I am officially under a 3 year contract on the barn as of July 1. Some moments it's terrifying to try to think of all the things that have to happen between now and actually living there, but most moments it feels so right. I am finding joy in things I never did before.
Like tending to the long neglected garden beds:
I didn't take a "before", but just consider what its neighbor on the other side of the indoor still currently looks like and you'll get an idea:
There's roses in there too...somewhere.
There's also joy in getting a hundred bales into the barn right before a big rainstorm. I am inheriting the greatest hay guy, who prefers to store my hay for me and just bring me a hundred bales at a time on a few days' notice as I need it throughout the year. He's worth his weight in actual gold.
I'm getting a crash course in pasture management and everything that goes along with it. Rotating fields, seeding, weed control, toxic plant identification, herd integration, managing fatties, the fact that Connor gas colics when rotated to a pasture with too much clover in August. Those kinds of things.
Poor, sick buddy. Nothing some banamine and electrolytes didn't fix right up, thankfully.
And also a crash course in facilities management, like, do downspouts that stand up to horses exist? (Probably, although anything is better than the original aluminum, and we're going to be installing them soon.)
The consequences of aluminum downspouts and horses
Side note - the downspouts in the above photo tie into drains that run from here,
underneath the indoor, across the trailer parking area and into the 80ft
deep ravine that separates our property from the subdivision. When I
say these barn owners thought of everything in the construction of this
place, they really thought of everything.
I'm not saying we'll never have to replace these either, but 1. they're cheap and available at the Lowe's that is two minutes from the barn so who cares, and 2. I took a flying leap and jumped onto this one several times before taking this picture, so at least they'll take more than one hit, unlike aluminum.
So while I'm not riding (yet), I'm finding joy in the other parts of horse ownership. And that feels pretty cool.
It took Disco longer than I thought it would to figure out how haynets work.
"I prefer my meals easily accessed, thanks."
I did all the usual stuff - fluffed the hay up inside so it was easy to grab, pulled hay out of every square. He knew it was there, and he'd nibble at it, but would often leave it mostly untouched in favor of the one flake I threw on the ground.
I was motivated to teach him about haynets because otherwise, omg, he keeps an even neater stall than Connor does, and that's saying something.
Just this week, he started draining the haynet suddenly and completely, which made me happy. I wondered what had changed that quickly though. Suddenly hungrier due to a growth spurt, maybe?
Good baby
And then I started getting funny videos from the boarders a couple of nights in a row.
*Jaws theme plays*
And I realized he'd found his own motivation to learn how haynets work. From his neighbor's alfalfa (Disco just gets grass). "That is such a pony thing to do!" my barnmate said.
"...what?"
Fortunately he's not getting much, and he won't be able to fit his nose through there much longer as fast as he's growing, but in the meantime it's making for some hilarious videos!
While Aeres was at our barn, she had Connor's stall in the center of our 7 stall barn. When Connor came home, he went into the open stall at the end of the barn, across from a big warmblood fellow that Aeres positively hates. Like, she won't eat if he's somewhere she can see him, and she's broken the crossties after he pinned his ears at her. So obviously Aeres can't go into the open stall across from him.
Exhibit A: Aeres, with food in her stall, turned around to the corner facing away from this guy and not eating as long as he was in the crossties. For what it's worth, their only interactions have been in the crossties and he's never done anything to her!
I've left Connor in the open stall since she's been at Purdue, but I've been itching to move him back so I could hang a new hay feeding solution. Tired of the ulcer rollercoaster, I started him on a small hole haynet hung low (he doesn't wear shoes), knowing that when he got into his usual stall I would hang it on the frame I bought for it.
A couple of Friday nights ago though, someone finally hung it too low, and this happened (thankfully while someone was standing right there to free him, so it's okay to laugh at this picture, I know I did):
"Well, okay, this is my life now I guess."
Knowing after that that I needed to get his permanent/safe solution mounted, I superstitiously reasoned that if I moved Connor back into his old stall, maybe Aeres would make a miraculous recovery and come home from Purdue so I'd have to shuffle the ponies all over again. (She's able to eat a tiny bit of food as of Saturday, so maybe??)
So two Saturdays ago, my barnmate stripped Aeres' stall for me (she says she loves stripping stalls and I wasn't going to argue!) and then I proceeded to bleach the entire thing.
We're positive what Aeres has isn't contagious, but also you can never be too careful. And it looked pretty darn good after cleaning. Scrubbing doors and the outsides of waterers are things that don't get done much around here given our sort of co-op, sort of full board model we have going on.
The Nelsons clean up good! The "before" is the backwash from Aeres being unable to swallow food and then trying to drink 😥
Finally, the following day, I hung Connor's new hay feeder in his old/new stall. It's the Freedom Feeder day net on their rolling wall-mounted frame. My hope is that it will be easier on his teeth than the Savvy Feeder was (if he didn't also need a hard plastic muzzle, the SF would be fine, but I'm just anxious about what amounts to probably 18-20 hours a day of plastic against his teeth during the growing season), and this will also allow him to eat in a relatively normal head down position.
Loading position
Full position
So far, so good! The barn staff absolutely loves it and wishes all the horses had one of these - although for the guys with shoes, if they hung them high enough to be out of foot range, I'm worried I'd need a ladder to fill them!
And now my little buddy is back where he belongs, where he can see me coming through the door and nickers at me immediately <3
In today's post, I'm covering how it's actually worked out in real life. We've had it for two weeks at this point.
Dog for scale
I ordered the Savvy Feeder on a Saturday night, and I have to say, the company was AMAZING to work with in terms of customer service. The scratch 'n dent model I originally ordered was going to come with a grate with holes too big for Connor's grass/alfalfa mix.
They reached out to make sure I was aware of what grate size it came with, to ask what type of hay I was using, and went WAY out of their way to make sure I wasn't getting the wrong product. We probably exchanged over 20 emails after I ordered and before it shipped. It shipped out Tuesday from Iowa, and arrived Wednesday.
Great customer service and product, questionable graphic and web design choices
The horses had already been fed when I got it to the barn, and I had to laugh at Connor giving me a sign that I was doing the right thing (if not by him, by my trainer who buys our hay!):
It comes with instructions on how to introduce your horse to the feeder. They err on the side of assuming the horse might be frustrated with the feeder.
I found loading it to be super easy, and my trainer and our barn workers agree. As shown in the images above and below, you flip it over, pull the springloaded pin that secures the bottom, slide the bottom over, drop the hay in, and replace the bottom and pin.
The feeder is big and sturdy, but light enough that it wasn't hard for me to carry it around. I can definitely see taking it to shows without issue.
From top to bottom: bottom shown with cover slid out, top shown filled with hay, and the springloaded pin on the side that keeps the bottom in place.
The grate is secured to the sides with "heavy black fabric" (vinyl?), which allows the grate to move up and down as the amount of hay in the feeder changes. The grates are replaceable and come in 3 sizes.
The size shown here is the medium size, which is recommended for "most grass and grass alfalfa mix hay. Not for very thick or coarse hay such as first cutting alfalfa or peanut hay," and also for introducing horses to the feeder.
Small is for soft/fine grass hays like Bermuda, medium (shown) is for most grass/grass alfalfa mixes, and large is for stemmy alfalfa, peanut hay and old horses that have a tough time grabbing hay.
Connor took to it immediately. I knew he would, and I was pretty lazy about introducing it to him. I put hay in there, pulled some through the holes, and sat on a stool in his stall for a half hour, watching him munch hay and listening to the rain on the barn roof.
I gave it to him on Valentine's Day, and texted JenJ "Roses are red, violets are blue, I made your dinner harder to eat, haha poor you."
I've been happy with it so far. It's no small hole hay net, but it definitely takes him longer to get a bite out than free-choice does (video below). I may get the small grate at some point to experiment with slowing him down even further. I haven't timed it, but he's taking longer to finish his hay in general now. He's also wasting far less hay than before.
The biggest downside is that it is specifically designed not to be secured to the wall, which means at first Connor's stall was a disaster as he pushed it around to see if that would get the hay out easier. His stall has gotten better with time as he gets better at eating out of it and has stopped pushing it around so much.
Here are two short video clips of Connor eating out of the feeder:
Bottom line: This is totally my pick for a slow feeder haynet alternative. I don't feel like I compromised on anything with this one, and it's doing exactly what I hoped it would do. I personally feel like it's the best on the market unless you need to soak your hay inside the feeder, in which case you should consider something like the PortaGrazer.
What: Savvy Feeder Price: $299 (new), $274 (factory seconds). They regularly offer 10%-14% off coupons around holidays with a maximum coupon of 20% off on Black Friday. Grate size choices: Small (soft/fine hays like Bermuda), Medium (most grass hays and grass/alfalfa blends, also recommended for introducing horses to feeder before using small grate) and Large (stemmy alfalfa, peanut hay, and feeders that will be used by senior citizens) Colors: Dark grey, light grey and tan are standard, but they have occasionally had limited runs of other colors, such as red, lime green and teal.
One day about a month ago, I was walking around the barn and realized Connor was the only one without a haynet.
Now, I'm not going to get him a haynet just to fit in with the crowd, but given his probable successful ulcer treatment, I would like him to have hay in front of him for longer than it currently lasts.
But...I don't like haynets. In fact I would say I hate them. It's just a personal thing. I don't like the angle horses hold their heads at to eat out of them. I don't like that you can't hang them low enough for optimal respiratory system health. I don't like that they're rope, since Connor's gotten himself caught in one before. And I really don't like filling them myself or asking the barn staff to fill them.
Haynets in trailers are a necessary evil though.
So I started looking into alternatives that would slow him down but allow him to eat as naturally as possible, with the enthusiastic blessing of my trainer (anything to cut down on hay waste!).
I did a ton of research before settling on one, and thought I'd use this blog post to help guide others looking for the same type of product.
High Country Plastics Slow Feeder Saver Jr
Product:High Country Plastics Slow Feeder Saver Jr Cost: $189 What I liked: Easy to fill, nylon webbing, cheaper than others, good reviews, seemed durable, designed to be strapped to the wall Why I passed: Reviews were overall fantastic but there was one thorough review that completely turned me off, saying horses ended up getting their noses through the generous webbing openings and scratching their faces. One review also said the edges of the box were sharp from the molding process. Several reviews mentioned that it was a great hay saver but not a good slow feeder.
Porta-Grazer
Product:Porta-Grazer XL Cost: $259 What I liked: Easy to fill, plastic "lid" instead of nylon webbing, overall good reviews, you can either strap it to the wall or the horse can roll and play with it if they want (Connor would) Why I passed: Horses have to stick their head all the way into the cylinder to get to the end of their hay, and several reviews said they noticed horses not finishing their hay because they didn't like that. One also said the inside of the tube got hot and humid in the summer and her horses developed skin funk on their faces.
What I liked: It's similar to the Porta-Grazer but seems overall better designed and is slightly wider, hopefully eliminating some of the issues with the PG. Why I passed: Doesn't ship to the US!
E-Z Feeder
Product: Health E-Z Hay Feeder Cost: $37.95 What I liked:Leah loves it! You can hang it from the ceiling to really slow them down, the price can't be beat, easy to load hay in Why I passed: Although the manufacturer says it can be mounted as high or low as you want, I didn't like the idea of it on/near the floor. I am considering getting one for my trailer though.
And finally, the one I decided to buy:
Product: Savvy Feeder Cost: $299 (I paid $235.64 + shipping with a 14% off coupon and by buying a "factory 2nd w/minor scratches") Why I bought it: I scoured the internet and could not find a single negative review for this one. It ticked all of my boxes: won't scratch his face, won't damage his teeth, allows him to eat with his head down, slows him down, and won't make him put his face in a dark tube to eat. It's also easy to load. Bonus, it's light enough to travel well.
Tomorrow I'll review how the Savvy Feeder's working out for us.
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