Our First Horse

The video I posted yesterday was just a little display of the snow with some scenes from our barn and pasture. Yesterday, Mikki and I brought cameras with us up to the barn to see how our horses reacted to the white stuff. After being cooped up all day the day before (we didn’t want them wet and cold), our horses were ready to leave the barn. I’m so glad we had cameras because Cash and Valentine in particular really seemed to enjoy the snow.

This video is also high definition and runs about 4 minutes. In it you’ll see just how dirty Cash looks against the pure white snow. Turns out his patches aren’t white, they’re tan! You’ll see Cash roll several times including once right in front of us. He romps and throws his head around. I loved seeing his beautiful long mane flowing and his “horn” snorts are pretty cute. Maybe we should have called him “Horatio”. That’s a common sound with him. At the end of the video I added a few slow motion sequences of him prancing around. Valentine got into the rolling and romping, too but he’s hard to see. The white of the snow blew out the exposure on the camera so much of Valentine’s fur detail is lost unless he’s right in front of the camera. Moonshine makes her authority known a few times and Romeo mostly stands around and eats.

Once again, you can view this video full size and I recommend it.

Didn’t that look fun!?

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We don’t get a whole lot of snow in east Tennessee. Maybe once or twice a year we’ll get a dusting. Well starting yesterday it actually did snow - pretty much all day. And today the snow continued, albeit light flurries. In the three years or so we’ve been here, this is the most snow we’ve seen! I know you cold weather people will laugh but we warm weather southern people get excited when it sticks to the ground. Schools are closed, people stick up on milk and bread, etc. It’s kinda cozy, so long as the electric stays on.

I went outside and took a short video of some snowy scenery around the barn and pasture. This is part 1 of 2. After I shot and edited this video, Mikki and I let the horses out today and got some great video of them playing in it. I’ll post that probably tomorrow.

This is high definition video and it’s probably better seen in full screen mode. After you push play, there is a little icon in the bottom right corner of the video that will allow you to expand it to full screen. The video length is about 3 minutes and there is no music. Just snow falling, traffic in the background, the hum of the video recorder and occasional horsey sounds.

EDIT: I almost forgot - making an appearance in this short video are our new barn kittens, Daisy and Clover! They’ve never seen snow before and don’t seem to like it a whole lot.

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Thanks for all the suggestions in the comments on my last post about surprise food aggression. Separate hay stacks are the plan and I’m glad to see most of you seem to do that as well. One question though. Do you do as I do and drop the hay on the ground? I’ve heard we should try to keep it off of the dirt/mud/stone but does that mean I should buy four or five hay feeders (not round bale feeders but trough-style)? For now, it’s on the ground but I’m always looking for the better way.

Although that seems like this food aggression was an isolated incident, I always keep an eye on my position and as was noted in the comments, I am careful to not let myself get between two horses. I’m seen demeanor change in a flash. A common comment from those who have had horse accidents is “it happened so fast!” and we’d all be better for keeping that in mind.

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Yesterday I noticed some disturbing behavior as I let the horses out of the barn. We have a method of doing it that works pretty well for us, which has us releasing each horse mostly in the opposite order of herd position. In our herd, the order is:

1) Moonshine
2) Romeo
3) Valentine
4) Cash

At the moment, Romeo doesn’t have a stall (we hope to finish his new stall Saturday) so I take out a bale of hay and Romeo follows, without returning to the barn. Next goes Cash. He usually doesn’t want to leave the barn so he sniffs the ground, nibbles on stray pieces of hay, tries to get past me to explore the parts of the barn behind me, etc. But eventually he exits and then it’s Valentine’s turn. Valentine isn’t very aggressive at all but as he slowly exits the barn, it usually gives Cash enough momentum to leave too. Lastly it’s Moonshine, and she doesn’t stand for any lazy horsing around. By the time she gets to exit her stall I can tell she’s annoyed at having to wait so long for the others and each time she shoes them out to the hay.

Since each of the horses seems to have to fight for their position to enjoy the days ration of hay each and every day (even though the result is always the same - according to herd position), we split the hay ration into four equal parts, spaced well enough from each other so as to minimize sneak attacks. They play this little game that is not unlike musical chairs until I suppose they tire of chasing each other in circles and settle down to their own piles. On this particular day, I was putting out the hay and Mikki was letting out the horses. Figuring I had a few minutes before Cash would exit the barn, I gave the go-ahead signal to Mikki as I cut the twine on the bale. Romeo munched away as I carried Cash’s flakes to a location an ample distance from Romeo. But this time, Cash exits the barn right away and comes galloping up the hill to where I stand. This isn’t unusual. They’re often a little spunky after being in the barn all night and it was nice and cool out. But this time was different. Cash showed clear signs of agression - towards me! He came right at me, tried to push me aside and then spun around as if to kick me. Fortunately I was paying attention and yelled and jumped out of the way. I couldn’t believe it. I threw his hay down and he ran at me again. To be honest, it was a little intimidating…scary even. I am no match of a 1,000 pound horse.

So of course I’m wondering why he changed on this day; why he saw me as a threat to his food. Is it because he grows weary at constantly being on the bottom of the pecking order? I’m trying to think like a horse but I don’t know what I could have done to position myself as a challenger or as weak. He’s been fine since but I realize we’ll have to be especially careful to watch for this behavior going forward. It’s disheartening, though, because Cash has never been aggressive with us or the others.

Have you experienced this kind of food aggression?

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Mikki, the Kid and I as well as Valentine, Moonshine, Cash and Romeo wish all of you a happy and prosperous new year! Here’s hoping it’s filled with positive equine experiences for all of us.

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The CD winner is…d2cmom!

We assigned each post a number (sorry, Lisa - your two posts only counted as one entry) and had the Kid draw a number out of a hat. Number 8 was drawn, and the eighth post was d2cmom.

So congratulations, and contact us soon so we can send your new CD!

Thanks to all of you for posting. We enjoyed all the posts - they were some very good stories, and interesting thoughts. We hope you’ll keep them coming, even without a contest.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

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