Swede on a Rope and Other News

I love feeding the horses and ponies be it hay, haylage or just giving them treats, so recently I made the ponies and Niko a Swede on a rope. Murphy loves a Swede so I knew it would be a success with him. I put two Swedes up for the ponies, one each, and one for Niko. Madeline and Tipper have not yet got rings to hang anything on in their boxes so they must wait for their Swede on a rope.

  
As you can see from this photo Niko wasn’t overly keen on his one, but the ponies ate both of their’s in one night, Niko still has the Swede in his box to nibble on if he wishes to.

In other news we’ve had some really nice weather here and the equines have all been out with no rugs. So everything has dried out a lot and Niko has had a good long holiday to give him time to heal any little strains or unseen injuries and to just generally relax and have some fun. But now that he has been rested and the ground is dry it may be time to start work again but that depends on how the ground is tomorrow as it did start to rain a little before we left today.

 Also now the weather is getting better I have started thinking about all the others and their work, I need to start some real work with Madeline and Tipper to let me see what discipline suits them best.

Anyway that is all for a later date, and for now I will content myself with fitting tie rings, and other trivial tasks. I hope everything is going well for you lot and that you too are enjoying better weather.

Pony Power

 

After writing my last post about Pip’s feathers I realized that I still had a lot to drone on about with regards to the ponies. Here’s little Pip, check out the moustache, he’s got a pretty big one now it used to be more like Murphy’s one but is now far more impressive.

  
The ponies share a box as they are both very small and the boxes were made with Niko and Madeline in mind, Murphy and Pip both stand at around 12 hands high, Murphy is about 12 1 and Pip is about 12 2. I am not confirming their sizes because  I used a hands tape measure and we don’t have a concrete pad for them to stand on so the measurement cannot be precise.

  
Here’s their bed, it is dust extracted wood shavings that also happen to be scented :) it’s a lovely smell when a new bag is first opened, we use wood shavings for the ponies because they will happily eat straw beds, while I do expect any equine to eat some of its bed Murphy takes it a little too far.

  
This is Murphy with his morning hair, which means bad. Murphy gets on pretty well with Pip in general and they are play buddies, but.

  
As you can see Murphy can be a little bit destructive, I was not too shocked to see he was able to kick though the kick board, considering they are made of sterling board , but having said that he has kicked me and others a few times and it hasn’t even left a bruise, I guess he pulls his kicks with us.

So that’s the ponies and their box it’s all worked out nicely as Pip wasn’t very happy with being in a box, but now he gets to be in with he’s good friend Murphy  Pip has now become very settled in a box.

A Yard of Sorts

  
As the horses and ponies have now been moved over to where we had the stables put up I thought I would sort of show you all around. So here are the stables they still have attachments that need putting on like door latches and most still need haynet rings.

  
All the doors except the one on the ponies box have large metal chew strips to help protect the doors, especially from this chap who just loves to have a good crib on the top of his door.

  
Here is the inside of Niko’s box he has the kick boards right the way up the wall to prevent him from cribbing on the wall and causing them to splinter. 

  
When we ordered the stables we asked for skylights and here they are, they’ve proven to be very helpful with so few daylight hours, it’s good to have that bit of extra light before it gets dark in the stables.

  
And here is something we did not ask for but were pleased that it was done, rather than the front wall reaching right to the roof a gap was left at the top, this was probably just a way to use less wood but we like it because it helps the stables with air flow.

  
Now enough about the stables. Here is the turn out area it’s far from ideal but it is not that muddy at the moment so it will do, as you can see we’re using portable electric fencing, it works very well and is quite easy to use.

  
The horses are in at night and go out during the day which gives them time to stretch their legs, have a roll, and socialise.

And finally the muck heap it is quite close to the stables which makes mucking out a lot easier, well that’s just about it, we don’t have a tack room as we keep it all at home.

And that is our yard of sorts.

The Project - Stable Block

We now have a stable block of four boxes, it isn't yet ready to have the horses in as the floor hasn't been put down and it seems it has sunk on one side so one of the doors won't lock. But we have them now and yes they need some adjustments and some other stuff to be fitted but they're quite nice and they're made with log lap which is almost as nice as barrel board which was what I wanted but I am very happy with them. Oh and one of them has no chew strip yet.



And now we can begin to try and get Pip used to being boxed. We put him in the box for the first time today he was not very happy to go in the box but when we got him in he was very well behaved. He is back in the paddock now but we will keep trying to get him used to being boxed. I remember when we put Murphy in a box for the first time he tried to jump out, but now he loves to go in to his box at the end of day and have his hay.




And as of the bonfire one of the yard owners has agreed that it needs to be put out but she is leaving it to the other owner to do it and he is to lazy to do it so the bonfire is still going. If they would just let me put it out this would not be a problem.

And thank you for your comments on my last post.