Quick Tip #23--Your Pasture Should Be At Least As Crabby As Your Third Grade Teacher

Horse Christmas just started out in the horse lot this morning. The crab grass is coming up and is mingling with the clover, rye, and other grasses and weeds. Nothing makes horses happier than a mouthful of crab grass.

Recent research has given proof that there are few things better for a horse than crab grass growing from nitrogen rich soil. (The clover in my pastures helps fix the nitrogen in the soil.) I will be planting much more crab grass in future years. It is perhaps the most resilient warm season grass that we have. Seed is hard to come by, but turning up and transplanting strong root and shoot systems seems to be an effective, though very labor intensive method of getting a stand going.

Crab grass dies off at the first frost. However, it seems to stockpile well if allowed to grow tall enough. Stock piling allows "dead" post frost grasses to be grazed as if they were alive. Though not as nutritious as living grass, stock piled forage is a nice, early winter feed for horses.

A more efficient use of smaller pastures is to allow the crab grass to be grazed down in late summer and then drill in rye or oats (in our part of the country). Doing so provides a bit of pasture over the winter and insures a solid early spring crop.

Add to this mixture safe tree bark and roots for winter and good quality hay and free access to 2/1 mineral and it is hard to imagine a better diet for a horse who is not insulin resistant.

(Insulin resistant horses should not be afforded green forage. The risk of laminitis is too high).

Mill Swamp Indian Horse Views: Motivation--(a 2011 Perspective)

Here is how things were looking here in February of 2011. To see this vintage post hit this link: Mill Swamp Indian Horse Views: Motivation: In about an hour I will mount up Holland, my 13 hand Banker horse from Shackleford Island and will ride him fifty miles. We have done th...

Austin's Unlimited New City

This is Emily, one of my most dedicated little riders and perhaps my best singer among those riders. We are playing at the Victorian Station Tea Room in Hampton  in this picture. Yesterday was a big day for her brother Austin. It was his first day of learning to ride. He learned how to work a rope halter, saddle up, mount up, and he learned the set of cues that we teach our horses. Austin is taciturn but has a quick easy smile.

 It is refreshing sometimes to find a kid that does not say anything when he has nothing to say.

Tonight will be a big night for Austin. It will be his first time on stage as he joins his sister, his brother Colton, Kayla, my bodhrun player, me, and Gerald on the fiddle at Bethany Church for a Relay for Life Event. Austin has just started playing an autoharp. He has impeccable timing and, who knows, in a few months I might even find out if he can sing.

I like seeing the sense of satisfaction and achievement that he gets from playing. He comes from a wonderful, supportive family. We get together over at their house on Monday nights and work up songs along with Daddy, my niece and a handful of other kids.

I love the sound of an autoharp, whether in Sara Carter's simple strumming or Maybelle's complex lead picking. I can hear in my head what Austin will sound like in a few years and it sounds very good. With his sister on dulcimer and his brother on every other stringed instrument within his reach they will have the simple, front porch sound that rests somewhere just inside my right ear, a sound that became softer when A.P. Carter died, but a sound that can never go out completely.

As a caveat, sometimes we do kids a great disservice by giving them too few instructions and too many decisions to make, decisions that have consequences that they can not be expected to understand. Had I asked Austin if he would like to learn to perform like his brother and sister and told him that if he would like to do so, I could teach him to play an autoharp and if it was what he really wanted to do, I could help him learn to play on stage. I suspect that the prospect might have seemed too daunting and he likely would have declined. Maybe he would have taken me up on it. But I thought it much better for him if I showed him what was possible first and then let him decide.

My invitation to learn to play was much simpler. "Boy, can you count to four? Can you learn that when your brother holds his hand a certain way you press down the D chord and when it changes to something else you are going to be either moving to A7 or G, to start with?"

He said that he thought that he maybe could. I set him where he could see Colton's hands. We played "Will The Circle Be Unbroken?" and moved on over to "Hobo's Lullaby"?

His timing was perfect.

And if I might say so, so was mine.

Qucik Tip #24 Look Out For Broom Straw

The weed that we call 'broomstraw" grows in acidic soils. When one sees it in a pasture it means that it is way past time to lime the soil.

My horses have never consumed the amount of 2/1 mineral that they are eating now. In the past male horses consumed very little and mares a bit more. Now even the stallions are eating the mineral down.

Over the winter my hay has had a significant amount of broom straw in it. That is not a problem by itself but the broom straw was evidence of a lack of calcium in the hay. I am increasing every ones access to 2/1 mineral now.

It helps them all to have stronger immune systems and helps the little ones to grow, just like Wanchese, my favorite Shackleford stallion, and Aiden, my favorite grandson.

Mill Swamp Indian Horse Views: Coat of Many Colors

This post from 2011 came up not long ago. It is about Lido's closest friend ever, Noah. To see this post hit this link. Mill Swamp Indian Horse Views: Coat of Many Colors: Yesterday I found out about this brick that is in a memorial walk of a Smithfield Church. Beginning the night of the funeral I learned th...