TCJp37 Spring Cleaning

SPRING CLEANING:
...getting tidy and organised after winter is a good idea.  You can donate all your unused and unwanted equipment to Redwings Horse Sanctuary, and clean up at the same time.

This is the time of year for cleaning:

Last weekend I cleared out both their stables and jet washed them with Jeyes. 

How did I get rid of the boys from the yard in order to achieve this performance?  Normally I just grab a grooming brush, have a determined look on my face, and that suffices...but they were busy eating a new tasty bale of haylage so I was going to need a stronger tool that sunny hot morning....the hose!

...ah, that sweet smell of medicated horse shampoo for sensitive skin wafting in the air, and the boys all shiny too...

Our annual visitors the swallows, who nest in each of the stables every year made a swift appearance.  The male comes first, and I saw him sitting on the top rail of the yard, just checking everything was as it should be before sending for the 'wife' and starting another family...twice!  I decided this was a good time to jetwash, before the swallows' missus arrives and the repair or rebuild of the nests get underway. 

This is the sort of image you can capture if, like us, you have cameras covering every inch of your property. This is an incredible shot, and you'd have to wait patiently and silently for hours to get it with a regular camera.

I have to make sure there's always a wet/muddy bit of ground near the yard, not hard when you have horses, so they have material for any repair, the blackbirds need soft ground too, so it's always worth making a wet patch if you can.

I get very grubby working the jetwash, all bits of old web and hay in my hair, but the end result is worth it.  I left them to dry all afternoon and overnight and put 5 bales of bedding down for the boys to sleep on.  Because when it gets hot, Tom & Henry spend a lot of time in their stables, eating haylage and sleeping.

You may notice above, I have draped the power lead across the hooks attached to the fronts of their stables to keep it out of the wet - safety first.

But the stables weren't the only things to get the spring clean as I mentioned...

I bathed the boys too!  It was 25degrees here, and my rule is: if I can wear flip-flops, it's hot enough for a bath...for the boys

They needed it too, all that dust and mud and old hair from winter, afterwards they smell so nice and clean too and so very shiny.  They still have lots of coat left to lose, but I gave them a helping hand.

I have a theory about grub: I call it 'Shelley's First Theory of Grub Tansferance' (or SFTGT), my theory is that like energy, grub is neither lost nor created, merely transferred from one thing to another.  Namely from Tom and Henry onto me!  So it was then afterwards, I began my own spring clean, I had to get the eau-de-jeyes smell off my hair from the jet wash, and I was covered in little bay hairs too!

...and of course they went straight out and rolled, but they must have been more comfortable, there was lots of grunting and head rubbing onto each others bodies.  They lean right into each other, it's great to watch - actually I'm lucky my boys get on so well.  They are matched of course in breed and are nearly the same size, but their personalities 'fit' together, they are different, but they are very good mates.

love those boys.....

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

.

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.