Can I Get An Amen

Ask someone what they feed their horse and you're likely to get a serious, almost religious, answer. "______ feed is the only thing I would ever feed my horse. I've tried _____ and _____ and my horse almost died. This feed is the one and only feed period."

In my experience working in veterinary hospitals medically and as a trainer behaviorally with dogs, I learned not to ever trust hype or even recommendation. The most advertised food was some of the worst (causing things like hyper activity, chronic ear infections, etc.) and owners really thought they were buying it to do the right thing for their dog. Worse, the nutrition courses vets took in University were funded by a big name food company, they literally wrote the text book. Not surprisingly, most vets turned around and recommended this food company's product.

I bought a sled dog nutrition book once wanting to arm myself with as much information as I could to make choices for my dogs. A few items caught my attention as contradicting and I researched who the author was. Turns out she was on payroll for another middle-of-the-road big name dog food company that happened to fit her entire book's recommendation perfectly. Sigh.

Then I get back into the crazy world of horses and fall in love with a hot blooded breed that are hard keepers. In regular terms this means that the food that makes horses fat my horses need, unfortunately most of those foods also make my horses insane. I already don't believe marketing after my dog experience so I'm pretty much screwed in this whole horse feed arena.

I have to date fed:

Alfalfa cubes with round bale access and open pasture (very poor weight)
Triple Crown Senior (weight was better, more $$$, Whisper very hot)
Purina Senior (weight was lacking)
Nutrena Senior (weight wasn't great)
Strategy (weight was good, Whisper was hot)
SafeChoice (weight was okay, great when coupled with good pasture/hay)
Tucker Milling 14% (local in Cohutta, some large chunks in bags that looked different, minerals? more $$ than SafeChoice)
Back to SafeChoice

Additions like sunflower seeds, beet pulp, rice bran oil, and timothy pellets have also been tried. I don't believe in using corn oil due to its high Omega 6 content and inflammatory response.

I have been told all sorts of contradictions :

Alfalfa is too rich and your horse will founder.
Beet Pulp is worthless and causes colic
Sweet Feed is low quality, has preservatives, and complicates racehorse ulcers.
Pelleted feeds will choke & poison your horse because levels fluctuate.
Complete feeds are best and provide calories your horse needs.
Complete feeds are unnatural and horses should only eat grass and grass hays.
Corn will make your horse psycho, avoid it all costs.
Never Feed a Thoroughbred concentrate, it will aggravate/cause ulcers. 
You must feed a Thoroughbred concentrate or they will look like a skeleton. 
Sweet Feed is the only thing most horses will eat.
Sweet Feed is made by Satan and the sugar companies. 

Once you get through all that companies are trying to sell you, the labels, and the passion each person has for their feed, it's hard to know where truth lies. I've been feeding SafeChoice for 2 years now with flake mixed grass hay and liked the way my horses acted on it and thought that body condition was pretty good.

Nutrena SafeChoice
 -this is one label, the formula does fluctuate with the market, often it has high levels of rice bran

De-hulled Soybean Meal, Wheat Middlings, Distillers Dried Grains, Ground Corn, Soybean Hulls, Alfalfa Meal, Cane Molasses : Vitamins and Minerals

Then came Czech. He had been on Triple Crown Senior to gain weight back from the appalling state he was returned in, and he loved it though he still needed to gain some weight. I mixed it slowly with SafeChoice and he managed to pick around and only eat the senior. He refused to eat it all together when it was the only choice. Add-in the fact that I'd go to buy SafeChoice only to find it out of stock in all surrounding counties, forcing me to buy something else to "get through", and it was time to find a new religion.

I like Triple Crown on paper very much, if I could afford $21 a bag for Complete, I believe that's what my TB's would be on. However, the Senior formula with its $19 tag is very rich for a horse like Bandon. So I began my obsessive horse feed search again to find something that would keep a nice weight on my horses, keep them in their normal mental state, be affordable, and be found at least within 40 miles.

I found a feed that was completely different than what I had been trying, it had a heavier corn content and the protein & fat percentages were different than what I had been feeding but it looked like something I'd like to try. The information I found on it was great, especially the firm formula that does not change as the market for grains changes. It contains more biotin (the hoof supplement I was adding separately is contained in this feed) and Magnesium (found in most calming supplements for horses) than what I had fed before and like SafeChoice it calls itself a "low starch feed" though I understand that's a debatable term these days.

Legends Show & Pleasure

Wheat Middlings, Corn Meal, Soybean Hulls, Distillers Dried Grains, Soybean Oil, Alfalfa Meal, Cane Molasses, Beet Pulp : Vitamins and minerals and amino acids (listed in detail I'm just too lazy to type)

The propaganda reads :

• Organic trace minerals for improvement of skeletal, muscle, reproductive and immune system function.
• Added biotin for greater hoof and hair growth.
• Fixed ingredient formulas for consistent palatability and less colic risk.
• Digestible fiber sources and low levels of sugar and starch for calm behavior and prevention of colic, laminitis and insulin resistance.
• Yeast culture for increased fiber digestion and improved nutrient absorption.
• Elevated fat content for lower feeding rate, increased body condition and improved muscle function.
• Guaranteed amino acid fortification for improved protein quality to maintain and repair active muscle tissue.
• Increased levels of antioxidants for optimal immune system and muscle function.

Once I found a dealer that was willing to carry it for me, we tried it out. We've been through 400 pounds of the feed since then and I'm really happy with it. The horses enjoy eating it, no one is acting any more hot-headed than usual, and body condition is excellent.

The TB's are eating 8 pounds a day each (10 pounds of SafeChoice was needed) and the feed itself costs less a bag than SafeChoice at $16.70. Time will tell, so far it looks like we've got a winner with healthy sane horses who like to eat it, I'm really interested to see what their feet do after 6 months on it.

I hope to have my horse feed religion sorted out permanently, hallelujah.

Fall Weekends

Saturday morning the barn was pretty empty as 4 horses were away at the Rolling Hills show. The farm's equestrian team brought home tons of ribbons from that show including a reserve and a grand champion, maybe one day Whisper and I will get a chance to join them. For now, I was all pumped up for a morning ride.

But first, as the morning chill began to wear off, I ditched a sweatshirt layer. Hmm... Auburn oversized sweatshirt in hand... little unsuspecting mini horse in the barn.... I wonder

Yep, it fits. 

All advice and common sense says that riding Whisper after she's been on turn-out instead of in the stall, should help with this early training managing her incredible energy. My life with my children doesn't allow this to happen very often until today when my hubby kept them for the morning, that gave me a pass to see how she would do coming off 12 hour pasture turn-out and took away the sun disappearing deadline we've had in the evening. 

Whisper was also pretty pumped up about this idea. In fact, she stood in the wash rack with her head jacked up, blowing like a deer doe standing her ground, at every little breeze and noise. She lost contact with the ground through her front feet more than once as I did up the girth, and during bridling I lost her all together as she ran through the barn. 

No problem, I've got lots of time, I'll just longe her, long line ground drive, all sorts of stuff I can do before I get on. I finally got her fully tacked and down to the ring. No longe lines. Shoot. I hadn't even thought about the show team needing them on site and had left mine at home. Instead I hand walked her until she stopped spooking at every little noise.

I went to mount up and some jerk (that's the G rated version of the word that comes to mind) driving by thought that was a perfect time to blast his horn. Why people think it's a good idea to honk driving by horses, I'll never ever know. 

Needless to say, when my rear hit the gear, my horse was already off and running. One full hour I rode her circling tight right each and every time she broke from a walk. It gave her a chance to work bending and reinforced that deciding not to walk was going to make it harder for her.

She began to come down, she chose to walk and earn her straight lines. Her head came down. An hour and a half into the ride, I felt everything in her relax, we could have been any horse on any trail walking relaxed in the fall sun. It was awesome! 

I was hoping the workout for the morning had prepared Whisper for that afternoon. My oldest daughter, Sage, was turning 5 and having the party at the farm. She had asked a thousand times to ride Whisper and for obvious reasons I've always said, "no". I  wanted to let her try and sit on Whisper for a lead line walk special for her birthday. Sage is pretty good at sticking on a horse and my bareback pad includes a strap to grip so I hoped the odds were slightly in my favor that it will go smoothly. 

Party was great, games went well, and Beethoven forgave me for shirting him and took part in festivities (yes, these are all my kids)

We rounded up all of the little ones, put up balloons and breezy crepe paper, to get ready for Sage and Whisper's big moment. 

Whisper was an angel. Sage weighs so little you could almost assume Whisper thought she only was wearing a saddle, but trust me, she knew. Sage was thrilled and all ended perfectly well.

On other fronts, Whisper's feed has been changed. I had her on Triple Crown Senior (she's been on free choice hay the entire time), she wasn't skinny on a high volume of that feed but she also wasn't adding the weight that I felt like she needed. We added in Rice Bran Oil to see if the pure fat would help, it did a little over 2 months, but she hated the stuff. Corn oil too. She'd eat around her feed and leave anything oily behind. The farm manager suggested a change to the 10-10 feed most of the adult age horses at the farm eat, considering that the levels of protein to fat may be more conducive to weight gain without adding a lot of heat to her. We did that with some soaked timothy cubes added in. She loved the new feed, just not the timothy, she'd eat around the soaked cubes. This week we've changed her to soaked beet pulp as the mix-in to the 10-10 grain. Maybe that will help those hips fill in just a little more and get us ready for winter. 

Speaking of winter, all of the horses are getting fuzzy. *happy sigh* they smell so good after warming in the sun and feel like big plush stuffies. On the really cool nights, we're blanketing the show horses and I'm including Whisper in that category when temps go lower than 50. I want her to get a nice winter coat, but odds are it'll be next year before her body produces a more climate acceptable coat for our area. The girls were also worried about their pony with the dropping evening temperatures...

Finally, the farm welcomed a new horse, this time a Thoroughbred. I have to say, the more I'm with them, the deeper I'm falling in love with this breed. 

OTTB Yin Yang

Welcome to the Yin Yang life of an OTTB owner.

My good friend Erin came out to the pasture with us this morning. She brought along her two sons who are close in age to my Hunter & Sage. They wanted to feed some carrots to the horses and see them for a bit during a time when Chris and I would already be out there to work with Whisper and groom Promise.

I tied Whisper and started to shed out Promise. Whisper was acting really strange from the moment we got there. She was acting like she did when she first came off of the trailer. It could have been the boys, it could have been the feed bag laying near my car, it could have been the strangely humid breeze blowing... who knows.

I should have taken that as a warning sign, as I was shedding out my red pony on the other side of the hitch Whisper fought the tie once. She calmed back down and I stayed very near her. Not even a full 2 minutes later she did the same thing and did not release tension at any point. If you aren't familiar with horses fighting the tie, picture what a horse (who's head is about 8 feet high) would look like if a bee stung it's face while it was restrained an unable to free itself.

Straight back, full force. My arm moved for the rope calmly to release her but I wasn't fast enough. The break away halter did exactly what it was designed to do. The leather crown-piece snapped.

The sudden release of that tremendous tension caused Whisper to sit full back on her haunches in the dirt and in her next forward movement, bolted to the side. She stopped mid-pasture by Beauty and began to graze.

I went back to focusing on Promise. Let Whisper calm down, let me calm down.

Promise was a good pony, tolerated the shedding blade and the anti-fungal spray (she's showing alopecia in areas and I'm using a broad-spectrum anti-fungal to cover the bases). She also took carrots from the boys. I was impressed with her manners though they did not attempt to pet her beyond her nose pats while munching carrots.

About 15 minutes had passed and I needed to see what could be salvaged on Whisper today. Walking across the pasture I was racking my brain with what mistakes I made. What made her so spooky to start with? Why did I choose to tie her while she was acting worried? Why was her neck rigid and her personality gone today? and my personal favorite : How the hell am I going to catch her now?

Apple cookies in hand, leadrope hidden behind my back, I went for it. She was taking treats, but not relaxing. Finally I was finally able to just slip the rope around her neck and keep her calm enough with treats to prevent another round of mud skiing.

Working with animals timing is everything. You have to be quick, aware, and always on your game or the training efforts are pointless. Working with large cats and my breed, Siberians, you also have to do it in a relatively short time span or you lose interest and attention. Once lost it can be almost impossible to get back. Horses are a whole other animal. Horses are the Masters of Time. The longer you take, often the better the outcome. Get a horse bored with a situation and you'll overcome it.

It worked. Whisper got bored. Bridle went on. No one was traumatized. She was beginning to settle.

We walked, her head dropped. We stood by the hitch post, she dropped her head and relaxed again. We walked over to the boys at the fence who she happily nuzzled and took carrots from.

I decided to ride for one lap up and back and then we would stop for the day. I took Whisper over towards my truck and she began to get rigid and blow. She's seen the truck every time I've come, she knows it's full of squealy happy kids and apple cookies. The truck itself sports smears all across the windows courtesy of Whisper and Promise together. Today, it made her spook. We walked off, we walked back. We walked off, we walked back. She got close enough for me to get my saddle pad.

She didn't fully spook at the saddle pad but she did jump. Her muscles trembling. 2 minutes later I produced a saddle and she was back to herself again. Totally fine. Like any other ordinary day she stood perfectly for saddling, protesting only slightly when I adjusted the girth.

Chris brought over my milk crate/mounting block and I was up. She waited until I was seated to move and Chris held her on his line while she walked off and I found my stirrups.

Whisper was completely relaxed. The stretched-to-the-point-of-breaking rubberband feel was gone. She felt like any other schooled mount. She kept contact with the bit but didn't lean on it. She didn't flinch and dance when my leg was against her. She was perfect.

Chris unsnapped his lead.

We walked around him, and for the first time it was just Whisper and I together. I asked her to move in a full circle around Chris and asked her to halt. There. That's the end of the day for her. THAT is perfection and there's no way I'd ask for more.... though I desperately wanted to. I was enjoying riding her and it was highly tempting to stretch that moment out as long as possible. This is my favorite picture of her and I to date, what a moment!

If I had learned anything today it was that in a 5 minute time span Whisper could change, dramatically, how she perceived the world around her. There was no reason to chance that my 5 minutes of perfection with her could be up soon and change again.

Before we left I watched Beauty come up to where Whisper stood, moving at a canter. A completely adorable pony canter. All of her little legs stayed right under her in short strides of her three-beat gait. What a darling little one she is. Couldn't catch her if we wanted to, and the boys did want to give her her share of carrots, but adorable none-the-less.