Our First Horse

Pasture Hole Repair

December 15, 2006 Bill Comments 0 Comment

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:

Stall Fork Preferences

December 14, 2006 Bill Comments 0 Comment

It doesn’t take long to figure out what products and procedures work well for horse chores. Last night while shoveling horse stalls (it’s more like forking horse stalls), Mikki grabbed the manure fork I normally use and I, in turn, took hers. After a few minutes, we happily swapped back again. Neither of us found it easy to work with a manure fork weren’t familiar with using. That might sound silly but we each use a different size and style fork and that makes more of a difference than I would have thought. Mikki uses a smaller fork purchased at a tack shop for around $20. It’s the typical style you see for manure duties, with a nice smooth aluminum handle. We bought the fork I use specifically for use with pellet bedding such as Woody Pet and Equine Pine. In fact, I think it’s actually manufactured by the Woody Pet people (I think they call it their “Fine Tines Fork” – around $26 at Tractor Supply). Its tines are closer together for catching small manure pieces. It’s also quite a bit larger than the one Mikki uses and as a result picks up a LOT of horse manure, which makes it quite heavy to use. For those who use sawdust or pine pellets, cleaning stalls is partly scooping big chunks of horse manure and part sifting to separate the good bedding from the little pieces of manure. The larger fork does a great job as a “sifter” since it’s deep and the sides adequately keep the payload from prematurely escaping the fork. The smaller fork Mikki uses doesn’t work as well as a sifter because the payload keeps falling off the sides. At least it does for me. Mikki has it down, though and much prefers it over the larger stall fork.

Here’s what they look like. Even though the larger one looks like it’s carrying less horse manure, remember it’s deeper. You just can’t see the depth in the photo.

On the left is the smaller fork, with the larger Woody Pet fork on the right. While shooting these pictures, I lost some of the horse manure from the fork on the left.

Incidentally, we’ve been using both stall forks for at least 6 months without any of the tines breaking. They’ve fallen down in the barn and used as rakes and shovels (not recommended) and have proven to be durable, despite being plastic. The bolt holding the fork onto the aluminum handle of the smaller one needed tightening once.

No romantic ear nibbling after stall cleaning

December 13, 2006 Bill Comments 0 Comment

Valentine Candy — *Photo by Laura Ockel on Unsplash*

Our routine for cleaning horse stalls has Mikki and I both heading up to the horse barn together. Not only does the work go faster than if just one of us did it, but it also provides good company during an otherwise monotonous barn task. Before we know it, the manure dust has cleared and we’re headed back down to the house. One day we’re headed back in and we realized how different life is for us now. We think nothing of emptying hay from our pockets and socks (how does it get there?), scraping manure from our boots and shaking manure dust from our hair. And this reminds me how quickly a romantic playful mood can change when somebody gets the idea to nibble on the ear of the other. That manure dust from your hair? Yeah, well it kinda settles on the ears until you wash your head. Neck, too. Oh, and no finger nibbling before washing your hands. And guys, if you’re listening, if you just nibbled on her horse poo dust-covered ear, kissing her before brushing your teeth or at least rinsing with Listerine is not recommended. Unless, of course, she’s a farmy kinda girl and doesn’t mind horse manure dust seasoning. Hey, don’t knock until you’ve tried it, right?

Horse Sayings

December 12, 2006 Mikki Comments 37 comments

It didn’t occur to me until we owned a horse just how many times we use common horse sayings. I’m amazed how common these saying are, even though they seem to have origins many years ago before the automobile was common. I’m sure I’m forgetting some good ones but these are really funny to me now that we have horses:

“Hold your horses!”
“Get off your high horse.”
“Hey, your barn door is open.”
“That’s like putting the cart before the horse.”
“Aw, blow it out your nose” (applies to multiple animals, I know)
“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth” (my non-gift horse would prefer I not look in her mouth either)
“He’s got horse sense” (Is this a compliment or an insult?)
“I got it straight from the horse’s mouth” (Ick!)
“…a horse of a different color” (you know “brown” isn’t really a horse color, right?)
“Hey!” (trust me, it’s funny up to 30 times a day when you work with hay all the time.)

and my favorite:

“Why the long face?”

Can you think of any more?

Horses, Fire and a Wood Barn

December 9, 2006 Mikki Comments 2 comments

As you all may know, we moved to the southeast from Arizona. In Arizona, fire is very, very scary. Setting a fire in your backyard and leaving it to burn is a major no-no. Here, it’s no big deal. We have an empty field across the street from our property, and the owner has spent many months clearing it. He chops down a bunch of trees, mows down weeds and sets whatever’s left on fire. Then he just leaves. No big deal. He did this shortly after we moved here, and believe me, Bill and I were fit to be tied. We let it go until it was a few yards from our other neighbor’s house, then put it out ourselves. I’m sure the natives are still giggling over that one.

Anyway, someone not too far from here is burning a big pile of something tonight. Either that or a house is on fire and no one has noticed yet. Our house smells like a casino (cigarette smoke, for those of you have never been to a casino), and there’s a haze of smoke all around. You can see a glow over one of the hills just east of here. The horses are pretty freaked out, and we’re concerned ourselves. Especially since we just locked our horses in a barn made entirely of wood.

Unfortunately, we can’t stay up all night to watch in case the fire makes it all the way over here. Normally, we might try it, but we have to take The Kid to school early in the morning, Bill is pretty sick with a cold and I’m still recovering from some other bug I caught last week. But as a precaution, rather than leave the horses’ halters and lead ropes in the tack room like we usually do, we brought them down here to the house with us. That way, just in case something were to happen, we have halters ready. We really should do that all the time, and if we had more storage here, we would. But there’s simply no space. We have a mudroom planned, though, and that would be a great place to keep a couple of emergency halters. As I’ve mentioned before, a lot of people keep a halter hanging outside the stall door for emergencies, but we’re too paranoid for that. It feels too much like leaving the keys in the car.

So that’s our emergency plan, such that it is. It’s kind of a short-term plan, but we really need to have an emergency plan in place, and so should you. In our case, we need to worry about fire, tornado or nuclear fallout. Think about what might happen (even a remote possibility) and plan accordingly.

As usual, more on that later. For now, we have the teeny-tiny chance that the fire that may or may not still be burning a half-mile away could possibly spread to our barn covered. Whew.

Horse Christmas Stockings?

December 8, 2006 Bill Comments 0 Comment

We’re animal people. We snuggle with our dogs at night and hug our horses when they come in at night. Every Christmas it’s always been a tradition of ours to have a Christmas stocking for each of our dogs. Inside we…I mean Santa…puts doggie treats, maybe a new collar, etc. This is our first Christmas with our horses and I’m wondering what to do for Valentine and Moonshine. Maybe we should buy two of those giant stockings and fill them with horse goodies. We could stuff them with Stud Muffins, peppermint treats, new grooming combs, his and her horse Santa hats and Tractor Supply gift cards!

Fence Mending

December 7, 2006 Bill Comments 0 Comment

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.

Horse fence repair — Fence fixed with center support.

We’ve been fence-mending a few times now. Here are our other posts about mending fences:

More Fence Mending (2/07)
Mending Horse Fences – Update (5/07)

Horses and the frozen tundra of the South

December 5, 2006 Bill Comments 0 Comment

Today was the coldest day yet in east Tennessee. Actually, there have been colder days since we’ve lived here but not since we’ve had horses. Lows at night are in the lower 20’s and we’ve had some wind. Although my Arizona butt hasn’t quite acclimated to winters that are actually cold, our horses seem to have adapted nicely. Both Moonshine and Valentine have thick fuzzy winter coats and despite our attempts to shelter them from the cold, they seem to prefer it to being stuck in the barn.

One thing I’m not familiar with is frozen water buckets. Yesterday and today both I’ve gone out to discover all of our animal water buckets had almost an inch of ice on top. I was expecting this but I’m not yet sure what to do about it. Most of the buckets aren’t near any power source so a bucket heater or bucket de-icer doesn’t seem like it would work for us. We could use an extension cord but that increases the possibility of a barn fire. I’m also concerned with our horses nibbling on the wires, though it seems like the heated buckets use steel wire wrapped cords to prevent nibbling. I saw a product called Thermo Bucket that uses a simple insulated float but it looks too thin to drink from. Maybe it’s just a bad picture. So we’re looking for a solution, mostly for in the barn stalls. The ice in the outside bucket I can break up effectively and it sits in the sun most of the day.

Because we baby our horses, the subject of horse blankets has come up, too. Mikki is interested in trying them but I’m skeptical. Besides yet another horse expense, I wonder if the blanket would stay on for very long. I can see Moonshine rolling in the dirt to get it off. Plus I wonder if it’s even needed. Here comes the old “horses in the wild don’t need that” argument. But it’s true. How many horse blankets do you see in those pictures of wild horses running in the Montana snow? None. Of course, horses in the wild probably don’t live as long as our pampered domesticated horses. But even when it was 26 degrees (F) outside, neither horse shivered or showed any signs of wanting to seek shelter. I did see Valentine galloping around more than usual. Maybe it was to warm up, maybe he just felt frisky. But no blankets for now.

In our barn, the outside stall windows are now closed for cold weather, though the ends of the barn remain open as we have no doors. We’re considering adding doors but it won’t be anytime soon.

Let me take a minute to say that I do realize 26 degrees isn’t that cold. Many, if not most of you live somewhere that has harsher winters than we experience in Tennessee. That whole “frozen tundra of the South” thing was a stretch, to be sure. It doesn’t get much colder than this except in the mountains.

Review – Energizer 6 LED Headlamp

December 4, 2006 Bill Comments 0 Comment

Energizer 6 LED Head light Part of our evening routine is for Mikki and I to feed the goats, clean horse stalls and feed our horses. Ever since daylight savings time ended in early November, its been dark while we’re doing this so we’ve had to bring out a flashlight. The barn has pretty good light and we’re going to expand our lighting system someday but for now Moonshine’s stall requires supplemental lighting so I can see to scoop. Until last month I had been using a portable fluorescent light that came with a Craftsmen tool set. It works really well for the most part and with a 19.2 volt power pack, it does last a long time. However, I found myself stepping in front of the light often which defeated the purpose. Then I got the idea to try this headband light I bought for camping and working on my Jeep. It’s an LED light that’s attached to a head band so you can use it hands-free. By strapping it to your head, the light follows wherever you look, which is just perfect for stall cleaning at night. This particular model, the Energizer 6 LED Headlamp, has 4 light modes but I really only use the first one, which powers only two LEDs through a magnifier to produce remarkable amount of light for such a little thing. Three AAA batteries are supposed to keep it running for 50 hours. I’m still on the original batteries after a month so that seems pretty economical. Oh and the light tilts down at the base so you can easily adjust it to shine wherever you want. The only downside is how it looks on your head. We’ve kind of taken to calling it my “geek light” because it makes me look (more) geeky. Because it uses multiple lights, you will find yourself looking less like a coal miner and more light a robot with this on. But it does the job. And the horses don’t mind it either.

So where do you get this? Aha! You knew there was a catch with this recommendation, right? Actually there isn’t. Just go to Walmart. I think I paid $10 for it. No affiliate links and this isn’t a sponsored review. I just really like the product and want to recommend it for nighttime horse duties.

Energizer LED Headlight packaging

Salutory Horse Gas?

November 30, 2006 Bill Comments 0 Comment

Okay, I was going to say “horse farts” but it just seemed uncivilized. Both of our horses have what I would consider a peculiar habit. Each time we let them in the barn they lift their tails and pass gas as they walk by us. What is THAT all about? Is this some kind of horse greeting I’m just supposed to know about or are they trying to insult me? I’m sure “horse gas” is what I’m smelling too because I can hear it escaping as they walk passed me. If you’re offended by horse gas, stop reading now, as it only gets worse. I remember reading something about the ozone layer and how methane from cow gas was causing measurable damage to the atmosphere. I’m not surprised if that’s true because my 1,000-pound horse can almost cause me to lose consciousness. I no longer wonder about the cause of all the barn fires in the olden days. Farmers used lanterns with flames! What were they thinking? It’s a wonder we don’t hear more about EXPLOSIONS in the barns of yesteryear with all that methane floating around.

But seriously, they don’t seem gassy (is that a word?) all the time we’re around them, just when we let them in for oats at night. I suppose it has something to do with the grass they’re eating during the day out in the pasture. Or maybe my neighbors are playing a joke on us by feeding our horses burritos. Haha, funny, I get it. Please stop now.

Note to self – let horses in early when romantic evenings are planned.