Jason and I are continuing on with our spring them of doing all the things. In the last two days we've spent a day with the dentist, a day with the farrier, de-wormed all of the horses and spread fertilizer. I think I could sum things up by saying we are tired, and if we could both shake whatever freakishly stubborn cold we have now had for almost three weeks we would probably be less tired. We're in that phase where we're not sick but we're not well either. So I guess we are swell, sick and well?
I will give all of the horses credit. They did their best to make yesterday and today go as well as they could have. The horses that had their teeth floated by the dentist couldn't have been any better, and the same for all of the horses that saw the farrier today. For the most part they were all cooperative about the de-worming as well.
The only thing they made more complicated, of all things, was spreading fertilizer. Jason was spreading in the Big Boys' field this afternoon and I constantly heard the horn on the tractor beeping. I finally took a break from working to see what the problem was and none of the horses would get out of his way when they happened to be in the path of the tractor. He would basically stand on the horn and make one long beeping noise while screaming at them to move. Their response to his tirades was to continue grazing and not even bother to lift their heads. Then he would start pounding on the horn with his fist and yelling at them even louder. I'm pretty sure anyone within a five mile radius could hear him screaming "Move! Get out of the way!" One time he actually had to get off the tractor and shoo Moe and Homer out of the way.
I think our favorite part of the last two days was when the driver's side window on the truck wouldn't go up. Jason put it down yesterday morning and then it wouldn't go back up. He tried off and on throughout the day but nothing happened when he pressed the button. Finally we began discussing our redneck options late yesterday afternoon. As we were discussing the pros and cons of clear plastic vs a black garbage bag Jason pressed the button one last time. Lo and behold the window went up. Hopefully neither one of us will accidentally hit the button and put the window back down over the next few days. There are rain chances throughout the week and we have so much going on this week we just don't have time to take the truck somewhere to deal with this.
Why on earth our late model diesel truck has a malfunctioning window is beyond me. This stupid truck dearly loves to nickel and dime us to death with stuff like this. We keep threatening to get rid of it. However we seem to enjoy being in an abusive relationship with our truck because we never break up with it, we only threaten too. I guess we are enablers.
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Jason spreading fertilizer
Some of the horses that had their teeth floated yesterday included Traveller
River
Rubrico
Clayton
Oskar
and MyLight
Lighty and Mick
Sam and Johnny
Hemi and Thomas needed the gate and the fence to hold them up while waiting to be fed. Being retired is exhausting.
Tony and Leo
Baby and Trigger
Johnny and River
Murphy and Mick grooming
Merlin and O'Reilly
Renny and Sebastian
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5 comments:
We had our field fertilized recently (with some sort of pellet) and I'm always concerned about how long the waiting period is before horses can go back out on the field. Most people said 2 weeks or after a good rain, but if it's only lime you don't have to wait. What kind of fertilizer did you use that you don't have to remove the horses? Or am I wrong and no waiting period is actually required?
I don't know the answer to that Lytha. I can say that I've never seen horses removed from a field at any barn I've been at because of fertilizer being applied. Hopefully Jason will chime in.
In our case I fertilized our saturated (read wet) soils with slow release nitrogen to enhance grass growth. Within fifteen minutes the pellets had been completely absorbed by the soil so no chance of horses ingesting any and no worries even if they did gain access to very small quantities (ie a few pellets). The nitrogen will sit (hopefully inert) in the soil and be uptaken by the grass roots over the next eight to twelve weeks.
For any sort of fertilizer I'm aware of removing the horses for two weeks and then putting them back out would do absolutely nothing to help them avoid whatever it may be that you're worried about in the fertilizer. The whole idea behind fertilzier is NOT to release all the nutrients contained therein at once, but rather to release them slowly over time....ie a season.
Hope this helps;
Jason
I LEARN SOMETHING EVERYTIME I READ YOUR BLOG. ONE THING I DON'T KNOW IS WHAT'S FLOATING A HORSES TEETH AND DOES IT HURT THEM?
YOUR GRANNY FAN [FLORIDA]
Boy, are we on the same wave length. I have just completed three weeks with my cold and I'm almost over the hump. There is never a time when you two are not very busy. How many horse are at your farm? Can't imagine dentist and farrier days. Thanks Jason, for all the good information you give us.
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