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.
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