#feed your horses hay you cheapskates

[gallopinggold]

Wild looking at the difference in Mary from various winters in different boarding situations.

Top photo is from the Jan of 2018 at CBCF, and Mary had been at that farm since Jan 2017. I had moved her from the previous barn, MHF, after she lost a ton of weight and developed quite a few health issues because of how poorly managed the farm was. One of Mary's old pasture mates, Dreamy, owned by the farm owners, essentially starved to death, after they bred her and didn't provide any forage. She wasted away to nothing, and died days after having her foal because she was so malnourished. So I moved Mary to CBCF, and she thrived there for a while. However, that didn't last, as the owners of CBCF had only owned the farm for a few months before I moved Mary there. The farm was well maintained by the previous owners, so the quality pasture was inherited. The second photo is still at CBCF, but in Jan of 2019. By that point, the farm owners had done nothing to maintain the pastures since purchasing the farm, and the grass had been taken over almost entirely by weeds and mud. The hay, when they actually fed it, was low quality and filled with foxtails. I spent months arguing with them, trying to bring in my own hay, move Mary into a better pasture, ect, before I realized any promises from them were empty and there would be no changes. In February of 2019, the farm owner's personal horse died from colic, likely because there was no forage available in her pasture. The horse had been nicknamed Skeletor by the other boarders, because she had continuously lost weight because the owners went days without feeding her.

I moved Mary to TWRD, which was a private farm that was essentially a retired couple's hobby farm. I loved this farm, and Mary's care was excellent. The pastures were mowed and weeded regularly, and they kept a strict ratio of how many horses could be in the pasture so that it wasn't overgrazed. The third photo is from there, taken in Jan of 2020. They didn't feed a lot of hay in the winter, but there was always some amount of grass available, no matter the season, because of how well it was maintained. Mary stayed fat and happy at this barn, and I would probably still have her there to this day if I hadn't moved after graduation. The owners did not have any personal horses, and no horses died while I was there.

Mary and I moved in Jan of 2021 to a new city, and thus a new barn, Ohboro farm. Photo 4 is from Jan 2021, and when Mary had only been at Ohboro for a few days, coming from the very nice TWRD. I've pretty well documented the issues I had with this farm, but like MHF, it was another farm that I was paying to feed my horse, that wasn't and was lying about it the whole time. Photo 5 is March of 2021, and you can tell Mary had lost a significant amount of weight in just those short months. After months of vet appointments trying to figure out what was going on with Mary, I finally caught that farm in the lies about feeding. They had stopped haying in January, and were feeding my supplied grain and hay pellets to their own horses, and not Mary. Since I've left, they've had multiple horses die or almost die. One horse had to have exploratory surgery, and they discovered he had a giant mass of gravel and asphalt in his gut because he had been starved and was eating and anything he possibly could. Another horse died in the pasture for "unknown" reasons, and was only found multiple days later by another boarder, not the barn staff, and had been partially eaten by coyotes at that point.

I had learned my lesson by that point that once you find the red flags, the only option is to get out as soon as possible, so I moved Mary once again, this time to HBFarm. This barn wasn't perfect, but was generally okay. An excellent barn in the summer, there was plenty of grass and the staff was incredibly consistent with grain feedings, Mary did really well there. However, they definitely followed the philosophy of over blanketing to compensate for low amounts of hay in the winter, and just thought you should add fat supplements and up the grain significantly. Mary wasn't terribly skinny in photo 6, taken Jan 2022, but thinner than I would have liked. It made me nervous, that's for sure, but there weren't really any other good boarding options in the area, and there were other aspects I really liked about the care at this barn, so I made due by feeding hay pellets myself as much as I could manage in a week. Horses at this farm definitely developed anxiety behaviors during the winters and lots showed stereotypical signs of ulcers, no deaths or colics though.

I honestly probably would have stayed at that barn and just spent the winters on edge, other than the fact that we finally purchased our own land this past fall. Mary moved to my backyard this November, and had been on free choice grass hay since day 1. I've blanketed her for 2 days total since then, and have only been feeding hay pellets as training treats or on the occasional snow day to increase water intake. She's on the same small grain ration she stays on during the summer. Photo 7 was taken a few days ago, January 2023.

Anyways, this was a giant post to say its wild how much the management styles at different places affected Mary's body shape. It became super obvious which operations were just milking every last drop of profit at the horses expense, those that were doing it out of love and joy for the horses, and those in the middle. TBs are such a mirror of a breed, they show their cards right on the surface.