Thistles in My Paddock

Recently I have noticed that our equines have been enjoying eating the heads of thistles so I decided to try them on a meal of cut thistles. It went down pretty well and so I thought I would do I post about it and how to make them more appetizing.

As these thistles are not in the paddock I had to first of all cut them down, and obviously place them in something to transport them to the paddock, I made sure to try and get the thistles that had begun to bloom as the horses like the blooming heads, Then I cut the thistles up into lots of little more edible pieces.

If you do try this remember to try your equines on a small amount first, as thistles are very prickly and may not be to the taste of some equines, Tipper was not very keen on them, but Niko got stuck in.

After preparing the thistles I delivered them in the wheelbarrow, as you can see they are going down quite well, obviously these are just a treat of sorts, and they all had their normal feed of haylage after the thistles. Please excuse the muddy equines it’s very hard keeping them clean with all this mud.

So there you go just one more thing they will eat, and they really did enjoy them too, but I think I will stick to something less prickly next time, it wasn’t much fun preparing them for the horses and ponies.

Thank you all for your comments on my last post.

Autumn Mist, he will be all mended very soon, it hasn’t taken long to sort itself out, but it is just one more mark that we will need to get the fur back on.

Sherri, yes sorry about the nasty photos, but I wanted to show how it was all coming along, thanks for the comment.

Abby, sadly we don’t have a hose in a suitable place to use on the horses, so we just let it go down by itself. Yes I think you are almost defiantly right about the farrier, I don’t know if he has been shod on all four, but considering he is a racehorse I would think that he has been. It is very worrying because one of Tippers shoes has become lose, and we will need a farrier to sort it out, but Tipper isn’t ready to have the farrier yet as he is still not very well behaved about having his feet picked up, and I don’t know if any of our farriers are likely to lose their temper with him, if so it will set him back so much and we may never sort this problem out. I think one of our farriers should be able to get it done as he has been brilliant so far, but you never know, right. Sadly the weather here is rain on and off one second it is sunny the next it’s windy and raining, still hopefully it will help the grass to grow. I just go on and on don’t I sorry I just had to get that all out like I said it’s all very worrying.