Remember awhile back when Tigger was not…NOT…NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS…going to eat anything tainted by one single grain of his new very expensive supplement?\u00a0 Remember that I used a carrot chopped into molasses and mixed with water and the supplement and then stirred into his feed and he still tossed his head, swished his tail, etc, etc, in protest but would slowly…very slowly…eat his food?\u00a0\u00a0 And would not eat it unless I left the barn area, while he was shut out (leaving Rags in possession of the barn, where Rags always ate?)<\/p>\n
Gradually the protests diminished.\u00a0 Oh, well, *maybe* he could force this mess down to regain access to the barn.\u00a0\u00a0 Oh, well, maybe he could eat while I finished the evening barn chores of cleaning the water tubs and refilling them as long as I didn’t stand there watching him.\u00a0 Oh, well, he might as well eat, still making the occasional head gesture if I was there, while I paused and watched him.\u00a0 Actually…actually it wasn’t that bad to be eating carrot chunks and tasting that good dark molasses all over his feed…<\/p>\n
Since twice is often enough to create a habit for horses, we have now reached owner satisfaction.\u00a0 Yesterday was the second time for the return to “normal” (for us) feeding.\u00a0\u00a0 Horses are shut out of the barn while I weigh and mix their feeds. \u00a0 Rags gets one supplement, Tigger gets two.\u00a0 Both get a feed-through wormer. \u00a0\u00a0 I put Rags’s feed pan just outside the barn in the south barn lot, and Tigger’s feed pan inside, in a straight shot from the gate where they’re let in, far enough from the gate that he feels no need to threaten Tigger with a kick.\u00a0 Tigger goes straight to his supper.\u00a0 Rags then comes in and veers to the right, out the open side of the barn, to his supper.\u00a0 Peace reigns.\u00a0 Much easier for me than having to let Rags in through the narrow side gate and fend Tigger off, then carry Tigger’s\u00a0 feed pan through the wider gate while not letting him through and put it down.<\/p>\n
Even though Tigger is now getting a little more feed than Rags (colder weather) he eats it up promptly.\u00a0 While they’re eating I carry out their “evening hay”\u00a0 and sometime between 9 and 10 their night hay, clean the water containers, top them up, and then I’m done until late in the evening.\u00a0 The timing changes with the seasons and weather.\u00a0\u00a0 The next change will be gradually reducing the amount of molasses….and eventually (I hope) no molasses at all will again mean ease for a lazy owner…no need to stir the mixture of molasses, carrot chunks, liquid supplement and dry supplement together with the pelleted feed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Remember awhile back when Tigger was not…NOT…NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS…going to eat anything tainted by one single grain of his new very expensive supplement?\u00a0 Remember that I used a carrot chopped into molasses and mixed with water and the supplement and then stirred into his feed and he still tossed his head, swished his Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,16],"tags":[49,17],"class_list":["post-719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-horses","category-life-beyond-writing","tag-horses","tag-life-beyond-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=719"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":720,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719\/revisions\/720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}