Posts Tagged ‘feeding horses’
As Expected
The National Weather Service warnings were spot-on for our area yesterday. Asher and I headed out for the morning walk into the snowstorm, fully prepared for the worst. It wasn’t the most difficult of conditions we’ve faced, but it was challenging. My legs got a good workout trying to keep up with Asher as he pranced through the snow with little in the way of extra effort.
There was just enough snow to make my trudging in stiff boots much less efficient.
The horses looked like they had chosen to spend the night outside the protection of the overhang despite the heavy precipitation.
There was enough snow blown into those spaces that it probably didn’t matter either way. The wind was blowing from the wrong direction for the overhang to provide its best shelter from the elements.
I spent much of the day plowing and shoveling. Got the driveway cleared just as Cyndie was pulling in, which was nice for both of us. The road didn’t get plowed until late afternoon. It knocked the mailbox off its base, which surprised me. I thought it was dry enough snow it wouldn’t pack such a punch.
I guess not everything went as expected.
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Minor Inconvenience
The cold weather arrived as predicted to grasp us in its firm grip. I suppose it is a sign of my lifetime of exposure to the harshness of season-long snow and cold that this cold snap has barely presented a minor inconvenience to my normal routine.
I’ve complained in the past about growing less and less patient with my slow and laborious effort of donning what I have taken to calling my “spacesuit” before heading out to do chores. The tedious struggle is well worth it though because the crazy cold hasn’t been a problem for me in terms of comfort.
I need to pay attention to the minutes Asher is out because the pads of his paws are vulnerable to the cryogenic extremes. Other than that, he shows no sign of having any problems with the cold.
The horses look to be coping just fine. Breakfast time almost feels warm under the cover provided by the overhang and bathed in the rays of sunlight beaming in during the morning meal.
The main challenge at feeding time in extreme cold is managing the knots on the hay bags. That and scraping away frozen pigeon droppings on the placemats under their feed buckets.
Yesterday, Asher and I even made a successful outing in the car, and the cold didn’t break the seal on any of the tires. He had a grooming appointment in Baldwin that Cyndie usually drives him to, but since she is being a good patient and staying indoors, I became the chauffeur.
I had forgotten that Cyndie mentioned there are cats roaming loose at the dog grooming place. I was taken by surprise when I noticed Asher nose to nose with a big long-haired cat just inside the door. He looked mildly curious but not the least bit threatening as I tensed up and probably triggered him to be more concerned than he initially was.
Luckily, the check-in process happened so fast, there wasn’t time for any problem to erupt.
On a cold day when my preference would be to stay snuggled in and avoid any potential for unexpected driving issues, I was sent out a second time at dusk to pick up a change of meds for treating Cyndie’s pneumonia. She developed a rash from the first prescription.
We are hoping that was just a minor inconvenience on her road to a full recovery.
My trusty car performed well despite the deep freeze. In the end, the most difficult part of the whole day for me was working through the checklist of getting myself in and out of my spacesuit every time I had to walk Asher or do the horse chores.
Remember the old saying, there’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing.
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Love Is
LOVE is: Letting your horse get as muddy as she wants and not fussing about it.
It appears that Mia was engaged in a little horseplay in the dregs of the shrinking Paddock Lake.
LOVE is: Holding the feed bucket for your horse when she is too jittery to stand over her station when the wind suddenly kicks up and the pigeons react en masse in a racket of slapping wings
Cyndie held a bucket for Mia, and I walked one over to Mix this morning when they were too unsure to return to their regular feed stations. Of course, I ended up with the slowest eater of the herd.
Doing something as tedious as holding a bucket for an awkward amount of time is made a lot less awkward by the energizing warmth of love.
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Eagle Visit
It was a cold morning yesterday and if we had any pumpkins there would have been frost on them. We do have a lot of leaves, though.
The temperature dropped far enough below freezing that the surface of “Paddock Lake” developed a layer of ice.
Since I’ve been pondering our role in the ongoing rescue of our four thoroughbreds, I took a few pictures of them in the early sunlight as they were gobbling their mix of cracked oats and corn.
Swings with her fresh application of mud.
Mix’s nose.
Mia
Light
Eight hours later, we showed up for the afternoon feeding. I was out scooping manure, and Cyndie was inside, measuring portions into their buckets. Mia was halfway down the slope toward the waterer, munching hay from one of the nets hung on the fence. Suddenly, I noticed Mia had flipped around 180 degrees and was standing on alert, looking to the south.
I scanned the distance to see if I could find what was grabbing her attention. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary, my eyes moved back toward Mia, and that’s when I spotted what she was reacting to. A very large bald eagle was standing about five feet in front of her on the shore of the now iceless Paddock Lake.
It’s odd that I hadn’t noticed it when I looked around the first time. The eagle’s bald head stood out with its bright whiteness, and it was so incredibly tall compared to all the little pigeons that are about to get their own zipcode due to a population explosion.
I couldn’t be certain how long it had been there, but because Mia had just noticed, I’m guessing it hadn’t been very long. I don’t even know if it had enough time to drink because, as Mia approached the eagle took off.
Luckily, I had gotten Cyndie’s attention quickly enough that she came out just in time to see the big bird’s departure.
A huge eagle landing in our paddock while we were milling around felt like a nice ‘hat tip’ of appreciation from the universe to let us know things are good here.
It also tells me I’m not the only one noticing that little puddle seems to be forming into more than just a puddle. I’m feeling all the more justified in granting that watering hole a real name.
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Left Out
The day started mostly sunny but the forecast warned of a chance of rain in the afternoon. Sometime after Cyndie departed for a couple of days away with friends, I granted Asher a chance to walk through the woods wherever his nose led us, hoping to distract him from already missing her.
Before we set out, I opened a gate to allow the horses some time to graze grass. As far as we can tell, their bodies are adjusting to the gradual change in diet just fine.
While our neighbor to the south mowed grass along our property lines, Asher and I popped out of the woods and made our way between the horses in the field and the riding mower. It seemed like a perfect afternoon of spring sunshine.
The sky was partly cloudy, but it didn’t seem all that threatening. I hadn’t paid any attention to what the radar looked like. I’ve heard the phrase “popcorn showers” used for the dotted image of precipitation blobs that showed up when I finally checked.
Asher and I had made our way around our entire property and into the barn where I left him to kill time while I cleaned up manure and then prepared buckets of feed. I was planning to bring out the buckets as an enticement to get the horses to come in off the field. Before I made it out the door, they came racing in at top speed.
We couldn’t feel the wind at that point but the sound of the howling gusts that suddenly blew through the surrounding trees was downright spooky. Eerie enough to scare the horses back to the safety of the barn. I hung their buckets of feed as quickly as I could to get them focused on their evening meal while I scooted down to close the gate to the field.
I made it back just as rain started to fall. Then it started to pour out of the cloud with an ominous roar that rumbled the metal roof to maximum decibels. I looked out the half door at the horses and noticed why it was so loud on the roof. It looked to be equal parts rain and BB-sized hail.
Unfortunately, of the four spots the horses choose for feeding, Mia’s is outside the cover of the overhang. With enough warning, we can easily move her under but she was already out there when the deluge hit.
I could see the pellets of hail bouncing off of her. It didn’t seem to bother Mia a bit. Light turned around a couple of times to look out at the cloudburst but other than that, the dramatic precipitation didn’t disturb the horses from their feed.
The gusher ended as quickly as it arrived. Mia was wet but unfazed by it all.
Asher and I walked back up to the house under a fresh interval of sunshine and ate our respective dinners devoid of any further meteorologic theatrics.
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Blowing In
When Asher and I set out on our routine morning walk today, the sky was filled with heavy-looking clouds that cast a dark mood over the landscape. The weather forecast warned of strong winds but we weren’t feeling that on the ground yet. The blanket of low clouds overhead, however, was moving past at a high rate of speed.
It was as if the blue sky was blowing in.
The horses radiated a deep calm as they consumed their feed from the buckets. That sharply contrasted with the barn pigeons that were cooing with an insistence that bordered on drastic urgency. Maybe it was egg-laying time.
The ground surface around the overhang is so dry I should be celebrating freedom from coping with massive levels of mud but the reality it reflects is the threat of drought that hovers near. I had time to contemplate the current conditions because Light and Mix were both taking their sweet time about emptying the feed buckets I was waiting to retrieve.
I treasure that we have settled into a routine that allows them to eat at their individually chosen leisurely paces as opposed to the racing randomness that was happening not that long ago. There are still moments when we need to convince one or two of the horses to get out of each other’s way to end up at what has become their designated positions, but once they get there, extra shenanigans rarely interfere.
The deep calm that materializes is something I don’t take for granted.
In the time it has taken me to finish my breakfast and write this, the wind has arrived at ground level and a fresh blanket of clouds has blown in. With a little luck, maybe it could blow some needed precipitation our way.
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Ages Advance
Happy New Year!
Since it is now the year 2024 I am going to do nothing different. It’s just the way I am. Step outside and look around, it doesn’t look any different than 2023. It’s different for the horses, though.
In a tradition dating back to the 18th century (ref), thoroughbred racehorses’ ages are incremented on January 1st. New Year’s Day is a 4-x birthday at Wintervale Ranch. The months of our horses’ actual births are February, March, April, and May, but their ages are bumped up on the first day of the year to standardize all horse ages.
This puts Swings at 29.
Next oldest is Mia at 24.
Light is 21.
Mix is 20.
In a rough comparison with human ages, Mix and Light are in their early 60s. Mia around 70 and Swings over 80. The average lifespan of a thoroughbred racehorse is 25-28 and with good care and healthy life, they can live beyond 30. I don’t know how much impact the hardships our four rescues may have endured in their lives will have on their ultimate longevity but we are offering them the best care we can while they are here.
None of them are showing any sign of slowing down.
I was just noticing yesterday that we have settled into a pretty consistent feeding routine with the new buckets by splitting them into specific pairs. There has been a lot less shenanigans between them after the feed is served. We continue to deliver Mia’s feed moistened and in a flat pan. The others seem reasonably satisfied with the buckets. I like that we’ve eliminated the mess of Light stepping in and kicking over the pan as she was prone to do.
Here’s hoping they continue to enjoy their lives with us in the year ahead. They are a big part of the love energy we strive to nurture.
May you discover new and increasing amounts of love today, this new year, and always. If you choose to set new intentions at the turn of a year, consider a supernatural dose of growing and spreading love in your goals.
It fits well with our salutations of making a new year happy!
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Getting Coffee
We are not comedians and are not in cars but I’d like to pretend you and I are out together for coffee just like Jerry and his guests on his internet series, “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.” I’ve been binging the series lately and it’s got me missing the days of idle banter with my various accomplices in the fine art of waxing lyrical about all manner of minutiae.
I would describe the futility of cleaning hay bale shrapnel out of winter boots.
When a new pair of boots I ordered arrived recently, I struggled to decide what to do with the old pair. They had been repaired once, but now the rubber base was cracked and ripping away from the upper leather. Feeling they were beyond repair, Cyndie advised me to throw them in the trash.
The laces were worth saving, so I pulled them out. That helped me to notice the leather was in really good shape and could be used for some future project, I was sure. I decided to cut the threads holding the leather to the rubber.
That is when I discovered how much of the nooks and crannies were filled with hay remnants. That new consciousness led me to try to empty my new boots yesterday after hauling nine bales from the hay shed over to the barn.
After dumping all the hay out of one of the new boots, I took a picture to convey the futility of trying to get it all.
A while back, I wrote about how the horses, Swings and Light, drool food over each other’s heads when they eat close beside each other. Yesterday afternoon, Asher and I showed up at the barn after Cyndie had finished serving up the feed.
Cyndie described the challenge of getting the filled buckets clipped to hang as quickly as the horses preferred. She decided to let Swings have a first and then she bent over to hook the handle of the bucket. Do you see where this is headed?
She said, “Now I have a bunch of slobbered feed pellets down my neck.”
While Asher and I were making our way along the north loop trail I was impressed by the power of the low-angled winter sunshine to melt snow despite our daytime temperature remaining below freezing all day.
Is it obvious which direction is south? In the picture, Asher is facing the direction of the setting sun. It never gets high enough to shine on the whole path, but the areas that receive direct sunlight are completely clear of snow.
Based on the present weather forecast, the rest of the snow doesn’t stand much chance, even in the shade. Temperatures will rise well above freezing for the next few days.
By the way, I don’t drink coffee. Make mine a chai latte and bring on the humorous back-and-forth wisecracking about our perceptions of this crazy world in which we live.
Say goodbye, John.
“See ya later, gator!”
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Another Choke
The new buckets for feeding the horses have been working well for me. Cyndie arrived home from a weekend away and I was excited to show off the new routine for her yesterday evening. Her ankle is still a little sensitive to the pressure applied by her winter boot, but she made a go of it and joined Asher and me in the barn.
Naturally, things didn’t go as smoothly as the last three feedings. Mia was overly anxious about moving past both Light and Mix to get across to where I’d been hanging her bucket. Instead of simply moving the strap for her bucket to where she was standing, I focused on trying to coax her over.
In hindsight, I fear we may have contributed to her subsequently inhaling her food too fast. It seemed like the horses had finally all settled down to eat. Cyndie and I were about to wrap things up, after practicing a few back-to-basics training with Asher in the barn. Then I noticed Mia had returned to the far side and she was lying down.
Uh oh. That is not normal behavior. Well, not normal for healthy, happy horses during feeding time. I looked into her bucket and verified she hadn’t even finished eating. She was rolling back and forth, getting up, then laying down again. Her early signs were mostly indicative of colic but eventually, she began coughing which is very normal behavior for having choked on her food.
When we initially suspected colic, it became important for us to get Mia up and walking. It was a bit of a trick to get a halter on her in the anxious and uncomfortable state Mia was in, but Cyndie eventually succeeded. That allowed us to attach a lead rope so I could coerce Mia into walking as a way of preventing her from lying down.
That was a little dicey for me at first because the other three horses had gotten a little jumpy and were crowding us which was making it hard for me to feel safe. Meanwhile, Mia began to cough up great blasts of air and spray I was dodging as well.
Daylight was fading, Cyndie had taken Asher back to the house, she was calling the Vet, and looking for meds that would help Mia if it was colic. I was trying not to panic and stay out of trouble while attempting to keep Mia up and walking.
As fast as the chaos started, things seemed to calm considerably. Mia’s productive coughing and the walking appeared to be easing her discomfort. The other horses decided to leave us alone and stood over by the dying willow tree. Cyndie returned with instructions from the Vet.
For the next few days, we need to monitor Mia for any after-effects. We will also return to adding water to moisten her food like I did a year ago after the first time she choked.
It’s a hassle but will be worth it to protect her from the unsettling discomfort and risks of an equine choke episode.
Horse fact: Choke in horses doesn’t interfere with the ability to breathe. So, unlike choking in people, it does not pose an immediate threat to life.
Here’s hoping Mia suffers no additional problems from yesterday’s dramatic affair.
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Relative Something 