Pee Wee And Passage

After being away last weekend at a Marike De Jong dressage clinic in Somerset I decided this week would be spent pootling about the yard with the horses (after I had recovered from two leaving do's involving a midnight and 2am finish).


The OH decided that as he was up to date with all the trimming that he would ride Max, of course he tells me that at the yard when all his tack was at home, so we cobbled together a treeless saddle, pony length non-dressage girth and Jamie's bridle that is cob sized with a pee-wee bit.  We thought it may go either way as horses either love or hate the pee wee, Max wasn't quite in the hate category, confused probably is the best description of it.  Jamie goes very well in it, he has a shallow smile, very small tongue and low palette, typical TB mouth.  Rosey loves it, she has thick lips and a large tongue and can be a bit gobby in her baucher French link.  Max has a similar mouth confirmation to Rosey but he wasn't very responsive in it, this was demonstrated when Charlie cantered home in front of him and Max decided he wanted to go too.  N got a lovely passage from him, lots of sit and power, he felt he would have pinged if he had taken more of a hold though so don't think we will try that experiment again.

Fitted hoof boots to a customer whose farrier has told her to remove the front shoes due to the hoof quality.  Nice mare and owner I hope it works out for her.  Farrier had removed the shoes but not trimmed at all which meant it was impossible to fit a boot, we ended up taking a rasp to them ourselves but really needed nippers.  Farrier came back out to tidy up, still not quite as good as a barefoot trim but good enough I think to get going.  Fittted Gloves and the horse moved quite nicely in my demo pair even though they were a size too big, discussed the financial benefit to using Gloves at £108 per pair and lasting around a year plus, to a half a set of shoes at £40 or so every 6-8 weeks, she may consider taking the hinds off as well.  Could be another horse and owner going barefoot without really realising it .......

Sigh - Feed Annoyances Again

So, I spoke to Charnwood yesterday about their Brewers Yeast as I want to make sure I can get some more in that horses will actually eat.  They said they currently have German and out of the batch they have had over the last month or so they have ~only~ had a couple of people report that their horses won't eat it.  That still seems quite a lot to me particularly if those are people that regularly feed Brewers Yeast which they probably would be as they are buying it in 25Kg sacks.  He said they had had awful trouble with the Czech stuff and it almost sounded like it wasn't actually Brewers Yeast as he called it something different to Saccharomyces cerevisiae.  Whatever it was the horses obviously didn't like it.  The good news is is that they are getting Polish stuff back in stock in 10 working days and that is the stuff the horses like.  Don't think they will be messing around with suppliers any more judging from the feed back they have got.

Second call to a feed company was to Top Spec to tell them that so far three sacks of their ~molasses free~ Top Spec Top Chop Lite contained large (about 2 inch by 2 inch) lumps of molasses in it.  They were understandably concerned about this and took it much more seriously than Marksway did when I reported the same problem with one of their feeds.  My suspicion is that both companies have their feed made by the same mill and if this is the case then unfortunately this time I am reporting it to trading standards as they really couldn't see why I was bothered last time I complained.  Last time it resulted in three horses getting laminitis and their feet have only just started to recover from it.  We shall see what happens.

Phew glad that's over

Last weekend was fantastic, worked with T's pony Minnie and C rode her, the first time the pony has been worked for three months and the first time C had ridden anything else in almost a year.  It was fantastic to see how her riding has come on.

We used my failed MOT car to move a load of horse food as it's last job before it went to the great scrap heap in the sky, took the opportunity to give C a couple of driving lessons around the fields.  She is only 15 but I think it is never to early to learn how to handle a car safetly particularly as we may need her driving skills for hay making .......

So pretty good really up until we got the horses in on Sunday evening to find Jamie had four filled legs.  One leg I can cope with but four is never a good sign.  He seemed well enough in himself so we cold hosed, then walked, then cold hosed, then walked again and put him to bed for the night, he has thick rubber in his stable and he tucked in to his dinner so didn't seem bothered by it.  The following morning they were down a bit but still up, Neil turned him out and I got down about 7am to check him.  Working on the assumption of 'it was something he ate - poison' or 'something he ate - loads of grass after the rain' we muzzled him and put boots all round.  Monday evening the front legs were down completely and by Wednesday the hinds were completely down.  He was still cantering around the place and in good spirits so not sure what that was.  He went out with no muzzle for the first time today and came in fine.

Definitely something in the grass after the weather we have been having, Max came in like a space cadet yesterday and Charlie had faint pulses today although they disappeared after work.  If we could get fence posts in we would cut the paddock in half we can't though so will have to cut down the bucket feed, up the exercise and reduce the turnout time a bit.  The paddock looks completely bare but it is coming through and they are eating it as soon as it appears.

The feed experiment to remove all alfalfa from the ponies diets is going well, the fast fibre and unmollassed sugar beet looks really boring but they are eating it well and are out for about 6 hours a day in the paddock with muzzles with a filter in.  Feet are getting back in to shape after their blip and Neil has perfected walking all three of them at the same time.  We have told C that after seeing her ride a 12.2 last weekend there is no reason why she shouldn't start riding Magic and Charlie once we are sure they are 100% ready for it, I think in a couple of weeks so just in time for the school holidays.

Major pain of the weekend was finding huge lumps of molasses in my Top Spec Top Chop Lite guaranteed molasses free chaff.  This is the second time this has happened last time was Markway stuff.  I will be on the phone complaining to Top Spec tomorrow, really not happy but at least the vulnerable horses weren't being fed it.

Had a huge amount of orders for Brewers Yeast, apparently the most recent Charnwood stuff was so unpalatable that most horses refused to eat it.  I order my stuff from them 50 sacks at a time so I had plenty of Polish stuff in stock which they will eat.  Unfortunately due to the demand I am now out myself apart from my own personal stuff so will need to see if I can get some more from somewhere.  I bet Simple System's aren't happy if they have been supplying them with nasty stuff as well, it is the Czech stuff apparently, Polish and German is fine.

All in all I will be glad to get to work tomorrow even if most of it will be spent on the phone to feed companies.