Posts Tagged ‘slow hay feeder’
Morning Pictures
Delilah and I set out in the pre-dawn light to walk the long way through the woods to the barn so we could feed the horses. The coloring comes through with a blue tint before the sunlight starts making its way through the clouds.
I always find the view of fresh snow on the branches irresistible to capture, but the pictures never do justice to what I get to see in real life.
Legacy likes to pretend he doesn’t know how to get around the obstacle of the arena fence line to come in for the morning morsels of feed. The two younger chestnuts ignore his act and simply keep grazing until its time to go.
This morning provided good evidence of the horses having a preference for one hay over another from the selections we have to offer them this year. I specifically mixed the supply in this box last night.
Not wanting them to suffer over their picky-ness about the fuel being served this morning in the snowy cold, I emptied the box of the less desirable hay and replaced it with one of the bales they prefer.
I dumped the unwanted hay out in the raised circle.
Now guess which one they prefer.
After getting back up to the house to feed the rest of the crew, I will be stepping back outside to crank up the Grizzly for the first snowplowing of the year.
With a Polar Vortex cold snap predicted for the days ahead, it is finally feeling a lot like winter around Wintervale today.
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Working Well
In case you’ve been wondering lately how the old slow feeder boxes I built are holding up, I’m proud to report they are working out really well. Precisely as I had envisioned, in fact. On this cold December morning, as Delilah and I made the trek up the driveway from the mailbox, the four horses were visible under the overhang grazing peacefully, 2 per box, in the brief splash of early sunlight shining over the horizon to the east.
I expect those few minutes of sun and blue sky are all we will see today, as clouds are now prevailing and we are due to receive up to 8 inches of snow by the end of tomorrow.
Prepare the shovels.
With this morning’s temperature hovering in the single digits, the herd was very interested in fueling their internal furnaces with non-stop input of hay.
When I arrive with a new bale in the wheelbarrow, which I need to repeatedly remind them is off-limits for grazing from, they hover close for the instant of opportunity to chomp up a mouthful when the first portion lands in the box. I let them take bites while I methodically, but swiftly, arrange flakes in the box. I want to get the grate in place before they take to pulling more than bite-fulls at a time and dropping them on the ground.
It pleases me greatly that they never show any hint of displeasure over the addition of the grate. I can start sliding it in place while they are mid-bite and like a precisely choreographed performance, settle it in place as they seamlessly continue pulling up bites, now through the openings. The grates don’t appear to bother them at all.
Being famously picky about the quality of their hay, horses will ignore what they don’t want until it becomes the only option. Then they will usually eat that anyway. We have bales from several sources and we don’t always get the same hay in each box. When they like it, I will find nothing but dust left with the grate settled on the bottom of the box.
Frequently, there will be a half-eaten bale with a whole bunch of unsavory cast off grass nested on top of the grate. They pull it out and nose it aside while continuing to graze their way down to more desirable tidbits. They seem to have a brilliant ability to discern. However, when I collect the neglected leftover hay and drop it off somewhere else in the paddock, often times they will follow me over to eat it.
Maybe the new and different ambiance makes it taste better to them. Regardless, the slow feeder boxes are working out just like I hoped they would, and that makes me continually happy.
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Very Happy
Despite the annoying ongoing saga of my favorite auto repair shop failing to figure out why my “check engine” light keeps coming on, I am feeling so very happy today, over how well my homemade slow feeder hay boxes have worked out for our herd.
We keep the boxes pushed up against the back wall in the two spaces beneath the overhang, so the hay doesn’t get wet. There is enough space for two horses to nosh at the same time (if they are feeling agreeable).
Only one time did we find a box pulled way out of position. It was really puzzling, because there was a surprising lack of obvious drag marks that would have helped to reveal how it got there. Other than that curious instance, the horses haven’t showed any inclination to need to mess with the boxes at all.
I had struggled to make the boxes sturdy enough to withstand a beating, anticipating that the horses would test each one in a manner similar to how they tested our solar-powered electric fence charger. I made the mistake of hanging it in a location where they could reach it.
The red control knob disappeared, the plastic trim around the solar panel got ripped off, and they scratched up the paint with teeth marks. I wasn’t very happy about that outcome.
Occasionally, the horses will get extremely picky about hay they don’t want to eat and the grate ends up at an extreme angle, due to their eating only one end of a bale down to the bottom. Most often, they just munch away evenly and the grate settles to the bottom.
As I was making my way in and out of the gate to the small paddock last night, making trips to the hay shed, I noticed a sensation of also being very happy that our horses allow us to be so relaxed with gate management. I have yet to find evidence of them attempting escape from any of our fenced areas, and they show no tendencies toward threatening a getaway when I am occupied with my own entering and exiting through the openings.
This gives me the impression they are satisfied with their confines and all that is within.
When they are happy, I’m happy.
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Disappearing Delilah
My inability to master the art of dog training is revealed in our lovely canine’s increasing confidence in behaving any way she pleases. Just two days ago, I was lamenting our failure thus far to stop Delilah’s behavior of jumping up on people engaged in hugs during greetings or departures.
She just wants to participate in the hugs, of course, but her nails on unprepared backsides are not something we feel our guests should have to deal with when they are otherwise occupied. Both Cyndie and I recognize that we have failed to gain the upper hand on demanding compliance with our instructions. The formula of training by way of rewarding good behavior, as opposed to a focus on punishing bad behavior, evades us when it comes to the current challenges.
Cyndie has been doing a heroic effort of conditioning Delilah to stay close to us when we allow her the freedom of being off-leash, frequently calling her back for check-ins and rewarding her with treats when she promptly complies. It had been working well for quite some time, until I distracted Cyndie in the barn yesterday when I sought her assistance installing my first half-sized slow-feeder box in Cayenne’s stall.
That brief period of our distraction from Delilah’s whereabouts led to the hunter girl wandering off in search of irresistible prey beyond the borders of our property. Cyndie didn’t want to give up without a fight and scoured our trails, blowing her whistle and calling Delilah’s name.
She even drove the truck in a search of the roadways immediately surrounding us. The only thing that came out of that effort was a texted greeting from George, after he saw her drive past their place. Once again, Delilah was in the “dog house” with us. From past experience, I knew our dog would eventually show up at one of the doors, happy as could be, covered in burrs, and clueless to the level of transgression she had pulled off.
After a long spell, just as I expected, Delilah did return home. We treated her matter of factly, allowing her a long drink at her water bowl, after which, Cyndie took her outside to remove the burrs.
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I don’t know how, but she seemed to recognize our displeasure. Her behavior for the rest of the day and evening was akin to her having put herself on a “time-out” all on her own. She didn’t demonstrate any of her usual playful behaviors, repeatedly seeking attention by bringing a ball or other toy to us, or simply walking up and putting her head in our laps.
She demurely laid low the whole time. I can only hope she was using that time to think about what she had done wrong, and was feeling entirely remorseful. Sadly, the other possibility is that she was just so exhausted from having had such a fantastic getaway that she needed the rest and was saving up her energy for the next opportunity to do it over again.
Trust me, she is back on full-time leash protocol again, and will be for the foreseeable future, whether she understands the correlation, or not.
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Slow Hay
I want to chronicle my project to get slow-feeders for providing hay to our horses, especially since my initial intent was to buy feed boxes because I didn’t want to build them myself. It didn’t quite work out that way in the end. I searched online and found most images were of home-made versions. One site offered to sell a set of plans to build your own. I opted to order a plastic box that most closely matched a version that appealed to me.
As I described in an earlier post, that online order flopped and I got my money back. I gave in and decided to try making two of them myself, based on the images of others that I liked. What primarily inspired me to follow through was an introduction to a local welder who said he could make custom grates to my specifications.
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I had him make two. It wasn’t cheap, but since I planned to use materials I already had lying around to build the boxes, I would still be able to do it myself for a third of what it cost to buy them. I used plywood for a base and 2×6 boards for sides on the first box. The second box ended up being a combination of plywood and boards for the sides. I had a bunch of 1×1 lumber that I played with to brace the bottom and lift the base off the ground.
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To prevent the horses from lifting the grate out of the box, I added iron corner pieces on one end and a chain on the other. The horses are comfortable with the chain because it is what we use to secure all our gates. To add hay, I unhook the chain and the grate comes out easily. I added handles on each end to make it easy to pick up and turn over to remove the hay dust that accumulates in the bottom. I thought about using slots on the ends to sweep out debris, but it ended up being easier to just tip the box and dump it out.
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It has been working well for us to add flakes as needed, instead of trying to always fit a full bale beneath the grate. We basically just fill it so the grate is up to the top. As they eat, it drops as the level of hay goes down. Sometimes they eat all of one end first and the grate ends up at quite an angle, but mostly they eat it fast enough that I find the grate almost level and near the bottom by morning. Best of all, they are eating every bit of the hay, instead of tossing it on the ground.
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I am particularly thrilled with how well it works to mimic natural grazing. The horses nibble to get a bite and then pull it out between the grate squares and munch away. Their heads are down, as opposed to the other feeders we have that hold the hay up at their standing head level. Those feeders allow the horses to push their noses deep to get at some morsel of a bite they want, and then they can toss their head and flip the hay they passed up onto the ground. The slow-feeder grate only lets them get a modest mouth-full of a bite and they need to tear it out with a motion that is identical to how they naturally break off bites of grass.
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Our horses have proved to me that they can eat together, two at a box, but I often have found them taking turns. I think it is part of their hierarchy playing out. When all four had 360° access to the old feeders, they would do this dance of moving each other around all the time. The new set up makes it easier to force a subordinate horse to wait its turn, instead.
I am absolutely thrilled that the horses have adapted to this new method of being fed hay, and that my (begrudgingly) homemade boxes are performing as I hoped they would. It is working so well, I am contemplating how I will adapt the design to work in a corner of their stalls in the barn. It all starts with the grate, and I’m thinking about testing a cheaper option than the custom welded solution, because this time, I will need 4 of them.
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Relative Something 