Posts Tagged ‘picky horses’
Nuisance Amounts
So far this winter (even though winter solstice is still nine days away), we have only been receiving what I call nuisance amounts of snowfall. It’s barely enough to justify shoveling, yet too much to leave on steps and walkways. Last week, when Asher and I got caught in that epic snow-burst, we couldn’t see the barn. In the end, so little snow accumulated that it was all gone two days later.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Yesterday morning, I spent a few minutes clearing the driveway closest to the house with a shovel.
I like having the cleaner pavement, but that minimal covering of snow isn’t enough to deserve firing up the ATV to plow, and I’m not inclined to push the shovel the rest of the length of the driveway to the road. I saw the township plow go by on our road, so I carried a shovel when walking Asher. That big blade didn’t throw up enough snow to make any difference.
I shoveled what little there was anyway. So now the top and the bottom of our driveway are cleared, and the middle is just a series of tire tracks and footprints until we get enough sun to evaporate whatever snow remains.
Since the temperature was forecast to drop precipitously overnight, I made sure the horses had plenty of good hay to stoke their internal furnaces. They are decidedly picky about one of the batches of bales we’ve been trying to use up on them, and they regularly ignore any amount that we mix into the hay nets. I chose to dump some of those dregs out on the ground where we are building a hay path for traction in advance of future icy conditions. That way, I could fill the bag exclusively with hay they prefer.
What’s the first thing that happens?
Mia comes over and starts eating the hay I dumped out.
I don’t blame her. Free of the netting, she can dive in and more easily scrounge out any desired nibbles mixed in with the stringy grasses she doesn’t like. She probably thinks of them as “nuisance amounts.”
.
.
Hay Preference
As if I needed any additional evidence, our horses have reaffirmed my suspicion about their dissatisfaction with one of our hay sources. Unfortunately, it happens to be from the supplier closest to home. So close, in fact, I was able to just hook up to one of his hay wagons and pull it down the road at 25 MPH to our driveway. It’s not just the miles, it’s a huge advantage of not needing to toss and stack hundreds of bales an extra time.
The other suppliers we used last summer required us to acquire a trailer and involved the stacking and strapping down of bales for much longer trips.
Exhibit A:
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
On the left, you can see what is left of the bale they like. This is a typical morning result. Pretty much nothing but dust left on the bottom of the box.
On the right, they have picked at it and pulled out what they could grab, then distributed it on the ground or nosed it out of the way on top of the grate in search of the possibility there will be something better deeper in the box.
I took those pictures yesterday morning. After returning from the lake, I got fooled about which bale was which in the barn, because our house-sitter had been so thorough as to replace bales I had set out for her. Turns out she replaced them with ones from the side of the hay shed I hadn’t been using.
When I initially loaded the boxes, I didn’t realize I had used the unpopular bales. Sunday night, I purposefully filled the one on the left with a bale I knew they liked, with a plot to see if results might be any different from the last time I tried mixing the bales.
I would say they have very consistently demonstrated their opinions about the bales from our closest supplier. This was the first time we purchased hay from him, and we have no knowledge of what it might be about his hay that our horses don’t like. The grass looks really good to us, with very little in the way of weeds. They don’t smell suspicious to us, but the horses have showed me multiple times that they can sense it in an instant with one whiff.
Could he have used a chemical fertilizer or pesticide that they don’t like? We will ponder how to best inquire about specifics when we next have an opportunity to visit with our neighbor regarding his hay.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Relative Something 