (hibernate?) in these tunnels and then emerge in spring to mate and drill some more.
  • Insecticides can easily kill the bees but it’s difficult to eradicate the eggs those bees have already laid. Dusting with carbaryl (Sevin) seems to be most effective against infestation and re-infestation since applied dust can travel through the tunnels. This can kill the bees and help de-hydrate larvae the following season. Dusters are available at many hardware stores for around $15.
  • Some wait until fall to plug-up treated holes but holes should be plugged after the adult bees are dead.
  • Prevention includes diligent treatment of existing infestation as well as painting wood surfaces. Carpenter bees seem to prefer unpainted, untreated wood. Wood stain doesn’t seem to help, but pressure-treated wood does.

So now we’re spending an hour or two every week working on this carpenter bee problem. In our barn alone, which is a six-stall barn (pictures later), I must have dusted 50 holes so far. Uggg.

For more information, the following link was helpful to us and there are a lot of articles on Google:

Ohio State University Extension – Carpenter Bees, HYG-2074-94

My dog eats horse poop

My dog eats horse poop

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My dog eating poo

I think that’s the best way to put it, really. My dog just loves our new horse. From the start, neither showed fear or even much interest in the other. Except my dog quickly learned that having a horse around meant occasional carrot and apple snacks dropped from our messy horse and an endless supply of the finest horse manure this side of PetSmart.

Now I just know there must be some kind of disease my dog can get from this and of course we stop him whenever we seem him doing it, but there’s no way to keep him from the pasture and as long he as doesn’t run away or cause trouble, we like him to be able to roam freely when we’re outside.

Dog cleaning up

The cleaning up after horsey snacks I don’t mind. I don’t like Valentine to poke his head through the fence and any food left behind will attract bugs and other critters. So I’m fine with my canine friend having some leftover (albeit dirty) carrot and apple pieces. But poop? Ick!

If you ever stop by our little farm, take my advice and don’t accept kisses from my dog.