Hay Hoarders

We've had a busy week here with multiple visits from farriers and vets, thankfully all for routine appointments and nothing out of the ordinary.  Much on our minds as we have gone about our tasks this week has been the weather.  It has been very dry here for the past month, with the only measurable rainfall happening earlier this week.  Summers in the mid south tend to be hit or miss as far as precipitation.  Last summer was almost perfect as far as rain was concerned, just about every week we had a good, soaking rain that led to gorgeous pastures and good hay cuttings.  The summer of 2007 is one that no one will forget anytime soon.  The worst drought in recorded history for this area (so glad I got to experience that - not!!) which led to a massive hay shortage. It goes without saying that a big hay shortage leads to REALLY high hay prices.  If we never live through a year like that again I would be fine with that!  Most summers fall somewhere in between last year's perfection and the 2007 nightmare.

If the last few weeks are a good predictor of the future this is going to be a very dry summer.  We've been putting some hay out in the pastures to see what the horses do with it and so far it is being ignored.  That will definitely change if the status quo continues.  We grow some of our own hay and purchase the rest.  In preparation for potentially poor hay cuttings for the rest of the season we've gone ahead and purchased an additional 350 large (1000+ pounds) bales of hay.  It hurts (a lot) writing those checks all at once but Jason and I are definitely charter members of hay hoarders anonymous, so as far as we're concerned you can never have too much hay.  

In fact our hay hoarding is so embedded in our natures we are talking about building a third hay barn at some point in the future.  Although two hay barns are good we've decided three would be even better.  Of course this being a farm we pretty much have an endless list of projects, buildings and equipment that we need and/or want.  Maybe one day we'll actually get to them all, but in the meantime I guess we will both be dreaming of a third hay barn as we drift off to sleep at night.  Instead of counting sheep we'll count hay barns!

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Fabrizzio, Thor and Walden

Slinky and Lucky

Gus

Elfin

Baby and Trigger

B-Rad, Alex and Renny

Titan and Winston

Rocky and Toledo

Homer, Levendi, Moe and Apollo

The Answer Is; Double Duty

In my last post I mentioned that I finally picked up a calculator to determine the average age of a resident on our farm.  Our youngest residents are well under the age of 10 and our most elderly residents are well into their 30's. There were some accurate guesses as to the average age in the comments and undoubtedly the suspense has been killing everyone. 

And the answer is  . . . 

drumroll please . . . 

19 years old!

Interestingly the average age and the median age are probably pretty close to the same number.  Maybe one day I'll motivate myself to pick up the calculator again and see what the median age is.  There are other numbers that would be interesting as well such as average age at time of retirement.  I have a number in my head that I think is correct but I've never actually checked to see if I am accurate.

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Today was a busy day at the farm and we ended up with double duty.  One of our farriers was here in the morning and then the vet was here this afternoon.  We had a few horses that needed to see the vet for vaccines, follow up checks on various things, etc.  Between the farrier in the morning and the vet in the afternoon I told Jason that we'll be lucky if the horses even come up to get fed tomorrow.  They were pretty put out with us by the end of the day today.

ready and waiting for meal time; George, Asterik, Titan, Gus, Silver, Faune, Winston and Lotus

Murphy and Chili; excuse the black spot in some of the pictures.  I've tried cleaning the lense of my camera several times but it still appears.  We may be stuck with it for awhile.

Kennedy and Tiny

Sebastian, Chili, Renny and Fuzzy

It has been very dry here for about a month.  We finally had a bit of much needed rain last night and Moe made the most of it.  Instead of muddy brown he should be the same color as Lily, the gray mare in the background!

Cinnamon and Traveller

Maisie and Norman

Apollo

Cuffie

Average Age - Take a Guess

A question that I am asked often, but never really have an accurate answer for, is the average age of the residents on our farm.  Their ages cover a broad spectrum.  Everyone always assumes a retired horse means an elderly horse and some of the time this is a correct assumption.  However we have several retirees here under the age of ten.  The youngest age at the time of arrival was five years old, retired due to an injury.  We also have several residents in their late 20's and well into their 30's.  

To satisfy my own curiosity I just calculated the average age a resident on our farm.  Anybody care to guess what number I came up with?

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Fuzzy and Renny

Darby

Silky and Traveller

Lucky and O'Reilly

Toledo and Kennedy

Lily and Maisie

Grand and Elfin

Clayton and Stormy

The Debate Rages On

This blog post probably won't win me any fans but oh well.  We live about an hour from the heart of Tennessee Walking Horse country.  I love the breed.  Although the breed is not well suited for my disciplines of choice I love their temperament, trainability, and most of all their running walk.  Whenever I've had the opportunity to go trail riding with a friend on her walking horses it is always a pleasure.  It is very obvious to me why a lot of serious trail riders choose to ride a gaited horse, what a comfortable ride!

However I hate the whole Performance Walking Horse division, better known as the "Big Lick."  This is not something a Walking Horse does naturally, it is completely artificial and has to be created.  The big lick is achieved through shoeing the horses in massive stacked shoes, wrapping chains around their pasterns, and forcing them to squat down on their hind ends and look like they are doing some sort of crazy crab walk thing as they go around the ring.  It blows my mind that huge crowds are attracted to these shows to cheer this on.  I don't get it.  When I watch Big Lick horses all I see is something that is so artificial and unnatural, and it looks downright cruel for the horse. I can't stand to watch it.  Not to mention the tail sets that the horses have to wear and a lot of the other stuff that seems to just be part of the breed.  

Don't get me wrong, I am fully aware that every riding discipline, English, Western, gaited or whatever you pick, has abusive tactics that some people employ.  However in my experience, and I've had the privilege to show extensively at some points in my career with some BNTs (Big Name Trainers), this tends to be the exception not the rule.  However with the Big Lick horses I'm not sure that one could ever convince me that all of these horses are not subjected to some level of abuse, because in my opinion being forced to live in and wear the huge stacked shoes is abuse.

The Big Lick training methods have been under fire for decades and they have their own USDA inspectors that inspect horses at the shows in an attempt to enforce the rules.  The industry always seems to circle the wagons and fight vehemently to protect their rights to to produce this Big Lick instead of trying to clean up their act.  Here is an old Sports Illustrated article from 1960(!!!) titled "The Torture Must End."

The latest embarrassment to the industry was the expose on ABC's Nightline a few weeks ago, "Video Reveals Torture of Horses Trained to Win Championship."  I will admit I cried when I watched the video in the link.  You see various ways that the horses in this undercover video were "sored" to produce the Big Lick.  You also watch the horses beaten and abused in a process known as "stewarding." This is where the horses that have been sored are taught to stand still no matter what someone does to them.  This is important as the inspectors are looking for pain responses from sored horses, so the goal is that the horses don't respond to pain and can pass their inspections and be allowed to show.   You see horses so tortured and abused they have to be beaten just to make them stand up in their stalls.  

None of the stuff in this video is new, is a secret or is a surprise.  It just another example of the systematic (in my opinion) abuse of the Big Lick Walking Horse.  The industry reps will tell you over and over that this is the exception and not the rule.  OK, then why is that just about every trainer in recent years who has won the World Grand Championship has been busted for violating the Horse Protection Act?  As of right now the top 20 horse trainers in the Walking Hose Riders Cup competition have amassed 164 violations of the horse protection act between them in the last two years alone.  

Some disturbing statistics quoted in this newspaper article (bold emphasis mine):  "According to Pacelle, “The (performance horse) industry claims a 98 percent compliance rate with the (Horse Protection Act), yet 52 of the 52 horses randomly tested were found by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to be positive for prohibited foreign substances having been applied to their ankles at the 2011 Tennessee Walking Horse Celebration, which is the major annual show (the Super Bowl, if you will) within the industry.

“Foreign substance violation rates (for soring, numbing or masking agents) at all shows at which the USDA inspected horses were 86 percent in 2010 and 97.6 percent in 2011. It doesn't get more pervasive than that,” wrote Pacelle." 

I find it laughable that their industry leaders can say abuse is not the norm in light of these statistics.  Maybe, unlike me, they don't think these numbers are bad.  I'm glad there is a yet another uproar over the Big Lick walking horses.  However this debate has been raging for over 50 years, and the truth is I doubt anything will change. The TWHBEA (TN Walking Horse Breeders and Exhibitors Association) is yet again circling the wagons and defending the Big Lick.  How they can claim soring is the exception and not the rule is incomprehensible to me.  That thousands and thousands of people flock to the Celebration each year to watch these horses and cheer on the Big Lick is something I just can't wrap my brain around.  However the good news is that the Celebration has lost some sponsors thanks to the Nightline story and the undercover video.  Maybe if they lose all of their sponsors some real change might finally happen.

So that is my opinion of the Big Lick walking horse.  It disgusts me, I can't stand to watch it, I wish it would end.  Like I said, this probably won't win me any fans but I've been keeping up with the outcry caused by the Nightline story with interest since I agree with many of the critics of the Big Lick industry.  I hope Jackie McConnell, the trainer in the video, is prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law for the things on that video, but I have my doubts that even that will happen.  

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Lucky horses O'Reilly and Noble enjoying the good life after never knowing about stacks, pads and stewarding

Fabrizzio and Walden

OReilly, Thor and Lucky

Titan and Romeo

Lighty taking a look around after hanging out in the woods (I think that is Johnny and either Wiz or Sebastian behind him)

Asterik and Faune doing some early morning grazing

Homer and Trigger

Levendi, Moe and Homer hanging out in the woods

Chance and Leo in the woods

Dutch and Wiz grooming (again!!)

Pictures

Some recent scenes from around the farm - enjoy!

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George and Gus grooming

Thomas, Hemi and Apollo napping in the woods

Slinky and Lightening

Calimba and MyLight

Tiny and Johnny

Sam and Chili

Renny and Fuzzy

Winston, Gus and Silver

Moe

Rocky, Toledo Johnny and Rampal grazing; Clayton and Stormy were distracted from their grooming session while I took their picture

Staging Our Lives

Most of the time people assume that when you run a horse farm you spend most of your time caring for and grooming horses and there is a great deal of truth in that statement. What might surprise a lot of people not intimately familiar with how a farm runs is how much time is also spent staging and preparing for various cyclical events.

Let's use making hay as an example. First, every piece of equipment that we're going to use has to be repaired and serviced, including mower(s), rakes, tedders, balers, wagons and tractors. Notice that everything is plural ? Before we even get started at doing any work this means keeping (and keeping track of) all the tools required to keep everything in good repair. There is nothing more frustrating than needing a special wrench or socket to complete a three minute job and spending two hours attempting to find it and then driving to town for a replacement. We do most of our service and repair work before we put the equipment to bed in the fall but since much of it has been sitting still for months  it is surprising what can wear out or rot with very little advance warning. The same series of events happens every time we move equipment across our land. We service bush-hogs before pasture clipping, tractors and loaders before winter hay feeding, sprayers before spray time, etc, etc, etc.

Routine horse work requires considerable staging as well. We make a day of it when the dentist comes to float teeth several times per year.  These days (and farrier days, vaccination days etc) start extra early as all the horses have to be fed well before the dentist arrives. The horses due to be worked on have to be haltered, caught and brought to one of the barns before the dentist gets there. We leave them in stalls and watch them pretty carefully when the dentist leaves, too. I don't want to bore anyone with a long list of details but the same sort of preparatory work takes place before every farrier day, every vaccination day, etc, etc. etc.  As Melissa mentioned in several posts on herd dynamics, new horses bring their own set of preparatory and behind the scenes work.

I heard someone say once that farming often feels comparable to trying to dip out the Mississippi River with a teacup.  It is a pretty accurate statement !

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Romeo napping and Faune grazing

O'Reilly, Walden and Fabrizzio

Titan and Lotus

Norman and Calimba

MyLight, Cinnamon, Maisie and Lily

Chili and Johnny

Mina and Lyle climbing the blanket pile