...log-in...

...the boredom-breaker issue...

With the weather unspeakable, the paddocks like a swamp and very little riding to be had, is it any wonder our horses might need some added amusement. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hay, of course plays a huge part of Tom & Henry's life, I make certain there's always enough fresh hay to last the whole day.  I don't weigh or measure it, just ad-lib.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Horses love to graze,  which means moving and eating.  so simply putting hay in a single place isn't good enough if your attempting a natural set-up.  Haynets - small holed and normal, hay racks, and 4 Haybars all play a part in my boys daytime feeding routine.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

More: added to these I have some Jimmy's Hanging balls situated under the eves of the stable.  Tom & Henry LOVE these.  We hung these up at Xmas, only replacing them recently, they last ages, and are a welcome addition to the 'graze' set up I have in the yard.  the boys can wander around the area and find all sort of things to do: eat, chew, lick, bite and play.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Logs:  we had trees down in the storm, so cut into pieces John has been leaving them in the yard for Tom & Henry to de-bark before they go in the splitter.

 

They LOVE them.  often spending 10 minutes at a time chewing the bark off, kicking them around the yard and playing with them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There's some grass too, and they really wander and graze all over the place, in and out of their fields and yard, to find something new or different to work on.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I try to remember in the wild horses would move for many miles in one day, chewing on branches and lots of different grasses.  I am just trying to replicate this as much as I am able.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Of course, large green plastic bins are not part of this 'natural lifestyle'  but they amuse nonetheless!!!

 

 

 

Snowfall at WW

...AND TALES OF THE TOTALLY EXPECTED...

 

 

I am writing this post, because without exception, when it snows, someone always asks me 'how are your horses in the snow?', to which I reply to surprised faces 'they love it!'

 

...and so does Min!

 

 

 

 

It's snowing again, the boys spent the night indoors of course, because we're not going through mud-fever again...seriously.

 

This snow time last year was when the abrasive nature of snow rubbed Henry's pastern and he got mud fever, remember this, snow can be fun, but it can cause problems too.

 

 

They were living out too, that didn't help, this year, they're indoors at night, their feet and legs can dry, we are MF free.

Snuggled up in their clean beds with lots of haylage, their drinkers didn't freeze because john has cleverly wound greenhouse heating wires around the pipes.

 

 

 

The yard is clear and danger free, the yard buckets are filled and snow is building up in the surface.

Tom & Henry would always rather be rug-free, but since its their nature to play and roll, and more snow is due, i put their outfits on suitable for the nippy weather and let them out.

 

 

Tom & Henry are gorgeous trakehners, but this does not mean they tip-toe around the snow because they are too posh to dip a toe in...NO! they love to play in it, eat it, lick it, roll in it.

boys!!!

 

Here Tom & Henry are looking gorgeous.

preparation, preparation, preparation...

SNOW:

Preparation is key to surviving the weather in the yard.

 

Last night, knowing it would snow all night, I prepared my yard with a sprinkling of salt&grit. 
 

 

 Not terribly romantic but John bought me a palette last autumn and it's very handy indeed.
 

I emptied the outdoor haybars ready for a new bale the next morning.

 

This morning then, when everywhere was covered in 5cm of snow, my yard, where I'd treated it, was clear and slip-free for the boys, and there was no fiddling with hay covered in snow, i just topped it up.
 

 

 

I put their medium weight rugs on, since they do like to play and roll in the snow, and out they went for a munch leaving me with an easy to sweep yard.

 

Once I have swept I sprinkle more grit on.

 

RECOMMENDED: Salt&Grit.

 

 

Also, we stocked up on horse feed too so we don't have to make any mad dashes to the farm shop for emergency supplies.

 

it's the Brownie Motto but 'be prepared' is the key.




 

 

 

TCJpart92 Spending Time

A HOT SUMMERS' AFTERNOON:

...and spending time just hanging out with my boys was just the thing I needed to get over a nasty spell of the flu and escape a house of builders.

 

 























So it was, I grabbed a magazine, Your Horse as it turned out, a bottle of water, shoved on my old mountain horse boots and settled myself down in the shade under the eves of the yard.  Began to read with the tranquil sounds of munching and deep breathing in the background.

The boys are very used to me positioning myself amongst them, offering myself up as an honorary herd member and chilling out.  This time they got as close to me as they could and fell asleep directly above my head.  I  love it when they do this, it's like they're trusting me to keep an eye out for foe.

 

After a few minutes, because that's all the time they spend sleeping, they begin waking up, and that's when trouble begins.

Tom grabbed my water and waved it about and Henry, not altogether fully agreeing with the sentiments of the article I was reading..


...reading about manners, and how to teach your horse to have some...and as if to prove the point of the text, Henry grabs the magazine and tears the page out!

This is just a lovely tale of spending time with my boys and how calm they make me feel when I'm with them.  I love them.

TCJp32 Invention

INVENTION & CUSTOMISATION:
...and how, if you can't find the things you need, all you have to do is be inventive.

Our yard had just been poured.

Thank you John so much for all this hard work xxx

John's philosophy to equipment is: if it doesn't exist, design it and make it yourself or customise something that is available to suit your needs. Of course it helps that John is skilled this way and has on many occasions 'invented' special devices for Tom & Henry and their living space, and things that make my life easier too.

I decided to add some of John's work to the blog so if you have needs that aren't readily met by available equipment, you can follow John's patterns and ideas and make them yourself. The cold-weather devices and outdoor haybars are genius.

Even the stable grilles didn't meet John's high standards, and needed customising.

John installed the grilles between Tom & Henry's stables with a galvanised edge as you can see from the photo

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Electric fences:  I have a perimeter of electric wire on the top rail of fencing, as you can see from the photo, John has attached it to the facing rail.  At several points on the perimeter and the inside fences John has mounted what I call Daleks:

..... they are handy plastic fixtures, shaped like little villains from Dr Who, for wire so the interior of the land can be split up into smaller paddocks, or 'runways'  from one field to another where appropriate.  At the moment too, we have electric fencing protecting the year-old hedgerow we have had planted along all the fences, to stop unofficial horticultural prunings by horses!!

Here John is fixing electric fence 'points' onto the rails, this way we can be very flexible with where the fence goes and it's all easy and quick because John has already attached all the fix-points I need.  We even have a little coral designed for injured horses...IE Henry, so we have a 'bubble' of field into the field for recovery time.

John has made a protective 'verge' around the

hedgerow, otherwise all the young trees would

get eaten!

Currently, we have just come out of a very cold snap in Essex, 2 weeks of freezing temperatures and snow which plays havoc on anything that contains water.  Water is probably the only natural substance that expands when it freezes, this can make life very difficult when water is essential to animals....and you keep 2 rather large outdoor ones (Tom & Henry).

Water drinkers freeze indoors and out, taps don't work either, and you have to boil your feed-room kettles to get anything to work!

John wrapped seed-tray heated wire around the water pipes and tap.  Which means at minus 10 my tap still worked.

THE SCIENCE PART: SAFETY by John Brown

Bacteria can grow in warm water pipes especially if it does not flow.  Only heat water pipes that you use regularly in winter months, AND FIT A THERMOSTAT, SO THEY ONLY HEAT THE PIPE WHEN NEEDED.

All electrical connections must be inside or in fully weather proof electrical boxes designed for the job.  There are plenty of suitable boxes designed to take exterior extension leads.  Garden and pond centres usually have a good selection.

THE SCIENCE PART: INSTALLATION by John Brown

 

Follow the soil heating cable installation instructions except wrap the cable round the water pipe instead of bury it in the soil.  Use a plug in thermostat so the pipe is only heated when the temperature drops below 1 or 2 degrees C.  The temperature settings need monitoring initially because it is likely the thermostat is in a different position to the tap and may need tweaking to get right.

I buy a tougher looking soil heating cable with moulded electrical connections.  This is so no water can get to the electrics and it will survive being bent round the pipes.   Be sure to wrap right up to and round the tap as that is likely to be one of the first bits to freeze.  I found even with the shortest 2m cable I had enough heating element to start in the middle go down to the ground, back up and round the tap and back down again.  I put normal water pipe lagging over the top all held on with plastic cable ties.  I have mainly blue plastic water pipes with a bit of copper, some flexible hoses and brass taps.  The cables works with all of those.  It does not get hot enough to cause any issues.

Yard tap:

A close-up of the heated cable around the tap.

As you would expect from John, he has added hanging points to the tap-house for a bucket brush, some soap and a ragwort fork.

John has also replaced the drinkers with much wider and deeper ones, inside and out, increasing the capacity of the bowl and giving longer life to a fast freezing surface area. 

Coco

Lemmy, chasing Coco.

John mounted some galvanised bucket brackets to the outside of the yard.  the idea is to offer unfrozen water to the boys in their yard just in case their drinkers are frozen.  I can bring water from the house or fill them from my tap.  Funny thing is, the boys LOVE these new devices, and drink from them a lot, and i keep having to fill them up......note to self: buy BLACK buckets!!

• Haybars: I wanted haybars in my yard, but haybars are only available mounted into a corner, which is fine in their stables, but I needed to have mine mounted to a flat fence.  John customised the haybar to fit to the fence.  They are mounted firstly onto a board and John has attached galvanised hooks to the back board so I can move them around and reposition, they hook to the top and lower rail of the yard fence. This also means I can empty them easily by taking them off the fence and tipping them upside down.

See this link to John's 'ideas' blog for more detailed instructions:

 http://www.discoverthat.co.uk/ideas/

When Tom & Henry demonstrated they wanted hay available in their yard, John decided to customise haybars, well we couldn't let them eat hay out of the bin, they're pure bred Trakehners!!!

John has used marine grade wood to survive for years...hopefully.  He cut the top rounded edge to 'bend' the haybar almost in half and fixed it to the back board with galvanised large washers: see photo below.

Tom enjoying his haylage.

Simple ideas, but very helpful.  And when you don't have much time every little cunning device lends a hand.