In my glamorous horse life...
Jun. 24th, 2023 10:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickThis morning I swept out the chicken coop aisleway (a week or so of hay for Bird & his companion -currently Ceres - gets stored on the chicken coop aisleway, where the chickens mostly aren't allowed to be though there are escape-artist chickens sometimes) and schlepped 8 more bales of hay down from the barn and stacked them in the aisleway for the coming week. I threw a bale into the feeder (the hay feeder is located outside the chicken coop on a large, poured concrete slab in Bird's paddock) and secured it by way of a tethered carabiner through both bale strings.
If a hay bale is merely placed in the feeder, unsecured, Bird will pull the entire bale out of the feeder and trample his food. He is easily bored, not very hungry, and unappreciative of his leafy, fine, easily-chewed, sorta-pricey second-cut hay.
If I am dumb enough to give him a bale with the strings removed, the wastage doubles because then he just pulls the individual flakes out and throws them around. He chews big holes in "slow feed" hay nets. On purpose.
Bale-with-strings that is basically TIED in the feeder is the best option to ensure maximum hay consumption and minimum hay-strewn-around.
Also, the feeder has to be tied onto its concrete platform because otherwise Bird drags it off into the dirt. It is *heavy* so I don't know how he does this but it happened like four times this spring before I gave up and fixed the issue. At this point, the feeder is secured with extra-long eye bolts used as spikes that I drove slantwise into the ground until they were basically buried under the edge of the concrete slab. Chains connect the eye bolts to the feeder base. Here's a picture.
There are also (not shown in drawing) concrete blocks on top of the eyebolts for greater stability. And (drawing not to scale) he can 100% totally reach all corners of the hay feeder. This is not a "HALP I CANNOT REACH THE FOOD" problem. This is "I am easily bored" paired with "I like to play with my food".
Anyway, I got done with that and started cutting down the curly dock that has invaded his paddock. Invasive weeds are an ongoing source of strife in my life and being involved in horsekeeping on a somewhat overgrazed, kinda run down ex-dairy-farm (Bird lives at my friend's house. Facilities are kind of low-end but he's four miles from my house and I can see him 2x a day for feeding and ride him like five times a week. So... yeah.) means that it's an uphill battle on the invasive weed front.
Over the last few years, I've gotten the jimsonweed (Datura stramonium) cleared out. It was prioritized because (a) I hate it (b) horse can't/won't eat it (c) is an annual with a simple-to-disrupt lifecycle (d) pulls out super easily. There were like three baby jimsonweeds this spring and I've pulled them all out already.
After the jimsonweed came cocklebur (Xanthium strumarium probably, the picture looks correct). Cocklebur is an annual with a simple-to-disrupt lifestyle and also hated by me and inedible for the horse. PLUS they are extra prickly and horrible. I saw one cocklebur come up this year, which I pulled out. This is a wonderful amount of progress for three years of fairly concerted effort. Two years ago I could pull fifty every afternoon without even trying to "search" for them. There was no searching. They were everywhere. But they're annual. They pull out easily when they're small. The seeds, one per burr, are fairly large and readily eaten by mice or voles or whatever. So, if you cut it to "zero seeds hit the ground" for two years straight, you have a pretty good chance to get shut of them for good.
And so now we're down to curly dock (Rumex crispus) which is not prickly or horrible, merely inedible (horses) and unsightly. It's perennial. It root sprouts and does not pull out easily. The seeds are pretty small and there are bazillions of them per seed head. But, I have gotten rid of the easy stuff and now I'm on to the not-so-easy stuff. This is how things go. After the low hanging fruit, you gotta get the not-low-hanging-fruit unless you're a fox in which case you whine about how the unreachable fruit is sour anyway and just ... leave, I guess. Right now curly dock is in immature-seed-head stage, so I'm cutting it to the ground and physically removing the seedheads from the field.
We'll see how that goes and perhaps I will have to dig out the plants for a few years to get them gone enough to make me happy. On the plus side, curly dock is not jimsonweed and it's not effing cockleburr. So progress?
If a hay bale is merely placed in the feeder, unsecured, Bird will pull the entire bale out of the feeder and trample his food. He is easily bored, not very hungry, and unappreciative of his leafy, fine, easily-chewed, sorta-pricey second-cut hay.
If I am dumb enough to give him a bale with the strings removed, the wastage doubles because then he just pulls the individual flakes out and throws them around. He chews big holes in "slow feed" hay nets. On purpose.
Bale-with-strings that is basically TIED in the feeder is the best option to ensure maximum hay consumption and minimum hay-strewn-around.
Also, the feeder has to be tied onto its concrete platform because otherwise Bird drags it off into the dirt. It is *heavy* so I don't know how he does this but it happened like four times this spring before I gave up and fixed the issue. At this point, the feeder is secured with extra-long eye bolts used as spikes that I drove slantwise into the ground until they were basically buried under the edge of the concrete slab. Chains connect the eye bolts to the feeder base. Here's a picture.
There are also (not shown in drawing) concrete blocks on top of the eyebolts for greater stability. And (drawing not to scale) he can 100% totally reach all corners of the hay feeder. This is not a "HALP I CANNOT REACH THE FOOD" problem. This is "I am easily bored" paired with "I like to play with my food".
Anyway, I got done with that and started cutting down the curly dock that has invaded his paddock. Invasive weeds are an ongoing source of strife in my life and being involved in horsekeeping on a somewhat overgrazed, kinda run down ex-dairy-farm (Bird lives at my friend's house. Facilities are kind of low-end but he's four miles from my house and I can see him 2x a day for feeding and ride him like five times a week. So... yeah.) means that it's an uphill battle on the invasive weed front.
Over the last few years, I've gotten the jimsonweed (Datura stramonium) cleared out. It was prioritized because (a) I hate it (b) horse can't/won't eat it (c) is an annual with a simple-to-disrupt lifecycle (d) pulls out super easily. There were like three baby jimsonweeds this spring and I've pulled them all out already.
After the jimsonweed came cocklebur (Xanthium strumarium probably, the picture looks correct). Cocklebur is an annual with a simple-to-disrupt lifestyle and also hated by me and inedible for the horse. PLUS they are extra prickly and horrible. I saw one cocklebur come up this year, which I pulled out. This is a wonderful amount of progress for three years of fairly concerted effort. Two years ago I could pull fifty every afternoon without even trying to "search" for them. There was no searching. They were everywhere. But they're annual. They pull out easily when they're small. The seeds, one per burr, are fairly large and readily eaten by mice or voles or whatever. So, if you cut it to "zero seeds hit the ground" for two years straight, you have a pretty good chance to get shut of them for good.
And so now we're down to curly dock (Rumex crispus) which is not prickly or horrible, merely inedible (horses) and unsightly. It's perennial. It root sprouts and does not pull out easily. The seeds are pretty small and there are bazillions of them per seed head. But, I have gotten rid of the easy stuff and now I'm on to the not-so-easy stuff. This is how things go. After the low hanging fruit, you gotta get the not-low-hanging-fruit unless you're a fox in which case you whine about how the unreachable fruit is sour anyway and just ... leave, I guess. Right now curly dock is in immature-seed-head stage, so I'm cutting it to the ground and physically removing the seedheads from the field.
We'll see how that goes and perhaps I will have to dig out the plants for a few years to get them gone enough to make me happy. On the plus side, curly dock is not jimsonweed and it's not effing cockleburr. So progress?
no subject
Date: 2023-06-27 11:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-06-28 01:19 am (UTC)Finn (the baby horse) is currently in residence at Trys's house. (Trys is Lala's much-younger little sister, whom I have known since she was in diapers. She's maybe forty now?) Trys lives about ten miles away, though I haven't measured or anything. Finn is keeping Trys's elderly (late twenties, has Cushing's) mare and her three beef cows company because as a long yearling stud colt, he needs to be firmly contained in a no-accidental-babies living situation.
Those are the two I own and where they live. I live on a fairly substantial property but (a) it is damn near completely forested and (b) has no fence.
Lala's house also contains a aging herd of her mother's horses that is declining in number due mostly to attrition at this point. Her mother is 70, so this is not an unreasonable thing for her horses to be all dying off of old age.
Right now, they have... about 20, with 14 of those well over the age of fifteen. This seems terrible but "about twenty" looks a lot better when you know that there used to be seventy-five. We are years and years into the process of fixing the "seventy-five" problem. (A reasonable number is probably seven or eight, one riding horse for everyone who wants one plus one or two spares/retirees.) We are getting there. This year (thus far) we put down Proof and moved Keystone over to Theron's after his mare (1997 model) died so that he had something to keep his elderly mini company. Elklin probably doesn't have another winter in her, but she was Lala's mom's personal riding horse for years and there are some... attachment issues there. Trys is working on it and I expect us to be down 3 for the year before December rolls around.
no subject
Date: 2023-07-14 01:39 am (UTC)