Our First Horse

Our neighbor down the hill, Buddy, rode his lawn mower over yesterday for a visit. We talked about a lot of things, including gardening. His garden is directly downhill from, and shares a fence with, our pasture. Apparently, our horses like to stick their heads over the fence when he’s gardening. He thought they were just being friendly, but we know better. They’re wondering what he’s growing for THEM. “Hey, Buddy, got any carrots? Apples? Blackberries?” (They do like blackberries - we discovered this while picking wild blackberries in our pasture yesterday. We’re lucky we escaped with any blackberries at all.)

Buddy is a nice guy, and we know he wouldn’t bother our horses. He probably wouldn’t feed them anything, either, and if he did I’m sure it would be something safe, like a carrot. But on the other side of the pasture are the neighbors my dad affectionately calls “The Bumpuses” (yep, another “A Christmas Story” reference). They do not have a bunch of hounds - just the two - but they do have three, ahem, rowdy children. They also share a fence with us, and apparently said children routinely played in our pasture when the previous owner lived here - whether they had permission or not is kinda unclear. In any event, they’ve caused us worry ever since we brought our horses into the pasture. Some concerns are horse-related, some are not. Since this is a horse site, let’s talk about the horse-related concerns that neighbors can bring.

• Fences. Fences are notorious for needing mending. If you share a fence with someone, who’s in charge of that fence? Sometimes there’s no question; last summer, our bush-hogger knocked a fence post down while bush-hogging our pasture. Obviously, we fixed that one. But sometimes it’s not quite so clear. Also, the fences we share are barbed-wire and we want to replace them. Do we have to get permission? Maybe they like the barbed wire, because they’re sure it’ll keep the horses out. Which brings us to:
• Horses damaging neighbors’ property. What if our horses decide Buddy’s garden is just too irresistible? I think you have to ensure your horses are contained as well as you possibly can, to keep the neighbors happy. And the horses safe, of course.
• Neighbors feeding your horses. For the most part, I think people have common sense about what you can and can’t feed horses. But there are some things you can feed a horse that seem pretty safe that really aren’t. Some plants, for instance. It’s entirely too easy for your horse to be fed something bad without you even knowing.
• Landscaping. This is even touchier. We want to block our view of the Bumpuses’ mobile home. This in turn will block their view (of our pasture). I think we have every right to plant some privacy-ensuring trees or hedges, but I’m sure they won’t be happy.
• Children in your pasture. We’ve gone back and forth on this one. As I said, the children were accustomed to playing in our pasture, and now we’ve asked them not to. I know this also doesn’t make them happy, and I also know that our requests have been repeatedly ignored. How far should you go to let them know you don’t want them over there? Is a verbal notice okay, or should you send a certified letter or something? Because sometimes you need a legal trail. Which brings us to…
• Liability issues. I remember being a kid. I remember being around boy children. I knew a great many kids, particularly boys, who would not have been able to resist the urge to ride a horse that lived practically in his backyard, as my horses do. I can tell you that neither of our horses would take kindly to that. Or a child could get stepped on, or kicked, or bitten. Most of all, I don’t want anything like that to happen to anyone, but also I really, really don’t want to be sued by a neighbor for something I tried to prevent.

So the point here is that, in addition to the many other responsibilities horse ownership brings, there is the added burden of trying to be a good neighbor. We do what we can…but I’m pretty sure the Bumpuses don’t like us.

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We are battling the flies again. In some ways, I don’t think they’re as bad as they were last year - probably because of a late frost that killed off a bunch of our normal pests - but the ones that are deviling our horses are really bad. Last year, we had a three-pronged approach to fly control: Equispot on the horses, feed-through fly control in the horses, and fly parasites in the horses’ environment. This year, we just weren’t prepared. Between the weird weather (One day, “It’s spring!” Then, “Wait, it’s winter again.” A week later, “I think it’s summer already!” The next day, “Nope, winter again…”) and our traveling, the flies kind of got the jump on us. Our poor horses are really suffering.

We are in fact using the fly parasites again this year, and I think they work really well. Unfortunately, without investing in a really big supply of them, we can only effectively treat the barn area. So the barn is virtually fly-free, but the pasture, where the horses spend most of their time, is still pretty fly-infested. That’s where the feed-through fly control would work. (Both the fly parasites and the feed-through fly control work by stopping fly larvae where they are laid - in the manure.) We like to get ours from a local feed store because it’s very economical, but haven’t had a chance to get over there (”local” for us means within 75 miles; this place is about 50 miles away). In the meantime, we’ve been using fly spray, which our horses hate and which doesn’t seem to work all that well anyway. We’ve also applied SWAT to their bellies again, which is very nasty and messy but does seem to help.

Since the flies seem to bother their faces the most, we decided we’d give fly masks a try. We got just one yesterday to see if they would even consent to wear it. We bought a SuperMask II without ears. Since my horse is was a fancy show horse and therefore seems to be more open to weird things being done to him, we thought we’d try him first. We put him in the stall, got out the mask and brought it over to show him. He backed away like I was holding a snake! Not a good start. But after letting him sniff it all over and giving him lots of reassurance, he did actually let me put it on with no trouble. He wore it for a couple of hours out in the pasture and didn’t seem to care at all.

One reason we didn’t try the mask last year is that we were concerned that it would affect their vision. All the fly mask companies claim that their masks don’t obstruct vision, but since “keeping an eye on things” is so important to a horse, we didn’t want to impede their sight in any way. So we tested it on the way home to make sure you really can see through - Bill wore it while driving. He says he could see just fine. So I don’t think there’s anything to worry about there. Isn’t he a devoted horse owner?

On the down side…it sure looks goofy. On the horse, not Bill. Well, okay, on Bill too. It’s a hard look to pull off.

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Speaking of hay, the word from the hay farmers in east Tennessee is that 2007 is shaping up to be a very bad year for hay. The first harvest of the year was about half it’s normal size and the lack of rain since the first harvest could mean there is no second harvest. In Tennessee, we had a hard freeze well into spring that seems to have slowed the growth of just about everything this season. That’s probably the culprit of the smaller-than-normal first harvest. Local farmers say we’re in the drought end of a 10 year moisture cycle in these parts.

What all of this means for those of us buying hay in east Tennessee is high prices and low availability. Last year feed stores were selling 30-40 pound square bales for up to $5.50 each last winter. I wonder what the price will be this year. If these farmers are correct, the best time to purchase hay is right now. As long as we keep them away from moisture, the bales will easily last and we have the room for it now. We’re planning on stocking up on round bales for winter and square bales for daily roughage. Worse-case scenario, we’ll supplement this winter with bagged alfalfa but I’d rather not do that. If you live in the southeast, this might be a good year to consider building some hay storage.

Luckily the midwest seems to be having a wet summer so you horse owners out there are probably in good shape. Heck, we might be importing hay from you guys this year!

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A few weeks ago we helped out bringing in the first cutting of hay for this year. It’s been 20 years since I helped “put up hay” and since I don’t have to do it for a living, it seemed like a fun idea at the time. I’m here to tell you, putting up hay is HARD WORK and I have a whole new respect for those who do it for a living. Here’s the square bale harvesting process in a nutshell:

1. At harvest time, a tractor pulls a hay cutter over the field being harvested.
2. Although not required, these days many farmers choose to use what’s called a hay tedder (some spell it “hay tetter”). A tractor implement, the hay tedder has circular rakes that spin as the tedder is pulled through the cut hay. This effectively fluffs and spreads it the cut hay to speed up and more thoroughly dry it. It’s important that hay be dry prior to bailing or else bacteria and mold will grow in the moist warm hay. I like to call the hay tedder a “hay fluffer”, much to the amusement of hay farmers.
3. After drying, the hay is raked into rows for the baler (using a tractor with a hay rake).
4. A tractor drives over the rows with a hay baler (some spell it “bailer”) implement. The hay is fed into the baler which compacts the hay into neat bales of a specific size (although somewhat changeable, we stuck with 50 lb. bales), cuts each bale into slices and then ties each bale with hay twine before spitting it out the back onto a hay wagon or onto the field, depending on what’s happening in step 5. There are lots of things that will stop a baler from working properly. This is the one single machine that seems to cause the most headache, as it’s in need of frequent maintenance, repair and kicking.
5. Up until this step, most of the work is done by machine. Step 5 involves manual labor. If you have a hay wagon, the baler spits the bale towards the wagon where someone reaches down and throws the bales to whoever is stacking the hay on the wagon. If you don’t have a hay wagon, the baler drops the bales onto the ground. These are then picked up and thrown onto whatever kind of trailer will be used to haul the hay (often a car hauler) by people following the baler in the field. We had several people collecting the hay and throwing the bales onto the trailer. The stacker had an easy job until the bales started stacking up. We stacked five rows high and that fifth row is a pain!
6. Once a trailer is full of hay, it’s sent off to wherever it’s going. Typically this means it’s unloaded into a barn that same day. Lots of manual labor here as someone needs to throw the hay up into the barn and someone needs to stack.

Trust me, by the end of the day, a shower is MANDATORY and you’ll be finding hay in places where you’d least expect it. The temperature that day was in the mid 80’s and humid so everyone was covered in sweat. Working with hay is itchy. I remembered not to wear shorts but forgot to wear a long sleeve shirt. It’s hard to wear long pants and long sleeves in the hot, humid summer but I’d rather sweat than be itchy all day.

Although the Kid and his friends came along to help, 50 pound bales were too much for anyone under 16 or so to move. Because of that, the 10-ish kids got to experience something far more fun. Farm kids learn to drive in the field during the hay harvest. The Kid LOVED it. I was a nervous wreck. Thanks to the ability to take pictures and video with my cell phone, Mikki was a nervous wreck, too, almost 2000 miles away on her trip. I put the drivers seat up as far as it went, raised the pedals, put the truck in four wheel drive low, dropped it into first gear and instructed our 10-year-old Kid to drive our air conditioned truck slowly behind the baler so the rest of us could do the heavy lifting. And he did a great job. This is one day when it paid to be small.

I want to close this post by saying how much respect I have for the farmers who do this kind of work every day. These people do it for a living and have strength and endurance that’s lost on those of us who are consumers only. I normally sit at a computer all day during the week and my out-of-shape body could barely walk the next day. I worked for five hours straight but these farmers were out there all day without much of a break and did it again every day that week. Amazing. Fortunately, I’ll forget how much work this was before the next harvest and will volunteer to help out again.

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I don’t know why this surprises me. All mammals have a belly button, after all. But it doesn’t show as prominently on furry mammals. I was talking with someone recently about belly buttons and somehow horses came up. A little research revealed that horse belly buttons are sort-of where ours are located. On both male and female horses, their belly button is three to four inches in front of their genitalia. Valentine has an “outy/outie”, making it much easier to see, while Moonshine has an “inny/innie”. I risked my very life to bring you this picture of Valentine’s belly button so I hope you appreciate it.

Cute, isn’t it? Not unlike a human belly button, except for size and furry-ness. I have not been around any horse births so I have to ask, do foals need those belly button clips we put on baby humans when their umbilical cord is cut?

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While I was visiting the kids/grandkids in Arizona last month, I read 5 books. I love to read! One of the books I read, which I highly recommend, is Beautiful Jim Key by Mim Eichler Rivas. I had never heard of this horse, and apparently not many people these days have, but after reading this book, I can’t believe he’s being forgotten.

I don’t want to give away the whole story, in case you want to read the book yourself, but here’s a synopsis: Jim Key was a Arabian-Hambletonian colt bred by a former slave, Dr. William Key, in 1889. His dam was “Lauretta, Queen of Horses,” a purebred Arabian said to have been owned by (and stolen from) an Arab sheik. His sire, the Hambletonian, was a very successful pacer, and that’s what Jim was bred to be as well. Pacing (a form of racing where the horse pulls a small cart) was very big at the time. Jim was very sickly when he was born, and not expected to live. With tender loving care by Dr. Key, who was a self-taught veterinarian, he not only lived but turned out to be a very special horse. He showed an unusual aptitude for learning, and Dr. Key ended up teaching him to read, spell, do arithmetic, file letters in a filing cabinet, memorize Bible verses, and give political opinions, among other amazing feats. He ended up on tour, showing millions of Americans his amazing talents at fairs and expositions around the country.

The biggest contribution Jim Key made, though, was to the animal rights cause. Animal abuse was rampant and accepted at the time, and by showing people how intelligent animals can be, he raised awareness in people and became a kind of ambassador for organizations that were the forerunners of today’s ASPCA and Humane Society.

Beautiful Jim Key retired in 1906 and lived a peaceful retirement until he died of natural causes in 1912. He’s buried in Shelbyville, Tennessee. We’re going to visit the memorial someday, when we go to that mecca of Tennessee Walking Horses.

The book was well-written, though in my opinion a tad on the political side, and it dwelt far too much on the relationship between their promoter, A.R. Rogers, and the humane societies. I also wish that there were more pictures, but of course it was just at the turn of the 20th century, so photography wasn’t nearly as common then. But on the whole, it was a very interesting, moving book and definitely worth reading.

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