smellshorsey

I like to feed horses

Horses like to eat, and I like to feed them. It's a cheap way to get a very committed fan club. All I have to do is walk outside, or where they can see me through the window, and they get excited.

I take it back. It's not a cheap way to get a fan club. But I'll pay the price.

I feed the horses. I am their favorite person. No one is more special than me. I have worshippers. Sometimes I have to sneak around to get my coffee so I won't be spotted in the morning before I'm ready to come out to greet my admirers. All two of them (unless you count the three cats and dog, but they don't offer the drama of galloping and whinnying to greet me).

And today, I have to start sharing my throne. Our horses will have a polytheistic world. My daughter is going to start feeding at night.

My husband says I do too much of the work around here (and I'll agree, but he's not interested in his chores list....) And it is time that our daughter started doing more with the horses.

She knows how to do it. So now, I'm sharing my crown. I've counseled her to check both sides of the horses for cuts and bumps and any swellings. It's not enough to feed them. You have to look at them.

She'll do fine. They'll do fine. And I still get to feed in the morning.

One last thing: There is one thing I hate about feeding them. The hay. There is no substance on earth more determined to stick to you, to stick in you, and to stick around long after you thought you had shaken it off. Hay gets everywhere on me. It's always in the dryer lint tray, the vacuum canister and my unmentionable undergarments. How it gets there, I don't know. If it could be tamed, it would out-do Velcro.

That I won't miss.

I can see the horses grazing as I write this. Little birds dart around their feet, eating the insects they stir up. I'll miss not getting to feed the horses tonight. I'm sure I'll get used to doing one thing less. And, if I know my horses, they have appetite enough to expand their adoration to both mother and daughter. When they gallop and whinny to her, she might finally understand just how special she is.

All it takes is a bucket of food, and your are queen forever -- or at least until the bucket is empty.

Hay Watch

You might think you know horses just because you ride often or own one, but unless you are the one responsible for the horses, you don't know horses. They are one of the most destructive forces in the universe.

They have eaten my fences. They aren't cribbers -- they like the taste of treated wood when it's wet. Yum, yum. Love that poison! Beavers couldn't have done any worse.

I'll whine later about the other things they have torn up, but today, they broke into the hay garage. Now, there are two problems with this. One is that they might have eaten so much that they'll colic. We'll watch and wait. Right now both horses are fine. I don't think they ate a dangerous amount, but they left the hay such a mess that it's hard to figure out exactly how much is missing.

My daughter fed them this morning. She assures me that she locked the hay garage gate, and she probably did. But you have to fasten the chain and snap so that the horses can't reach it, and then lock it twice in case they do. I don't think she has mastered this. I would hate for the horses to colic in general. It would be extra terrible (we as a people are out of superlatives) if my daughter thought she caused their suffering. So, they'll get bran mash tonight and in the morning. And not one thing else but grass.

My second complaint is that it was part of a shipment of hay I just bought to try to get me through the winter. Hay, like gas, used to be cheap. Now, Rumplestiltskin wouldn't need to get whatever-her-name was to spin straw into gold. It is gold! This is the third year that hay prices are nutty -- triple what they were when I first started horsekeeping. When Katrina hit, all the Gulf Coast hay crops were ruined so that caused a hay shortage. (Mind you, I am not unsympathetic to the greater casualties caused by Katrina. I just mention hay, one of the minor things. But not minor when you have to write a whopping big check or ten for hay....) Then last summer we had a drought, so last winter there was no hay. I bought hay from states I haven't even been to. I bought hay in all flavors of grass, most of which I'd only heard of. I paid and paid and paid for hay. Oh! And did I mention that transporting this hay from far flung regions of the country cost extra because of gas prices?

Now they tell me that hay fields are being converted to corn and other ethanol crops. So hay will become even costlier.

Horses were never a cheap hobby, but keeping them at home worked out pretty well.

Are they grateful? No. Of course not. They trampled the new hay. They ate it. They acted like me at a chocolate buffet where I didn't know anybody.

Good thing they're cute. And part of our strategic plan to keep our girl safe through her teenage years.

But hay! Shut your big mouths and get your hooves off of my gold! You must think that stuff grows in fields.