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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!

File This Under “Just Plain Weird”

File This Under “Just Plain Weird”

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Valentine in his stall

Here’s another funny little quirk my horse has: practically every single morning when we go up to the barn to let the horses out, Valentine pokes his head out and looks at us, then quickly retreats back into his stall to let loose with about 5 gallons of pee. I swear he does it on purpose. He’s actually held it till we let him in at night, too. Six acres of pasture and he has to pee in the stall.

Horse Carriages

Horse Carriages

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Handmade Horse Carriages

A few Saturdays ago, the three of us headed to Dollywood to see it all decked out for Christmas. It was a sunny and warm (in the ’60s) and we live only about an hour or so away. One of my favorite parts about Dollywood was a visit to the carriage maker. The park has real craftsmen on staff doing things (mostly) the old-fashioned way. It’s part theme park attraction and part craft preservation. I’ve never before seen someone build a carriage. What struck me the most is how reasonably priced the carriages were. You can get yourself a fancy brand new one or two-horse carriage, complete with a hydraulic brake system for around $2,500. Now that’s a lot of money but you get a hand-built horse carriage made from high-quality parts that can be used for pleasure riding, parades, weddings…whatever. If we find ourselves with $2,500 too much one year, I’d love to buy one of these. I can’t even imagine one of our spirited horses pulling a carriage but I’m sure they’d be fine with training. Of course, Moonshine and Valentine probably couldn’t be paired due to their size differences so I guess we’d need a one-horse carriage. Mikki wants a doctor’s carriage like the one in the picture above. I think it would be fun to have a wagon that seats four. And I could probably justify spending that much money by saying we’d use it to make money giving rides at parades, fairs, and other events. It would be an investment! Riiiiight.

Here’s a picture of an unpainted carriage up close:

Horse carriage with unfinished wood

And here’s a picture of the carriage shop inside:

Dollywood carriage shop

Do any of you have a carriage for your horse(s)?

2019 Update: unfortunately, the Dollywood carriage/wagon shop seems to have closed down some time between 2017 and 2019. I’m going to miss watching them build these! 

Picture Proof Moonshine is a Paint

Picture Proof Moonshine is a Paint

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Muddy Moonshine

I introduced my first horse “Moonshine” a few days ago and mentioned she is a registered paint. You can’t tell it by looking at her because she’s almost all black, just like Valentine. Well, I forgot to mention that one of her favorite pastimes is rolling in the mud! Anytime there is any mud to be found, she will surely roll in it and later show up with a coat of mud plaster. So even though when clean she doesn’t look like a paint, she sure does during rainy days.

Not the best picture but you get the point. The clean one is Mikki’s fancy ex-show horse Valentine. The dirty one is my redneck horse, Moonshine:

Muddy horses
Introducing…Moonshine

Introducing…Moonshine

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Moonshine walking alone

Well, it’s been a few months and I suppose I should introduce my new horse. That’s right, I have my own new horse now. Mikki and I have mentioned her a few times already so it’s about time you know just who I’m talking about. And I’ll explain why I call her Moonshine.

We’ve always intended to have more than one horse. In fact, we’d like to have three – one for each of us. But since we knew nothing about horses when we embarked on this first-horse adventure in February 2006, we thought it wise to become familiar with our first horse before buying our second. Then when our guest horse Blaze left, we noticed that Valentine seemed lonely. Horses after all are herd animals so we began to casually look for a companion horse. While at our favorite tack shop, Mikki and I glanced at the bulletin board and inquired with Charlie if he knew anyone who was selling a good, gentle, inexpensive horse. Charlie put us in touch with a guy who does some work for him on the side and that very afternoon we drove to a small farm like ours to look at a mare for sale. The man selling her said he didn’t want to sell her but he didn’t get to ride her much anymore and he was in need of money to pay a stud fee for his other mare, which was about to foal. The horse stood like a statue out in the pasture as we walked around her, touching and rubbing her. I’m not really sure what we were looking for but I guess we hoped anything that should concern us would stand out, hopefully with a sign that said: “don’t buy me.” She looked good with the exception of her hooves which were in need of trimming and were worn rough since she wasn’t wearing any shoes. The owner said he hadn’t ridden her much (warning flag 1) and that she threw him once and it kind of scared him (warning flag 2). He admitted he wasn’t much of a rider, though. Heh, neither were we! Now, this is the point when we started falling in love with this horse, enough that we were willing to ignore the warning signs (I didn’t listen to any of the advice I dished out in my post about “Should you buy a horse?“). She was gentle and didn’t mind us touching her feet, back, belly and head. She haltered well, too. We went home to think about it and a few days later decided we wanted to buy her.

Mikki and I knew we didn’t know what to look for so we asked our farrier, Gabe, if he’d be willing to come up and take a look at her for us and bring her home if he thought she was a good deal (we don’t have a horse trailer and he does). A few days later my new horse Moonshine was on a trailer headed for our barn and a very curious pasture-mate.

Once we were home, we let Moonshine and Valentine smell each other over the fence and then let her into the pasture to see how they’d react to each other. In equine society, females rule the herd and despite being a whole hand shorter than Valentine, Moonshine quickly took the leadership role and Valentine let her. I think he was just happy to have a friend…a girl-friend at that! I have some video of the moment when they met that shows them running around together. Someday I’ll post that because it’s fun to watch.

As I said, it’s been several months now and these two horses love each other’s company. You never see them very far apart and the pecking order is well-established. They’re beautiful together and at times I wish Valentine was a stallion. Their babies would be beautiful!

And the particulars: Moonshine is 15.2 hands tall, black with a white star on her head and snip on her nose. She weighs about 1,000 pounds. A registered paint, you wouldn’t know it to look at her since she’s all black but she’s registered as breeding stock. She’s also part quarterhorse and Thoroughbred. The Thoroughbred part really shows when she runs, I think. Boy is she fast! It’s interesting to see the two horses together. Valentine runs oddly, as gaited horses do (he’s a Tennessee Walking Horse) while Moonshine runs like a racehorse.

Moonshine running

And now about her name. Her official name is moon-something. I can never remember what it is but being near the mountains in east Tennessee it just seemed funny to call her Moonshine. It’s funny but for me, the name also refers to her radiant beauty, like the shining moon. Moon shine. And it rhymes with Valentine. You might see her name as Moonshine or Moon Shine.

So now you know most of the story. You’ll be hearing a lot about her on ourfirsthorse.com. And while technically we have our first horses…the name of our site and horse blog still applies, since Mikki and I each now have our own first horse.

Should you buy a horse?

Should you buy a horse?

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Buying a horse

I’m going to try and talk you out of buying a horse. Stay with me…it’s not as bad as it sounds.

If you’re reading our horse blog, you probably fall into one of the categories of either owning your own horse and commiserating with our newbie fumbling or you long to own your own horse someday. Horses aren’t casual recreation purchases for most people. Since there is so much involved in horse ownership, horse owners tend to be pretty fanatical. It’s not like buying an expensive toy, like an RC car or a motorbike. When you don’t want to play with it anymore, you can’t put it away for a few months until you get interested again. So if you REALLY love horses, there is probably nothing I could tell you to convince you that buying a horse isn’t a good idea. On the other hand, if you’re a fence-sitter or are thinking about buying a horse as a gift for someone, maybe this is time for some serious consideration.

Our First Horse should be a real eye-opener for anyone who hasn’t owned a horse before. One of the things we write about the amount of time/work involved. Actually, for one horse, it’s not bad. But you’re going to need to spend at least an hour a day just keeping your horse alive (cleaning a stall, feeding, watering, debugging, medical attention, hugs, etc.). If you want your horse to be more than decoration, you’ll need to occasionally ride it or it will rust (okay, it will get rusty). In my experience, you can’t ignore a horse for a year and then slap a saddle on its back and go for a ride. You have to work the horse and keep it trained, at least with the minimums like giddy-up, whoa and “WHOA!!!”.

Then there is the ongoing expense. If you do the work yourself, it’s not too bad, unless your horse needs medical attention. You’ve probably seen our horse expense list. We spend about $40-$50 a month per horse but one month recently our expenses went up to $173 for one of our horses! Make sure you have some cash tucked away for those months. And keep in mind we have our own barn and pasture. If you don’t live on a property that includes these basic horse accommodations, you’ll either need to either put in horse fencing and plant good pasture grass (if you have the room and are zoned for horses) or board your horse somewhere, which will add significantly to horse ownership expenses.

There are scheduling issues. Although some people leave their horses out in the pasture for days at a time or longer, we bring our horses in daily for some supplemental nutrition via oats and alfalfa pellets and provide fresh water daily. Fresh water is most important and since we don’t own an automatic waterer, we simply must check and refill water containers daily. This means we sometimes do horse work at midnight or later if we go out to see a movie or take a day trip. Anything longer than a day trip means we have to ask someone to mind our horses for us. If you have dogs, you’re probably familiar with this routine. Only you can’t load your horse into the family SUV and take him to a vacation kennel.

Having said all that, I don’t regret for a minute owning a horse, or in our case now, owning horses. However, I do have some pre-purchase suggestions to help make sure buying a horse is the right thing for you:

  1. My best suggestion is to volunteer at a horse barn. Seriously, once you assure the barn owner that you’re not crazy, volunteer to help out daily for a few weeks or a month. Clean out stalls, feed horses, brush them, help with some basic training, but do it every day so you can see how it impacts your schedule. In addition to determining if this hobby is right for you, you’ll also learn valuable lessons on what to do and not to do. You might also make some valuable contacts and learn who to buy from, what are good prices in your area, etc. In fact, some of the best horse deals come from people who haven’t publicized that their horse is for sale.
  2. If you’re not wealthy enough to have an attendant for your horse, volunteer at a veterinary facility or stable where horses are rehabilitated. Your horse might become injured at some point, requiring you to provide rehabilitation services for many months before you can ride it again. Do you have the time, money and patience for this?
  3. Visit your local horse supply stores, such as the feed store, tack shop or farm co-op. Read the bulletin board postings, chat with the employees. You’ll likely walk away with some great information and you’ll need to know these people anyway if you decide to buy a horse.
  4. Consider taking a weekend or longer to volunteer at a horse rescue (we have some listed on our Links page). There are people out there with a passion for rescuing horses from destruction or food slaughter. The horses they work with are often great for casual recreation and are sometimes registered, former racehorses or trail horses. Some are rescued from abuse or neglect. Help out a worthwhile charity, learn about horses and maybe fall in love with a horse.

I probably didn’t talk you out of buying a horse but hopefully, you got some suggestions to help you make a rational decision. Although I don’t recommend it, you could just ignore our advice and go in blind for your own newbie horse ownership adventure. That’s what we did :-).

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.

Watch Your Head!

Watch Your Head!

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Funny face

After being stepped on a couple of times, it appears that I’m paying too much attention to the horses’ feet and not enough to their heads. The other day, we were doing our usual carefully choreographed routine to get both horses out of the nice, comfy barn out to the wide-open pasture. Now, the horses like being in the pasture (as long as it’s not raining, that is), but for some reason, they don’t like to go out there. It probably has something to do with the gooey, murky swamp of mud they have to cross to get there. So we have various tricks to maneuver them out there.

I have to say here that the RIGHT way to accomplish this is to halter each horse, lead them out to the pasture, stop them with a firm command, remove the halter, then walk away. The horse should not lead you out there, and should not walk away before you do. We have done it this way many, many times. However, unless we want to walk across the gooey, mucky mud-swamp, we have to take the horses out through the back of the barn, across our lawn and out through a different, drier gate. So every day, we have a choice: bring the keys, get each halter out of the tack room, halter each horse, negotiate a stall door and barn gate, drag said horse across the broad expanse of luscious, green grass, negotiate another, smaller gate, and release them in the pasture; or, just open a stall door and a barn gate and coax each horse out. We usually choose the lazier of the options. But do as we say, not as we do.

Anyway, this particular day Bill walked out to the pasture (through the “dry” gate) to lure the horses out there, while I managed the stall doors, one by one. We got the mare out (we still haven’t agreed on a barn name for her) without too much trouble, but Valentine had other ideas. Their stalls are on the west side of the barn, and his is closest to the gate. The hay is on the east side of the barn, diagonally from his stall. That’s where he wanted to be, and I was between the two. Now, he could have forced the issue – being twice my height and, we’ll say, 10 times my weight. But, lucky for me, he does respect me. However, in his search for a way past me rather than over or through me, he turned his head rather abruptly and completely clocked me upside the head. I gotta tell you, that HURT. I don’t remember any stars, but I swear I felt something shift up in there. I got a very noticeable lump on my left temple and any pressure in a 6-square-inch area up there was extremely painful for a couple of days. In fact, it’s been 6 days since it happened, and it still hurts to touch. (I know, I know, don’t touch it, then.)

So watch out for the top AND bottom of the horse. At the same time.