A School of Hard Knocks Lesson in Feeding Horses

You'd think feeding horses would be as straight forward as buying a bag of grain and a scoop. Viola! Throw a little hay at them. I mean if the cowboys could keep horses alive on pasture grass mine isn't gonna be that much harder to keep! WRONG. Negative, no, uh uh, think again you silly head ignoramus, nope.

Coming to this new barn brought me a lot more new things than I brought it. In a word (or two): Self Care. This is what people envision when you say you have horses. Muck boots, feed scoops, and occasionally some time to ride. Let me tell you something, there are some levels of education that we "Full Service" boarders miss on our way to the top.

Filling/Cleaning water buckets requires about a 2nd grade education. Gotta have enough concentration to get the job done, but the job is relatively straightforward and quickly accomplished.

Mucking stalls asks for a Jr High education. It's a bit more on the side of manual labor and also requires some attention to detail. If you're in charge of a horse like Cash, it requires some outside of the box thinking. Specifically about what to do with a horse that creates his weight in urine daily. Can anyone say shavings hog?

Cleaning tack brings us to a highschool grade level. Problem solving is factored into the equation. Many a late night I've spent proudly taking apart, cleaning, and putting back together bridles only to put them on my horse's face and realize I've attached the bit to the noseband part. While I may have the perfect bridle for an aardvark, my horse is not so appreciative and I'm not up to snuff on my aardvark riding skills.

Barn cleanliness is college. I don't care if you don't like the teacher you've got a whole more semester in front of you and you have to make an A! Or, in pony terms, I don't care that the aisle is 100 yards long and you'll have to empty the wheelbarrow 3 times, it's got to be done, ponies don't just clean up after themselves and a new boarder is coming to look at the barn in 45 minutes.

But then there's feeding. That's like, above and beyond PhD level. It's even surpassing post-doctoral research level. This is the puzzle of all puzzles. What should I feed my horse?! This begs several questions and brings up more!

• What WAS he eating? (and how will what he was eating and what I am feeding him differ because colic is only the wrong scoop of feed away)
• How much should I feed? (Based on activity level, stall vs pasture time, protein % of feed, etc)
• What should I feed?
• What if I want to change feed?

And lucky or not, horses aren't like humans, or dogs and cats for that matter. You can't get out your little pony scale every other morning and ask them to step on it, naked, not dripping wet from a shower, before breakfast, and track their own weight on a dry erase chart you'll hang conveniently in their stall. And even if you COULD do that, 100 pounds is child's play to a horse.

Horses will drop weight for a multitude of reasons (why can't we all be this lucky?!). Excessive work, stress, lack of forage or water, you looked at them the wrong way, they broke up with their girlfriend, or the horse's poop in the stall next door is nauseating can cause a drop in weight. And it seems like it happens overnight. Yesterday your buddy and you were watching Thunder Bolt graze talking about how he's going to be on a diet and tomorrow he's got sunken eyes and dips in his hindquarters.

Putting weight on a horse is right up there with climbing Everest and performing brain surgery, there are some that have the gift but others are more challenged. Once you've unlocked the code I've heard it's quite simple but I never had to worry about this and I'm a bit in over my head. Were I to really be climbing Everest, I'd be the girl they'd send back home after making it to the first base camp without any limbs because I wasn't prepared for the snow and got frostbitten.

So I'm off to do some research. I think I'm working on a pretty good concoction now but I need to go a little more mad scientist on it (not enough smoke and flame yet). If I crack the code I'll wikileak it out for y'all. Just keep an ear to the ground. And bail me out of Russia if my wikileak goes south.

Too soon? Here's to feeding horses!