Know Your Horses

A text to my wife: Gemini is in the middle of the track, so I opened the gate for him.

Back from her: Hmmm, OK

She was confused, and should have been since she was away at a horse clinic for a couple days, and she had Gemini with her. He's the black horse we have, and the only black horse. Or so I thought.

My wife had agreed to be a middlewoman between someone selling a horse, and someone looking to get a horse for a friend. When the lady number two saw the horse, she felt it was "too much horse" for her friend. So Starlet, the horse for sale, stayed at our place. I had assumed that Starlet would be heading back to the original owner any day.

Apparently I forgot what an assumption really means.

Starlet was in our pasture for a few weeks when I mistook her for Gemini. I know one's a boy and one's a girl, but I didn't check that closely. I was heading out one day, saw a black horse in the middle of the pasture with no water, and opened the gate.

I wasn't thrilled with us going from three to four horses, but my wife pointed out that we'd been dealing with it, and the chores, for a few weeks and I hadn't noticed. At that point I didn't have much of an argument left.

It pays to be able to tell your horses apart.

Nosy Neighbors

I’m sure you have had them, or still have them. Those neighbors that want to know what you’re doing, make a bit of a nuisance by injecting themselves into whatever activity you are a part of.

It might be curiosity or it might be a desire to participate, but in either case, I had some company while trying to cover up some barbed wire with welded wire yesterday.

I was working my way down the fence, and I had company from the next door neighbors. Close company, as you can see here. I don’t know these horses and donkeys well, so I was a little concerned as I reached around with pliers and clipped things together. Mostly it’s lip action, but these beasts do have teeth, so I was keeping a close eye on exactly how much participation they were trying for as I worked.

About 5 of them followed me along as I slowly moved along 100’ of fence. I guess I was more interesting than grazing for a few of them. Me scratching necks a bit probably added to that interest.

In the end, I finished, and we each went our separate ways.

Fence Man

I went out to help my wife get some fencing up recently. We have 3 pastures that are fenced off with various materials, one of which has a natural horse track. This is a 12-15ft wide track circling the pasture that should help to get the horses moving more often. It seems to work since not much grows on the track, but that's a topic for another day.

We bought some posts and ribbon to build another track on the second pasture, but first we needed to cover the barbed wire along one side. Our plan was to take down the barbed wire and install a mesh fence instead (and electrical wire), but somewhere along the way my wife decided we didn't need to take the barned wire down and we could clip the new stuff over top. Made sense to me, so we headed out there one Saturday with that in mind.

My wife had done the calculations, 29 posts, estimating 8-10 ft apart, and had purchased 330' of mesh. That would have been fine if the posts were that far apart. I think some were 14ft, and some maybe 16', but in either case, it meant we were fairly short. Not a big deal, and I was tired when we ran out of wire.

You see me wife is also trying to train horses, and while she is happy to do chores, they seem to have a lower priority than playing with horses. In this case, they had a lower priority than her helping her sister play with horses, so when we were about half done with the roll, she went back to see if she could help her sister. Not a big deal as I could have stopped and waited, but it was getting later, the sun going down and insects likely waiting up. Plus I have a bit of OCD and hate to leave something undone. If I had lost the momentum that day, it might have been  a week or two for me to get it back up and go out there again.

So I wrestled the slightly smaller, but still large and heavy roll along, clipping mesh to the t-posts as I went.

330' of fencing up, excluding posts, makes a good day of work.

Summertime Hay

Once again my wife's on the road and guess who gets to feed horses?

Yep, me.

It's easier, though, in the summertime. We rotate horses among pastures, and there's a decent amount of grass. I don't have to rush out before I've had some coffee, listening to whinny's and calls wondering where I am. I don't have to fight through a herd of horses trying to eat out of the wheelbarrow as I'm moving hay around. And I don't have to bundle up against the cold. Today I even took a conference call as I was walking around dropping hay.

On the flip side, I still need to change clothes. Jeans, boots, and I should have taken out gloves. That hay rubbing on bare skin, at least my bare skin, itches and irritates me. Pollen in the air, and hay dust, has me sneezing.

I guess it's never easy with the horses, and it's a chore if you don't enjoy them. But I love my wife, so I go out there and deal with it.

Pasture Cutting Delayed - Rotary Cutter Parts Needed

I usually start cutting the pasture in April, and it goes through May and June. The 4 pastures I cut on our 35 acres take me a good 40 solid hours and since I actually have to do other work for a living, this gets spread over a couple months.

This year I haven’t started yet. To be fair, things weren’t bad for April and most of May as they were dry months for us. So I wasn’t too worried. However things have sprouted lately, so it’s time to get going.

One problem. The rotary cutter doesn’t work. The blade assembly to the left here fell off the deck late last year. Not sure what happened, and honestly, I don’t know how it was connected to the rest of the cutter.

The company we bought it from went out of business, it’s a generic (we didn’t know better then) and I have had trouble with repairs before. Last year I managed to track down the guy at the old company and he had some old replacement blades lying around that he gave me, but he’s not there now. And there’s no one answering the number. Apparently he was closing out the bankrupt company when I called last year, luck I called that week), and now they’re gone gone.

So I took a picture of the bottom of the deck:

and I’ve sent these two images to a few people, hoping someone can help me get a nut or assembly to connect things up. If that works, then I’ll be in good shape for cutting.

If not, I’m out $1000-1200 for a new cutter.

These horses sure are trouble.

A Shrinking Herd

Have you ever heard of such a thing? Having less horses?

Barring some accident, it’s not something I’ve experienced in the last six or seven horses. Ever since my wife got her first horse, she’s been finding ways to increase her herd. She either buys them, is given them, or boards them.

However this past week we ended up losing two boarders, going from eight to six horses.

Good to see, from my perspective since it’s less work. For either me or my wife. I was actually surprised to see her mention it a few times, but in a good way. She’s OK with it, and I’m glad.

At the rate she was going, I thought that we might end up with 50 by the time I retired.

Manure Movement

I came in the house the other day smelling of horse manure. It was on my clothes, in my hair, and a shower was the first thing on the agenda.

How did I end up in this state?

My wife has been feeding on the west side of the barn all winter. We set up three large tubs for the 8 horses and we would put hay in them. If you're familiar with horses you'll realize that they tend to poop where they're standing with the urge comes over them, and with them standing near the hay in cold weather, there's a lot of droppings nearby.

Not a hug big deal as we harrow it down to break it up, but across 3-4 months, mainly because I've done a lot of feeding, we have about 1-2" of manure dust on the ground. I didn't realize it until the last snow storm when there were clumps of old manure appearing.

I've been meaning to scrape it off with the rear blade, and putting it off, but this past weekend, with my wife hurt in bed, it seemed like this was the time for me to do it. I know, I should have done something else, but I needed to be close to home and she usually has other chores for me. So I hooked up the rear blade and started scraping.

It's a little challenge to get the manure and not dig into the dirt, and I seemed to hit and miss (too high or low) regularly. But the 1 ft high x 6ft x 3 ft pile of old manure grew to one that's 5-6ft high in places. I didn't get all the manure near the barn, but I got a lot of it and it's down to dirt in places.

Good for preventing thrush, which results in me spending more time near the horses' feet helping my wife soak them than I want.

Now I have a new chore. Get all that manure spread out on the pastures as fertilizer.