This week I was looking through pictures from last year, longing for warmer days when I found pictures of our pasture access gate. It was a rusty mess. We’ve looked at and walked through this gate a million times and couldn’t take the rust any more. It was ugly, it made my hands red, it made noise and was in danger of disintegrating into a pile of rust. The solution was a simple one.
Our pasture has three gate access points: 1) through our back yard using this small rusty gate, 2) through our barn using a galvanized metal gate (no rust) and 3) via the road going past our place using a large rusty gate, big enough for a truck, tractor, etc. to get through. One summer day, we decided we had enough of the smaller rusty gate and picked up some primer and green Rustoleum at Walmart. The gate (pictured) took 2 cans of primer and 2 cans of paint. We selected green because it matched the color of the grass back then. What a huge difference it made in the appearance of our back yard.
A few thoughts when painting pasture fence and gate stuff:
Horses are curious creatures and have large nostrils with which to inhale psychedelic paint fumes (careful, those of you who have a horse that cribs/sucks wind/wood).
It’s easier to avoid getting paint on you with gloves than it is to wash paint off of your skin
Keep the horses away, especially if you’re using non-horse colors like white primer and green. Yes, horses come in white sometimes but mine are black.
You think you know this but trust me when I say – don’t spray into the wind. Lesson learned…again.
10 months later, this gate looks about as good as it did when I painted it. Next, we’ll do the big rusty gate, though it’s a lower priority since I don’t look at it every day from the house.
We’re in need of some more gates and we’re thinking of building our round pen with these 12-foot gate sections. But I’m at the point where I need to decide on painted or galvanized. Painted looks nicer…at first. I don’t know how long this paint job of ours will last but I sure don’t want to paint gates every year. I don’t want to spend the time or money. Paint for this little gate cost us almost $20 and a new, painted gate isn’t much more than that. I’m strongly considering galvanized. I think in the long run we’ll save money.
Gone. That’s how I’d explain the round bale I mentioned in Part 1 (October 13) and Part 2 (November 21). Our horses totally decimated it and seem offended they actually needed to forage for grass again. But as the weather got colder and the grass in our pasture became less and less, I started realizing that supplemental forage seems like a necessity. We seemed to “get away with it” last year because we bought Valentine in mid-February and prior to that only had a single boarding horse on our 5+ acre pasture. This year is different. We have two permanent horses sharing one pasture of dead or missing grass. So here at the end of the “experiment” I can tell you it has been a total success. $20 worth of hay supplemented our horses forage needs for almost three months (October-January). I don’t expect to get nearly as much time out of the next round bale because our natural forage supply is almost gone.
Based on our experience these past few months, here are some notes I’ve made on round bales:
I’m a little concerned that our horses stand in one small area and eat from it all day. Will they get fat this way? I thought horses always wanted to keep moving for safety.
I came across an interesting report concerning round bale hay spoilage. The government of Alberta, BC, Canada funded a study of how round bale storage techniques affect spoilage. Although the report was conducted in 1988, the data remains relevant today. The results showed that, with the exception of round bales stored inside, there were no differences in hay spoilage where round bales were stored outside in rows versus wrapped in plastic. Round bales stored outside, according to the study, may lose up to 10% of the hay to spoilage, after 16 months, amazingly. Round bales stored away from the weather experienced no spoilage. For more information, visit the Round Bale Storage Techniques report at the Alberta government website.
Although I purchased this last round bale for $20, delivered straight off of the hay baler wagon, I wonder how much price will fluctuate in winter. Supply and demand and all.
Delivery was great but there is no hay cutting going on these days so I can’t count on free delivery. I’m sure I could pay for delivery but I have a car hauler trailer and am inclined to save a few bucks and pick it up myself. I wonder if this is a good idea. At 1,000 pounds, how difficult will each be to move around at home, since we don’t have a tractor?
Location – the spoilage report mentioned above notwithstanding, I’m still considering putting the new round bale in our old barn out in the pasture. I wonder if I’ll be able to get it in there without the aforementioned uncontrollable 1,000 round bale rolling through our barn and knocking it down. Sure, it would be funny later but barns aren’t cheap.
I made some calls to try and get another round bale, as the grass in our east Tennessee pasture becomes less and less with colder weather. Fortunately, I have a friend who was willing to sell me 2 round bales for $30 total, provided we pick them up. So we picked up two round bales from an open field on 1/12/07 with our F150 and a 16-foot car hauler, which worked nicely. I think we could have pulled three round bales home if we wanted to. “Picked up” means we went to the field and my friend loaded both round bales onto our trailer with a tractor and hay spear.
We brought the round bales home and figured since our pasture is hilly, we’d use that to our advantage. I backed the trailer up with the rear-facing downhill next to a tree and Mikki and I were able to roll off one of the round bales. The horses found this whole process quite interesting!
Next, I backed our trailer up to the barn to unload the second round bale. This proved much more difficult. I keep calling these “round” bales but in reality, they’re flat on the bottom from sitting for 6 months. We also didn’t have the downhill advantage. But eventually we unloaded it. Man, I wish we had a tractor.
So now our horses have their faces in the “new” hay every day for most of the day, though they do roam the pasture in-between “meals”. The quality of these round bales looked pretty poor on the outside, with lots of visible mold. Since the bales are in layers (think pecan swirls), the moldy layer was easily unwrapped to reveal the good hay. The inside looked much better. The outside peeled off as we rolled the bale into place. Our horses are picky about their hay and forage so we don’t expect they’ll be interested in any of the moldy hay, as long as there is good hay to be had.
As of today, February 2nd, the first bale in the pasture is almost entirely gone. That’s 3 weeks for $20 ($15 plus gas to get it here). Not bad for winter forage, I suppose. The horses don’t seem to have touched the bale in the old barn for some reason. We might have to push it out.
Knowing how well round bales are working for us, we have a plan for later this year. This summer/early fall when the round bales are plentiful, cheap and not moldy, we’re going to stock up, putting them in the old barn protected from the elements. I’m sold on round bales!
Thanks to David who commented in The round bale hay experiment – Part 2 about using a hay ring, specifically a horse hay ring. Apparently one of these devices reduces the amount of wasted hay by keeping the round bale contained. Horses simply reach their necks over and feed out of the middle. We’re doing some more research on price, etc. and will bring it up in a later post. David says it extends the life of the bale up to a week or more. Sounds good to me, provided the price is reasonable.
…also, Tree: about 50; supercharged F-150 SuperCrew: 1. We went a few more rounds with the tree in our pasture that blew down a few weeks ago. If you look closely at the very blurry picture to the right, you will see two chainsaws – one pointing up, one pointing down. The reason why it’s so blurry is that it was taken at about 7:00 at night with my cellphone. It was the only camera on hand, and I only had it in case I needed to call 911. (Thankfully, that was not necessary.)
(Tree in daylight, sans chainsaws)
It was yet another of those things that seem so simple and turn out to be anything but. About 1/3 of this tree had split off the trunk in a bad windstorm, and it was a pretty big tree. It was kind of an eyesore, probably not too safe for the horses who liked to wander underneath it and most importantly, was an irresistible magnet to the neighbor kids who were denied permission to play on it but were doing so anyway. So we headed up to this tree at about 4:00 Saturday afternoon (that would be December 30) thinking that we’d just get the broken limb detached from the trunk. About 15 minutes later, the chainsaw got pinched in the cut. No problem, we think, we’ll just wiggle it out. Half an hour later, we decide to try a crowbar. Half an hour after that, we decide to try an ax. Half an hour after that, we decide we’ll just hook up a tow rope and pull the limb loose with our truck (there was only a small un-sawed part left). Twenty minutes of skidding and fishtailing later, we decide we might need help. So we call up our way too put-upon friends, the Watsons, and ask to borrow a chainsaw. Mr. Watson generously offered to not only bring his chainsaw but to help.
Five minutes after his arrival, his chainsaw is also stuck in the stupid tree. Again, out comes the crowbar; again, no luck. This time, we skipped the ax and went straight to the truck. The Watson chainsaw came out fairly soon after we began pulling, but our saw still wasn’t going anywhere. Another ten minutes of revving that V-8 and sliding all over the place and the father of the neighbor children joined us. (The tree is about 20 yards from their back door; he was wondering what all the ruckus was.) We eventually moved the tow rope to the other side of the branch and pulled the limb downhill, and it finally gave up the ghost – and the chainsaw. What was left of it. Needless to say, we were done chainsawing for the day and the tree will rest unmolested until we get a new chain and bar.
Can you find the horse in this picture?
By the way, if you were wondering – our two very helpful horses spent all this time getting too close to the unstable tree limb, too close to the chainsaw and too close to the truck, in addition to not moving from behind the truck when we needed to back up, trying to go through the gate with the truck each time we opened it, and scaring Mr. Watson by appearing suddenly in front of him in the dark (they’re pretty much invisible at night, being black – see picture to left).
What did your horse do today? Mine ate a pine tree. Filling the pasture water bucket today I noticed something missing. There was a small pine tree growing near the water bucket and I’ve been watering it for months. It was a cute little feller with aspirations for being an equine belly scratcher someday. Its poor little life was cut short (nipped in the bud, you might say) by an apparently very hungry horse. Neither horse had a pine-fresh scent so I couldn’t figure out which one ate it. I’m not sure what I would have done if I did know. Can you Heimlich a horse? Sounds dangerous.
The weather was beautiful the other day – 70 degrees in the middle of December. I completed horse stall cleaning while it was still light and decided to take a little walk out in the pasture. I don’t do this as often as I should. I have to force myself to even go outside during cold weather. I’m a warm-weather person, really. But today I’m reminded that horse people need to keep an eye on so many things. I discovered this 8 inch wide, 10 inch deep hole next to one of the trails. It almost looked like someone had dug this hole with a post-hole digger. I was aghast. I can just see my horse stepping in this thing and coming up lame. Since the dirt here is as hard as cement right now, I filled the hole with horse manure, packing it nice and tight. I’ll keep an eye on it. The hole didn’t look like a sinkhole and it’s in a place where I can see it from the house. I don’t think anyone dug the hole but it’s a great reminder that we all need to check the pasture occasionally, for obstacles like this. Here’s the hole, with Mikki standing next to it for scale:
My beautiful four-legged wood chewer finally put too much pressure on the fence and broke the top board. It’s not entirely her fault. This a section of fence where we often stand and pet them and show them off to friends. Horse treats are often dispersed here so they’ve gotten into the habit of leaning into the fence. Very cold weather is coming tonight (wind chill below zero) and this is just when our horses would decide to jump this section of fence and tour the neighborhood. Time for some fence-mending. Here’s what I learned about fence-mending today:
Horses are very curious creatures
Horses think almost anything can be food, including hammers, drills, nails (yikes!), fence wood and of course fingers
It’s hard to use a hammer when horse nostrils are 2 inches from the handle
Although fence-mending would be easier with two people, it would be much easier with three. Think rodeo clown.
If you need to step away to get another tool, you must remove all other tools, nails, screws and wood supplies from the area before leaving.
Fortunately, I had a spare fence board that was just the right length. This time I used screws instead of nails. Screws are less likely to walk out and injure the horses, in my opinion, and aren’t that much more expensive. I also decided to use part of the broken board as a center support. I’m seeing this center support idea in a lot of horse fencing and it makes sense to me. These are 10-foot sections and tend to bow eventually in the middle. The center section will help strengthen the center section, which is especially important on this particular section of horse fence in our pasture.
Fence fixed with center support.
We’ve been fence-mending a few times now. Here are our other posts about mending fences:
Nope, not a Halloween post. The other day Mikki and I were out in the pasture cutting back a large section of a tree that had fallen during a storm. We headed on out with a chainsaw and an ax to clear the tree away from the round bale of hay resting under a nearby tree. The fallen tree presented a hazard to our horses so like good horse parents we were gonna fix it. I figured the horses would be afraid of the loud noises the chainsaw made but was surprised to see they didn’t seem to care. I guess they trusted since the noise was coming from around us, they didn’t have to fear it. At least we didn’t bring any plastic shopping bags with us. Now that would have been scary! Of course, I didn’t saw very close to them and had they approached me Mikki would have shooed them off. And I didn’t cut any branches that would have fallen on them or snapped towards them, despite how close they look in the picture (it was a staged photo).
A month ago I wrote about experimenting with a round bale of hay in the pasture during the cold season and here’s an update on how that’s going for us. Although our horses almost entirely ignored the round bale when the weather was warm, they’ve shown great interest in it once the weather cooled and the green grasses died off for the winter. In fact, I’m starting to think we should have purchased a few more round bales. Not only was the price a good deal ($20 for 1,000 pounds of fresh-cut hay!), I’m starting to think the horses really need the supplemental forage until spring. Almost every day now I see at least one horse rear sticking out beside the tree where the round bale rests. The horses don’t seem to like to outer layer which is no doubt moist from all the rain we’ve been having but the chewy center must be delicious, as they’ve managed to carve the middle section of the round bale out (see picture). So I’d say the “experiment” is going quite well. Armed with this information, I’ll probably look for some more round bales, though the prices have almost certainly gone up since I bought this one. If I’m successful in acquiring a few more, I’m going to place them in the old barn to keep the moisture down this time.
I need to point out that the brush you see on the left of that picture isn’t normally there. A nearby tree split during a storm and has since been trimmed. We try to correct fallen trees and other hazards as quickly as possible for the safety of the horses.
We’ve almost come full circle here with the weather and our horses. Bill brought Valentine home in the dead of winter (28 degrees the night of February 13! Brrr!), experienced a gorgeous spring, survived a hot, relatively dry summer, and now it’s fall. Today, however, already feels like winter – we had our first frost last night and it’s supposed to be below freezing again tonight. So I guess it’s time to winterize around here.
What you need to do depends upon where you live. If we still lived in Arizona, we’d be celebrating right now, because it would finally be cool enough to ride! But around here, we’re dreading the cold and even more so, the MUD. We thought we were making progress with the mud pit outside the barn this summer, but as soon as it cooled off again, the mud came back. Yuck.
So here’s what we need to do, and what we probably actually will do:
It doesn’t get so very cold here. It’s often in the twenties and thirties at night but usually warms up to the fifties during the day. Our horses are already doing the most important part of getting themselves ready: they are growing the most gorgeous, thick winter coats. They just look stunning, I have to say. All the sunburned summer hair has fallen out, and thick, velvety new hair has come in. They’re also very fortunate to both be all black, it attracts the heat very nicely. Lucky them! If your horse doesn’t grow a good winter coat, or if it’s really cold where you live, you should purchase a good blanket. I’m not sure why they call it a blanket, because it looks more like a coat, but that’s what it’s called. Good luck with this – I’m told that most horses hate them and do everything they can to get them off, from pulling on them with their teeth to rolling in the mud to having their horse friends help them pull them off. But in some climates, they really should be wearing one. Please, though, try to preserve their dignity by choosing one that doesn’t look too goofy.
For our part, the most important consideration for winter is the food supply. The grass in the pasture actually sticks around all winter, but becomes shorter and scarcer and not a good thing to rely on for winter forage. Our ultimate goal is to seed the entire pasture with cold-weather grass in the winter, but you need a tractor for that and we don’t have one yet. Hay also becomes harder and harder to come by as winter drags on. Last year, we had a panicky moment when we actually could not find any more hay (after paying $4.50 a bale for the hay we had last found). Luckily, we mentioned our dilemma to a friend whose mother had a barn full of “old” hay that she sold to us for $1.00 a bale. This year, we are planning ahead. We built a loft in our barn so we could store more hay, and have begun to fill it up. (A note on hay storage here: the biggest risk with stored hay is that it will develop mold. As you dispense hay to your horses every day, check each flake for signs of mold. The easiest method is with your nose – moldy hay smells bad. Never feed moldy hay. You should be checking hay for other stuff anyway – I’ve heard of everything from plastic bags to dead snakes being found in baled hay. Maybe you should be wearing gloves as you’re checking.)
We have also supplemented the hay supply with a round bale of hay, which is in the pasture for the horses to munch on whenever they want. Since they spend most of their time in the pasture, that’s a good place for a supply of hay. Ideally, any hay in the pasture should be protected from the weather. A “run-in shed” is a good thing for this purpose. It’s a three-sided shed that protects your hay – and your horses – from rain, wind, snow, whatever. We have an old barn in our pasture that we intend to use for this purpose, but it needs some serious maintenance right now. So the hay is parked beneath a large evergreen tree.
Another important note about winter feeding is that your horses will need to eat more to keep their weight up. Keeping a body warm in cold weather takes a lot of energy. We give our horses more oats in the winter – they’re higher in calories than hay.
Although your horse won’t need as much water in the winter as in the summer, a supply of clean, fresh water is still just as important. If you live somewhere where water might freeze, you need to invest in a bucket or trough de-icer. You might consider one even if it doesn’t freeze – horses don’t like to drink icy cold water and may avoid drinking if they don’t find the water to their liking.
As for protection from the elements, most of our horse friends laugh at us because we don’t just leave our horses out in the pasture all the time. They say that horses are just fine out in the cold, and I’m sure they’re at least partly right. But we have a nice barn with lots of room, so every night we bring them in to sleep in their stalls, and if it’s cold and/or windy, we close the exterior windows to keep the drafts out. But that’s up to you.
The biggest winter problem for us, though, is the mud. We battled it with straw this summer, piling it on and mixing it in (in Arizona, we’d have adobe by now). The next step is a large load of sand, to help the clay drain better. The best thing to do would be to shovel out the mud, lay down a layer of stone, then gravel, then sand and put the original soil back, but again we’d need a tractor. So we’ll try out the sand and see if it helps.
You’ll be hearing a lot about mud again this winter, I’m sure.
A few weeks ago a guy we go to church with dropped by to deliver a roll of hay. We’ve decided to supplement our square bales for the horses (which cost $1 each at a minimum and as much as $4.50 at the end of winter when supply is low and demand is high) with a roll or two of round bale. Round bales are much less expensive ($20 this time) because they are easier to make when the hay is being gathered. But they’re also harder to transport and store. We can move square bales at 30 pounds each but couldn’t move 1,500 pounds of round bale by ourselves. We can stack square bales in the barn and pull off a flake at a time (a flake is a two-inch or so slice of hay precut during baling). Although you could use a round bale for everyday feeding in the barn, you’d have to roll one in and pitch-fork it to the feed bins. We opted for a round bale as a test to see if the horses would eat it in the pasture and if it works out, we’ll buy another one and have it rolled into the old barn to supplement our square bales if we run low towards the end of winter.
This delivery was made into the pasture and I’ve never seen it done before so I thought I’d share some pics. Basically, the baler (or is it bailer?) backed up to a tree and plopped a roll out. The tree is to protect the hay from rain and to stop it from rolling during delivery. So far the horses don’t appear to have touched it but there is still plenty of green grass so I can’t blame them. I’ll update you on the round bale hay experiment over the next several months.
Gone. That’s how I’d explain the round bale I mentioned in 
…also, Tree: about 50; supercharged F-150 SuperCrew: 1. We went a few more rounds with the 
