Our First Horse

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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Over the past year we’ve spent time mending horse fences. Some repairs worked, some didn’t last. Here’s what we’ve learned:

• Screws work better than nails. Eventually nails creep out, especially since horses tend to lean against fence boards pretty hard. At least ours do.
• When using screws, drill pilot holes first. Otherwise you end up with wood splitting. In fact, many of the boards that were nailed in actually split from the nail.
• Have spares - never know when you need them, such as in the middle of the night. There have been a few times this year when we heard a loud bang outside and it turned out the horses had broken a fence board. It’s important to have spares around for emergency repairs.
• Save broken fence pieces for other repairs. We occasionally have a break in the middle of our 12 foot fence boards. We’ll take the two halves and trim them for use as center supports.
• Center supports work and look nice. A center support is simply a small section of board attached across the center of the three fence boards. Lots of people don’t use them but I find our 12 foot sections tend to sag over time in the middle. The center support ties the three boards together in the middle to prevent that and to spread the force of a horse leaning on the middle across all three boards. They also look nice.
• Fences are expensive! We discovered our 3 board fence costs about $40 per 12 foot section. That really adds up when you’re looking to put in 150 foot of fencing. We may need to replace a few sections of barbed wire fence at a time.

I have an idea for a fence strengthening brace that might also look really nice. The idea came to me while I brainstormed about how to save the fence boards that had split at their nail holes. I wanted to see if there was a way I could repair them using easy-to-find and inexpensive hardware items. What I came up with is a simple piece of flat steel brace with three holes in it. If I screw the fence boards into the posts through one of these, it would spread the grip of those three screws across the entire brace, essentially clamping the board onto the post. And if I painted it black and maybe rounded the corners, it would like nice against the wood. Here’s my concept photo:

The braces should cost less than $.50 each, or about $3 per 12 foot section. I’m still toying with the idea but I’m thinking about trying it on a small section of fence to see what it looks like.

Other posts about fence mending:

Fence Mending (12/06)
More Fence Mending (2/07)

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We had rain yesterday in east Tennessee. When I went out to check the water bucket I noticed two shiny flat spots near the barn. I got a little closer to investigate and then went for my camera. I know what caused it. What’s your guess? I’ll edit the post later with some “evidence” and the answer.

Well thanks for playing guys! Laura was the first to nail it…it took me a minute but I recalled a photo I took in about this same spot:

And this is what our horses looked like:

Rediculous…I mean look at this:

She’s suddenly a redhead! Horses are so funny. I rarely see Valentine muddy but I think it’s pretty clear from the two distinct flat spots in the top picture that both horses rolled.

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I love the smell of my horse. If you don’t have a horse, that must be a weird thing to hear someone say but it’s true. She smells horsey and I like it. But today for some strange reason as I kissed her long face and breathed in, I detected the scent of something smoky. In fact, it smelled like…marijuana. Why does my horse smell like marijuana? I wish I knew. We don’t smoke it and don’t know anyone around who does. I really don’t think our neighbors do. Are there plants in the wild that smell like burning marijuana cigarettes or should I be on the lookout for hippies in my pasture? This was an isolated incident but worth noting, nonetheless.

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It’s time to deal with the clay and mud mess we have in front of our barn. We’ve written about this mud before, back in October as we were preparing for the winter mud. Over the past year we’ve tried a few things and are finally starting to see some results. The best thing would probably be paving the area we have trouble with, but we just don’t have the $2,000 or so in our budget. In looking for inexpensive solutions, here’s what we’ve tried so far:

1. Sand amendment.

Our “soil” is mostly clay here and when it gets wet, it’s a goopy mess. Because clay doesn’t drain well, the goopy mess sticks around for several days after a rain. In fact, some pockets of water are around for weeks after a rain. We’ve accidentally stepped in these pockets and had old smelly water spray all over. Ick. So it seems to us that the key to improving this situation is to amend the soil so that it drains better. We’re not going to stop the mud when it rains but we want it to dry up as quickly as possible.

Since this is an experiment, we’ve selected a section of our barn entrance and every couple of weeks or so we poured and spread a 50 pound bag of play sand, purchased inexpensively at our local hardware store. Each 50 pound bag cost around $5. And even though fifty pounds sounds like a lot, each bag only covered an area about 3 foot square. Over the last 6 months, we’ve added about 200 pounds of sand to a six foot square area. Now obviously for a large area, the best way to bring in sand would be by truck and not by bag. But this was an experiment.

2. Organic material amendment (mostly hay).

Adjacent to the 6 foot square area we used for the sand amendment experiment, we selected a larger 10 foot square area for our organic material experiment. Sometimes our horses don’t eat all their hay and when it’s left on the ground we don’t like to use it for feed anymore. Cost is zero. So we scoop it over the gate and gradually the horses walk on it so the hay gets mixed in with the clay. And sometimes we throw some grass clippings on top, too. In nature, all this organic stuff breaks down slowly and it seems logical that eventually this material will improve the soil composition.
Six Month Results - what’s working?

It’s been about six months since we started this little mud abatement experiment and we have some interesting results to share. Surprisingly, the sand has worked very well. Take a look at the before and after pictures:

To the left is before and on the right is after. The “after” picture was taken a few days after rain. The “before” picture is obviously a muddy mess. Six months later, the area closer to the bottom of the “after” picture isn’t as muddy and is much smoother than the area towards the top of the picture. Below is a picture from the side:

Organic material amendment is represented on the left and sand amendment is on the right. It may not be so obvious in the picture but the difference is huge. A nice benefit of the smoother soil on the right is that the horses don’t trip on it like they do the area to the left. When the clay dries it hardens, creating rock-like clumps next to hoof-sized holes filled with stagnant water. Smooth is the way to go.

The experiment continues but sand is winning so far. We’re going to step up our sand amendment effort and expand it to a wider area. I titled this post “Barn Entry Mud Abatement - Part 1″ because I intend to continue reporting on this experiment. I’ve posted in a few online horse forums about our mud problem and quickly learned barn entrance mud is universal and no one seems to have a good solution beyond paving. I hope this information helps those of you who are in “low budget” mode like us.

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It’s been in the 70’s and low 80’s all week, a sure sign that spring is on the way. I love spring but there a few things I’m not looking forward to. The first has got to be carpenter bees. I mentioned carpenter bees last year, when I noticed how much damage they were doing to our wooden barn and wood-sided house. Upon further inspection this year, we quickly realized that carpenter bees have destroyed a significant number of important beams in the old barn in the pasture. We’re going to have to replace those this year or risk losing the barn. It’s that serious. You’ll recall that carpenter bees don’t just drill large holes in wood, they burrow up to 10 feet into the wood. We treated the burrows we could reach last year with Sevin dust and sealed up a good many of them with expanding foam. Yeah, wood filler would have been better but we had a LOT of holes. The expanding foam seemed more economical.  And easier.
Walking around outside today, I can tell you I must not have made too big an impact on the carpenter bee population because they are everywhere! I’m not sure what to do about the ones in the air besides what some call “carpenter bee tennis,” but I’m back to treating the holes I can find with Sevin dust. I’m worried about places I can’t see or easily get to like 25 feet up in the rafters of the barn, under our deck or behind the wood siding of our house. Stupid carpenter bees.

Another related downside to spring is wasps. Our barn serves as an ideal wasp nest host, with crevices all over, including lots of hidden ones. Last year there were days where we just didn’t want to hang out at the barn much due to all the aggressive wasps. I made some wasp traps with nectar attractant, the kind that are easy to get into but hard to get out of, but the wasps totally ignored it. We diligently knocked down or treated wasp nests as we found them and there were no incidents with our horses. But now I’m back on wasp patrol. Any suggestions are welcome.

Flies - they’re coming soon. I’ve seen some but when you have horses, you’ll have flies and lots of them. We were successful last year with fly parasites from Arbico Organics (there are lots of companies that sell them). Have you seen these? You subscribe to a monthly service that send fly parasite larvae. They hatch and destroy flies in some kind of gruesome way. We were skeptical but proved last year they really do work. We wrote last May about what fly treatment methods we were trying. It’s time to think about what we’re going to use this year.

Thorns and other weeds - We’re excited about the grass growing. Our horses seem seriously tired of dry hay and I don’t blame them. But the return of grass means the weeds and thorn bushes are also returning. Time to get out into the pasture to uproot the thorn vines. We also need to stay on top of keeping the pasture trimmed/bush-hogged. Apparently if you don’t keep your grass trimmed, the weeds choke out the good stuff.

Snakes - Mikki wrote last year about a snake that visited our barn and freaked us all out. I hate snakes! They creep me out. Yes I know, they provide the valuable service of getting rid of mice and rats but I’d still rather have barn cats.

Other than those things, we’re VERY MUCH looking forward to spring. I’ll take warm weather with these downsides any day over 20 degrees and windy.

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