Wanted: Mowers. Must Run On Grass
The horse borrowing business has cropped up almost over night in my neck of the woods. Even very un-horsey people are stringing up temporary fences and frantically searching for horses to borrow. Or goats, llamas, sheep, or cows will do to.
As I've mentioned in my past blogs, we've had an exhorbitant amount of rain recently here in eastern Idaho. It has begun, though, to let up and the result is abundant greenery. The grass is growing like crazy and the fields and countrysides that are normally short and turning brown by mid-June are knee-high, thick and green, and going to seed.
As for the horses this can be good and bad. We have a ten-acre pasture that houses at the moment one of my paints and several of my in-laws' thoroughbreds. Last year two to three acres of it was a dust patch where hardly even a weed could grow. Now the grass is so tall and thick our Australian shepard completely disapears when she ventures into the pasture and the seven horses haven't even made a dent.
Now grazing like this can be a godsend for the growing yearlings and the pregnant mares that need the nutrients, and their developing bodies are thriving on the abundance. However, other horses, including my Tickles, have just grown fat, which can be very dangerous, even deadly, for horses; so she and another obese mare have been cut off from pasture grass. They are confined on about a half acre behind the house forlornely munching their dry hay and trying to look miserable.
Meanwhile our friends and neighbors are constantly shuffling horses around. Anyone with a little land needs grazers and anyone with horses, cattle, goats,etc... are in high demand for people to 'borrow' thier animals to take care of all the grass.
It's a good time to be a horse. But an awful time to be a horse with a slow metabolism, at least according to Tickles.
As I've mentioned in my past blogs, we've had an exhorbitant amount of rain recently here in eastern Idaho. It has begun, though, to let up and the result is abundant greenery. The grass is growing like crazy and the fields and countrysides that are normally short and turning brown by mid-June are knee-high, thick and green, and going to seed.
As for the horses this can be good and bad. We have a ten-acre pasture that houses at the moment one of my paints and several of my in-laws' thoroughbreds. Last year two to three acres of it was a dust patch where hardly even a weed could grow. Now the grass is so tall and thick our Australian shepard completely disapears when she ventures into the pasture and the seven horses haven't even made a dent.
Now grazing like this can be a godsend for the growing yearlings and the pregnant mares that need the nutrients, and their developing bodies are thriving on the abundance. However, other horses, including my Tickles, have just grown fat, which can be very dangerous, even deadly, for horses; so she and another obese mare have been cut off from pasture grass. They are confined on about a half acre behind the house forlornely munching their dry hay and trying to look miserable.
Meanwhile our friends and neighbors are constantly shuffling horses around. Anyone with a little land needs grazers and anyone with horses, cattle, goats,etc... are in high demand for people to 'borrow' thier animals to take care of all the grass.
It's a good time to be a horse. But an awful time to be a horse with a slow metabolism, at least according to Tickles.
posted by Alicia T @ 12:46 PM
1 Comments:
At 2:27 PM,
Sage said…
Boy do I understand the situation. But mostly we have just sage and tumbleweeds. In the horse pens the ponies manage to keep them down. But outside of the pens - yuck. I lead them out and let them graze on weeds but can't very much. Takes to long. My neighbor just got some goats for the same problem.
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