Nothing exciting to say today......I need to buy hay in the next week or so as I only have about 10 bales left. I need to decide whether to just buy another 20 from the same place or what. Half a bale a day now, and I've added on some alfalfa pellets and beet pulp (not much, maybe a bit less than a 1lb alfalfa pellets soaked a day and probably a half pound or so of beet pulp shredded/soaked) and about a pound of sweet feed. That is about all the sweet feed she will get....I will be switching her to Ultium in the next few weeks as she runs out. I just like to make up a conconction for her in the evenings to be honest :)
Foxy is a pig and wants to eat eat eat. She is better off getting 30lbs of shitty hay than 10 lbs of GREAT hay. She would rather eat all day. If I don't give her enough hay she starts eating manure. Gross habit and really, after 3 years of being fat and happy, apparently she will never forget "being hungry" from before I owned her. So I throw a couple flakes out in the morning before work and a couple flakes when I get home. And then a couple more before bed. It is a sort of crappy timothy/orchard mix, small bales so small flakes. Bales of maybe 40-45lbs? So half a bale is a good day of hay for her.
Either way, she is being blanketed if it is below 40ish and especially if wet out. She still refuses to use the shelter so will definitely stay blanketed all winter. It is interesting to note that now that she is at home, I feed less treats. Today she got....two carrots? Yesterday I think I gave her half an apple. Actually I gave her some licorice today. But when she was boarded she would get like 2lbs of carrots a day. It was quite a bit. Carrots in the morning, carrots in the evening, etc etc. Now I spend so much time throwing hay at her, I usually only bring a carrot out during a doggie potty break between meals or something.
She still does her best Beavis and Butthead impression for food. I will have to get a video of it one day. I get a hearty nicker when I open the back door if she is nearby. Food Lady has arrived!
2 comments:
I just keep coming back for more stories about Ms. Foxy. On this visit I can't resist tagging you for "Book Tag" Here are the rules:
1)Grab the nearest book.
2)Open the book to page 56.
3)Find the fifth sentence.
4)Post the text of the next two to five sentences.
5)Don't dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one.
Pick the Closest.
6)Tag five people to do the same.
i'm also addicted to foxy's coming home story. i hope to have one of my own soon and i'm learning from your experience!
if i had a horse like foxy, that can't eat free choice hay and seems to be starving at mealtimes, i think i'd look into one of those hay feeders designed to slow down the horse, so they can only get small bites and it stretches out the meals.
however, i don't know if these horses get enough movement, if they're standing at a hay feeder hours longer than they otherwise would. so you kind of have to balance that i guess. it looks like you have good grass too, so foxy probably moves around a lot.
anyway, here are some sites:
slowdownfeeder.com
http://heunetz.de/media.php
http://www.stallskins.com/grcustomer.html
there are other haynets out there designed to slow horses down, but i can't seem to find them.
hope it helps,
~lytha in germany
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