Steen spent most of the last week snow-locked in his pasture. The main problem was the door into the indoor arena from the pastures was covered in a huge drift. So, being unable to get him inside anyway, I didn’t see him after my Tuesday visit until yesterday.
Sunday morning found Brian and I driving out to the barn. We retrieved our horses and brought them inside. Steen was a bit agitated again. I’m not sure what is behind his new-found indoor antsy attitude. I imagine it’s a combination of factors, but I think one of them is the grain. I wish I could find a way to get him through the winter without having to feed him so many compressed calories…
So, we had another day of groundwork and I was pretty firm with him a lot – really making him move out of my space, and fast. And I contrasted this with a lot of standing around with me petting his rump and back. He did relax at times, so hopefully it’s just another temporary problem.
I took the new camera out, too but didn’t manage to get the settings dialed in quite right whilst holding a fidgety horse on the end of a rope. I did kind of like this one, though, with Cal in the background (sporting the new leather halter I gave Brian for his birthday).
Yeah, Steen is definitely on the smallest amount of grain possible. I'd (obviously) prefer to have him on none, and he's not on much, in the grand scheme of horses and grain. According to everyone here, it's not enough to make him hot. But it does. I increased his intake gradually until his weight seemed to stay mostly steady (he still fluctuates a little depending on how fresh the big bale is and how cold it is) but I'm loathe to taper it down yet as I've discovered he's perfectly capable of losing large amounts of weight in very short… Read more »
Heh, Tranikla was never a fan of the snow falling off the roof of the indoor arena either. 🙂 Dunno how much grain Steen is eating, but maybe he doesn't need quite as much as he's getting? Tranikla will get pretty wound up on even small amounts of grain (below what everyone tells me "isn't enough to make a difference"), so I ration and adjust it pretty carefully over the winter. He seems to reach a certain weight, and any additional calories just get turned into energy…I'm told that's an "Arab thing". Or, it could be a bunch of other… Read more »
Thanks Tammy. 🙂 I am lucky to have an indoor. I don't think I could muster up the wherewithal to pull an trailer on icy roads…
The wind can definitely have an effect. It also wasn't helping the snow was melting and sliding down the roof outside and then hitting the ground with loud plops. We'd get synchronized-spooking whenever that happened.
I wonder if the wind against the arena walls make the horses skittish. It has just been nasty lately. You are lucky you have an indoor to get to. I have access to friend's arena's but was looking at my trailer the other day and thinking it would be quite a challenge to even get it out of the drift!
Great picture!