Thursday, March 12, 2009

New look

I thought I'd get a new look. What do you think?

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Portable horses

We have used our horses as a great excuse to NOT have to spend more than 1 or 2 nights with parents and such, especially when we had the old mare. She could not get nourishment from pasture grasses or hay so she had to be fed 2 times daily. We did however understand that a day would come when we would need to be at my in-laws for more than 1 day and would need to make other arrangements. So I started looking into local barns that rented paddocks. I went and checked one out that was really close to the parents house and it was reasonably priced. I think they said $10 per horse per night. No problem for a couple days having my horse nearby.

Well, Spring Break is coming and the inevitable has happened. I have to go Sunday night and am coming back on Thursday. That's 4 nights and I now only have 1 horse, so I called the people to schedule a place for my horse. The price went up to $20 a night. That's $80!!!!! You know I rent about 35 acres for 10 -15 head of cattle for $20 a MONTH. The 20 was just a place to stay. That did not include hay or feed of any kind. I was supposed to bring my own feed. WOW!!!!

So, I started looking for other options. We had looked into getting an electric corral for when we went camping and hubby got paid extra this month sooo... I got this portable corral from Stateline Tack. Of course, I looked at several on the internet before deciding on the Stateline one. It helps that I already had a Stateline account. The fence is 900 sq ft and both hubby and Koda informed me that it works. :)

We are going to put her in it for an hour or so every day until Spring Break, then she'll have to stay in it at the in-laws. I think I just figured out how to mow the grass with out the lawn mower!

I am curious if it is expandable though. The in-laws have an acre and it would be a shame to pen her in such a small area if not necessary.

Sunday, March 8, 2009

Trail Ride

The church had a trail ride today. We went the same route as the last trail ride. We started at one church family's house, went down the road from her house to our pastor's property, through the trees and back to the original property. As usual, Koda acted a fool all the way down the first road. She wanted to run. She wanted to be in front, I think. I fought her all the way to the end of the road where she finally decided that she could walk. After that, she was good. On the way back, one of our boys (about 13 yrs old) started having trouble with his horse. The main problem was that he hurt himself on Thursday while riding his horse. His horse loves to try to run back to the barn and usually the boy will sidepass on him to wear him out some. This time the sidepassing hurt. We convinced him to switch horses and ride a calm horse.

The real fun started after we got back to the starting location. We grabbed a snack then went on a second ride. This time we actually used a trail. There were ravines, gullies and logs to climb over. I like those rides better than the road rides.