I Hate Scrubbing Buckets
Don’t you? That’s why when we went to Tractor Supply last year and saw a product called Stock Tank Secret, we thought it was worth a try. It’s a little bag full of barley straw that you just drop in your water tank, trough or whatever. The company claims that barley straw has been used in the UK for hundreds of years to help keep livestock water clear. So the day after we got it, I scrubbed the bucket clean (Stock Tank Secret says you don’t need to clean it first, but ours was pretty gross) and dropped it in. Then our most important product reviewers ambled over for a drink.
First, they looked at us like we might have dropped poison in their water. Then they nudged the sack, then nudged each other as if to say, “No, you try it!” and looked at us again, this time as if perhaps we’d dropped a small animal carcass in their water. After several minutes of nudging, sipping and head-shaking, Valentine finally decided he was thirsty enough he’d have to just go for it. They both got a drink, albeit still suspiciously, and hung around the water cooler for quite a while. Unsurprisingly, when we came out about an hour later to check the tank, the suspicious item was on the ground a few feet away.
They finally got used to it and left it alone, but did it work? Not really. I emailed the makers of the product to ask for further instructions, and the actual owner emailed back with his phone number. I called him and had a very nice conversation with him, in which he gave me one of my favorite quotes to this day: “A horse is just an animal spending its day trying to kill itself.” Unrelated to the stock tank, but true nonetheless. Anyway, he diagnosed the problem, which was that I had put the water tank in the shade. It needs sun to work. So we moved it to a nice sunny spot, where we also did not get good results. But we were using an itty bitty (about 20 gal) tub, off-white in color. We upgraded to a 100-gallon stock tank but by then it was winter and we kind of forgot about the Stock Tank Secret.
Fast forward to this year. We’re on our second 100-gallon water tank – the first one cracked and therefore leaked like a sieve. It also turned green within days of cleaning, and wasn’t much fun to clean – big, deep, with a ridge about halfway up because the bottom half isn’t as wide as the top. Why are they made that way? I’m sure there’s a good reason – other than making it harder to clean – but I don’t know what it is. (Perhaps to keep the horses from kicking it – well, they still do.) Anyway, when we got the new tank, we decided to try the Stock Tank Secret again. We’ve been using it for about a month now.
So, does it work? Kind of. It stays pretty clear of algae, which is what you have to scrub off. The water still gets nasty pretty quickly, because horses are very messy drinkers. They dunk their dirty muzzles all the way in, and backwash like crazy. We still have to empty that big old thing at least once a week and put clean water in, but we don’t really have to scrub it, which is nice. All in all, it is worth the small investment.
The small stall buckets and the goat buckets, unfortunately, are too small to pop one of these in, though, and still require scrubbing. Pretty sure the horses would eat it out of there, anyway, the goats definitely would. When someone invents an anti-scrub product for those, I’m in.
In the past couple of weeks we’ve been traveling quite a bit. At one point there was no one home for about 7 days. During that time our horse friend Shari kept an eye on the place and fed our outside animals (the dogs were at a kennel). Several days into our vacation, we got a voice message from an older neighbor saying our horses were out and were roaming the neighborhood and highway and they didn’t know what to do since they weren’t horse people. In fact I think they thought we were still home because we often arrange to have cars in our driveway so it doesn’t appear as though the house is empty. We immediately began dialing through our list of horse rescue contacts to ask for help. We were about 2,000 miles away from home at this point. Unfortunately, almost all of our horse contacts were off doing weekend things, far from home. We finally reached a vet friend and the girl we bought Romeo from (thanks guys!) and they quickly led the horses back into the pasture. The fence was down in one section. To make a long story short, although the fence was repaired each time, this has happened a total of four times in the past two weeks. Our horses have learned two lessons:
Been a little while since we talked about this but I have an update. Since we last wrote about our round bale experiment in 
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.
I thought Valentine was limping a little when I let him out of the barn this morning. As I watched him throughout the morning, it seemed to me something was wrong. Although he is more of a loner, this morning he wasn’t eating when I put out hay and he just stood there next to the other horses looking sad. And he seemed to be standing funny but it’s hard to tell with him. He’s such a big Walking Horse, with dominant hips. Worried, I haltered him, walked him up the muddy hill to the barn, and hosed off his feet and legs while he ate grass in my back yard while I had a look. Everything seemed normal. So I dragged him away from the yummy grass and took him for a walk down the street. It’s not the first time. In fact, I do it pretty frequently to exercise the horses and to keep them familiar with things that otherwise might spook them, like the neighbors barking dogs, cars and tree stumps. After a nice walk I was able to determine that he’s walking normal and there is no swelling and no visible lacerations. Maybe he was just still from being in the barn all night. He drank a normal amount of water, ate all of his overnight hay and his poop looked okay. After returning him to the barn for further observation, I noticed he was eating hay, though I gave him the best we had.
Poor Cash. He’s been with us since June, but we honestly don’t think he wants to be here. We were concerned when he came here on a visit and 
