Hidden Creek Horse Farm, LLC

02/19/2025

For anyone in the SC, NC, GA area needing custom saddles or leather tack repair, Valerie Leaning Oak Leathercraft is filling orders and willing to meet you halfway if distance is prohibitive! Happy to have this resource!

The Best of the West in the Deep South! We provide saddle and tack repair for Western and English disciplines, as well as harness, racing and other equestrian leather repair. We also build fully custom Western saddles and tack - providing safety and comfort for both rider and horse. Leaning Oak Leat...

02/17/2025

We love our donkeeeeey!!!! 🫏

♥️ Rosemary❤️

02/17/2025

It may look like we got a new interior designer for the barn, (and like we maybe need to send them along their way with their selection of drapes), but it’s just us trying to drip dry from the nasty sog before the next round! Our workers are the BEST for all their blanket wrangling this time of year! 🏆

02/15/2025

Specially curated and artistically hand chopped: the horse version of a Valentines box of chocolates. 💝

Taking many minutes to make and milliseconds to eat…

…we love our big, goofy Valentines!

02/15/2025

**Films, First Rides, and (tiny tot) Fotography!** Fun things happened here between the raindrops this week. Love introducing new friends to farm life!

01/24/2025

01/22/2025

A few of my favorite wintertime things:

1. Microfiber layers
2. Waterproof ski pants with microfleece lining. Once you get working you are more likely to be toasty than cold!
3. My Dublin-wannabe Saxon country boots that are leather and waterproof and have lasted me 5 years and they don’t make them anymore. 😭
4. Latex exam gloves under ordinary gloves or better yet mittens
5. Bar Bar A automatic waterers 💯

Bar Bar A - Automatic Horse and Livestock Waterers

01/15/2025

For the horse crazy homeschool kids ages 9-12 who one day would like to work at a horse stable but haven't been able to get much experience, here is a 4-week mini course introducing them to the philosophies, values, and practical application of a future valuable stable hand employee.

We will cover topics related to horse behavior, reading horse body language, safe horse handling on the ground, and tasks such as cleanliness, biosafety, cleaning stalls, washing buckets, horse nutrition and feeding. We integrate life skills such as honesty, integrity, identity, communication, and faithfulness.
This is an unmounted horsemanship course (no riding involved).

Each Tuesday: January 28, February 4, 11, and 18.
10am-12pm

Included in the course are 8 hours of instruction and application ($360 value) study handouts, and a certificate of completion when done.

Here is a Google Form to register - https://forms.gle/mrQQqiXdECuuZhMB7

Feel free to message us with questions!

Space for this course is limited to 10 students.

01/15/2025

Hey grown up! Have you always wanted to do something with horses but never had the opportunity? Do you have a young person in your life who is into horses and you'd like to know a thing or two also? If you are brand new to horses and would like a chance to get in close and learn about them and the basics of safely handling, leading, and grooming, this is the 4-week mini course for you.

Starting January 30, each Thursday until February 20, from 10am-12pm. Eight hours of instruction and application. No riding, no judgment, no such thing as dumb questions. Just fun!

Fill out this Google Form to register and get more information! https://forms.gle/dz18VRHsfe8T8JF46 Spaces are limited.

01/09/2025

Shadydale is hosting a 4-day Integrated Equine Therapies course in April!

Join us for IET Foundational Techniques Course in Travelers Rest, South Carolina where IET Certified Instructors Grace Keeton and Bonnie Bemboom will guide students through a 4-day intensive course on techniques to address equine lameness, dysfunction, and emotional blockages. See below for mor

01/08/2025

Tribe with horse trailers, someone needs your help! A friend of a trusted friend in NC lost everything in Helene and needs to move her 17 horses from NC to NY in a couple weeks. Like the packmule team, we need a caravan of rescuers that can help trailer her horses and remaining belongings, and some in NY who can help receive and settle them. If you can’t go, can you give to help others who can?

Please see the post and contact Gesa if you can help!

https://www.facebook.com/share/1G5ar5QYs2/?mibextid=wwXIfr

Please help Emily Wright relocate her horses to a safe location. Hur… Gesa Wellenstein needs your support for Aid Emily's Horses after the Hurricane Disaster.

01/06/2025

As blanket season is in full force upon us, here is a very important reminder courtesy of the horse doctors at Miamitown Equine Veterinary Services:

"When securing blankets, make sure that the snaps/clips are facing inward, toward the horse! If they are facing out, they can easily become stuck on something, like the hay net in the picture."

12/21/2024

Dear Friends of Hitchcock Woods,

Finally, the moment we’ve all been eagerly waiting for is here! Hitchcock Woods will reopen to the public (pedestrians, dogs, and equestrians) at dawn on Saturday, December 21, 2024. On behalf of everyone at the Hitchcock Woods Foundation—trustees and staff alike—we are delighted to invite you back into the Woods.

The Foundation staff and professional contractors have labored hard under dangerous conditions to bring us to this point. There are 2100 acres and 71 miles of trails in the Woods, much of which was significantly damaged by the hurricane.

We know how difficult it has been to be without access to this community treasure—we’ve missed it too—but your safety is, and continues to be, our top priority. Accordingly, Phase 1 of our long-term recovery effort was to remove trees, obstacles, and obvious aerial hazards from the major trails. The completion of this phase allows us to now open the Woods.

Please remember Hitchcock Woods is a hurricane storm-disturbed area, and all visitors must exercise caution. Please do not enter any areas of the Woods that are marked “Closed” or taped off because they are not safe.

Please note: Aiken Hounds will not be hunting on Tuesdays and Saturdays in the Woods before January 7, 2025, so dogs will be welcome on those days as well.

Please report all hazards and the location to the Hitchcock Woods Foundation office at 803-642-0528.

Again, thank you for your patience and steadfast support as we work to restore Hitchcock Woods. Our work is just beginning, so we hope you will continue to support us throughout this long-term effort.

We look forward to seeing you in the Woods soon. Please stay safe and enjoy!

Mary Katherine Philipp MD, Executive Director
Bennett Tucker, Woods Superintendent

12/06/2024

To accompany the unpleasant photo 😅 is actually a really helpful and informative article for anyone with a horse that struggles with f***l water syndrome.

I have addressed this problem so many times in the field and in my group that I still don’t quite know why it has taken so long to actually do a short article on F***l Water Syndrome aka “FWS”.

FWS typically presents in horses as an excessive amount of thin brown liquid being ejected from a horse’s a**s. This is different from diarrhea because it doesn’t have any f***l matter contained in the liquid. The horse’s manure may be on the soft side or may be perfectly formed.

In most cases FWS isn’t debilitating to the horse but it is messy and can coat their butts and legs with nasty smelling and irritating liquid. It is especially difficult during the cold winter months as you can see from the photo I used. The fluid clumps on fur and freezes while the cold temperatures make it difficult if not impossible to clean.

Obviously FWS is a gastro-intestinal issue but most owners miss the mark when treating FWS. Owners will throw expensive supplements at the problem and the symptoms will persist. I know this from personal experience with my mare, Flair. That poor mare had about 32 different supplements thrown at her and nothing worked.

Probiotics, prebiotics, biosponge, ulcer treatments, gut supplements and anything else I tried wouldn’t clear it up. Nothing ever even slowed it down.

Then while attending an equine nutrition clinic I was having a cocktail with one of the more well known equine nutrition PhDs and I mentioned my frustration to her. Of course she had the answer!

Just so everyone knows, it’s not that I’m really smart but I hang out with really smart people!

In the overwhelming majority of cases FWS is being caused by a mild case of a condition known as Right Dorsal Colitis. I got the full monty clinical explanation, and as I would do in any conversation with an extremely bright, lovely woman who is twenty years younger I sat at the edge of my chair in rapt attention while understanding none of it but all I needed to know was that it is a condition similar to Irritable Bowel Syndrome in humans.

IBS is something that most people in my age range (somewhere between classic and Jurassic) are familiar with. The cure for both conditions is simple: add easily digestible fiber. I began taking a tablespoon of psyllium each day and my IBS cleared up almost immediately.

Right Dorsal Colitis can become very serious and require clinical intervention in some cases. In severe cases FWS is accompanied by lethargy, weight loss, lack of appetite and colic. I am NOT a vet so you should discuss any concerns that you have with your vet and follow their treatment advice.

Many times RDC is caused by coarse hay. Mature, coarse hay is very high in fiber and can be difficult to process in the gut causing some inflammation resulting in the watery fountain of stench emanating from your horse’s butt.

My own experience with FWS is very much like what I hear from others. The FWS shows up in the fall when the horses are off grass and on hay. Whenever I get different hay. My horses are both easy keepers and metabolic so I feed mostly very mature low NSC grass hay ensuring that I am dealing with FWS for most of the year. Quite often you will find that it is worse during the winter and the simple explanation is that they are eating more hay which attenuates the problem.

The dietary treatment for both conditions is to replace some (or all) of the forage with a complete feed enabling the gut to recover by offering some easily digestible fiber.

You can also try using some psyllium but it’s expensive and it typically requires a large dose.

My personal go to and the advice that I have offered to hundreds of people as a first treatment is to simply add a pound of hay stretcher pellets per day to the horse’s normal diet and this usually clears it up. If the FWS doesn’t clear up in a few days I increase it to two pounds per day.

Any genuine complete feed will work as long as the crude fiber is over 20% and the fat level is low. I typically choose to use hay stretcher because it is very high in fiber, usually over 25% and it is not heavily fortified nor high in calories so I don’t really need to make huge adjustments in their diets. I simply toss a cup or two on top of their normal ration and call it a day.

For a 1,000 pound horse two pounds per day should offer relief of the symptoms but if two pounds of hay stretcher doesn’t change things it’s probably time to try something else and at this point all bets are off. Psyllium would be my next step along with a gut supplement.

It is almost never a lack of probiotics unless the horse had recently been on a course of antibiotics.

The long term solution is to feed better hay. If you can find some nice, soft second cutting grass hay it would go a long way towards drying things up.

There are a number of downsides to feeding better hay. Cost and availability are at the top of the list. Then there’s the horse. Second cutting hay isn’t the best choice for easy keepers or insulin resistant horses so this option has its limits.

Many times FWS is linked to insulin resistant horses as a sure sign that they are insulin resistant. The conditions are not related except that most IR horses are on j***y, low starch, low calorie hay.

Please allow me to head off the naysayers and negative comments. This is not by any means a sure fire cure for FWS. It is, however, a very inexpensive treatment as a first go to attempt and it does work in most cases. If not, then try all the whiz bang supplements that probably won’t work either.

In short, if you have a horse with a squirty butt go buy a bag of cheap hay stretcher pellets and run some through the horse. If it works, you got off cheap, if not at least you know something that isn’t going to work.

As a final reminder and a more serious tone, if the FWS persists and the hay stretcher doesn’t work I would strongly encourage you to please consult your veterinarian and have all the appropriate diagnostics done.

Thank you for reading this article.

I am retired and write blog articles to try to make horse owner's lives easier and horse's lives better.

If you found this article to be helpful my horses would be very grateful if you would consider buying some hay for them by going to:

https://buymeacoffee.com/jimthefeedguy

Of course your contributions are not required, nor expected but all are very much appreciated.

Cheers!