And it's winter again.
I suppose I brought this on us by waking up yesterday and deciding it would be the first day I didn't put on longjohns under my jeans. And it fact, it was so warm out that I worked in the orchard pruning the fruit trees with my adorable little battery run mini-chainsaw Mike got me, and I didn't even need a jacket. By sundown it was snowing and the temperature had dropped twenty degrees.
Even the dogs were less than excited about snow this morning. Normally while we wait for the horseboys to finish breakfast, the dogkids are zooming around as fast as they can go. Not today. I'm guessing it takes about twenty minutes for the horses to finish their bucket feed and then get started on their hay. Our monitoring them isn't so much about who eats what, since all but Corazon get a similar diet, it's more about keeping order. Each horse has their assigned feeder and they are not allowed to switch around until they are down to just hay. We aren't mean about it, we just send them back to their own feeder if they decide to roam. Once in a while one of the boys will decide to see if we are on our toes by sneaking towards someone else's feeder, by now all it takes is an 'Uh! Uh!' from Mike or me and they turn right around and go back to their own space. It really surprises visitors who happen to be around at feeding time to see our five horse quietly and patiently waiting at their assigned feeder to get their buckets. No fighting, no dangerous behavior, just five horses who know no one gets fed until everyone is in their place.
4 comments:
We've had blister heat following by chills cold enough to light the heater. It's so disheartening after a few blissful days to dig out the sweaters again. Hope it warms up for good real soon.
Do the horses know which feeder is theirs? or do you have to lead them to their feeders?
I guess the pups are tired of winter, too!
Hi Janet - we keep order by working within the order the horses would feed themselves. They each have their own feeder and they are spaced moving away from the gate so that the #1 horse is at the first feeder, #2 at second and so on. When we get a new horse, we observe where they fit in the scheme of things and place their feeder accordingly. No one gets to eat in anyone else's feeder, only their own. If they try to mix things up, we just wait with the buckets and the horsey police (Griton) will straighten everyone out for us. It doesn't take long for a new horse to understand where he eats and to not try to eat someone else's food.
What a piddly little snowstorm -- just enough to mess things up again.
I'm impressed by how smart and orderly your horses are. I never thought about the importance of making sure each one got its own special feed mix.
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