Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to all of the horses and riders out there!  I hope that everyone has a safe and warm holiday.  Enjoy your families today!
I'll be home with a sick kid today, so I will be thankful for all of the gifts in my life from home.

Weird Horses!

Today I had quite a scare.  It was cold when I woke up, in the single digits.  My horses had finished their round bale yesterday, I had dumped out all of the wet hay in the bottom last night.  ELEVEN days that bale lasted, pretty great!  Anyways, so I ran out to feed the horses a square bale.  They all four dug right in, just like normal.  About ten minutes later, once I finished getting ready for work, I came back outside to take off for the day.  I see three horses eating hay, and my old mare (Abbie) up on the hill.  She whinnies when she see's me, and comes booking down the hill.  She then wanders around by the shelter, and over to the level (rather sandy) place where the round bale was.  Then she lays down, and just lays there.  Freaked me out, but I was late for work so off I went.  Came home tonight, she's perfectly fine and ready for dinner.  Apparently she just wanted me to worry all day.  WEIRD horses...

Pictures are after eleven days of eating on the round bale.  Everyone seems to be in great weight lol!
    

Feeding in Winter

I find it mind boggling how much hay my horses can consume, and the speed at which they do it!  We decided to feed round bales this winter.  Great idea, it's much healthier for horses to have constant food in their stomachs and to graze slowly.  However, the first round bale did NOT get consumed slowly.  My four adult horses had it gone within five days.  I'm talking gone as in even the muddy parts on the ground pretty much cleaned up.  Over a thousand pounds of hay gone in less than a week, so we were back to feeding square bales two or three times a day. These pictures are after TWO days of eating.  Look at that mess!! 


SO I bought my piggies a Cinch Chix hay net: http://www.cinchchix.com

Today I went out to check on it, and these pictures are after four days of eating:

 

My husband and I had no problem moving the round bale.  We untarped it, rolled it into the pasture, removed the twine and put the Cinch net over it.  It was quite easy, the entire process probably took us fifteen minutes.  Not too bad, fifteen minutes to feed my horses for a week!  Then of course we got a boat load of rain, and 50+ mph wind gusts all weekend.  I have no hay wasted, and they are still eating.  YEA!!  So far so good, I'm loving round bales with Cinch Chix nets.