Narrow Gait Farm

07/03/2024

05/19/2024

Amazing, Amazon gift. These pallet forks have been so useful.

05/09/2024

New queen of the stables

04/26/2024

Happy dog

04/23/2024

03/30/2024

Prey brains are different in many important ways from predators' brains. Horses have no prefrontal cortex. They do not even have a frontal lobe.
This horses are reactive and cannot reason like a dog.

03/16/2024

Any effective ways to rid barn of pigeons?
I’m not great with BB gun anymore?!

03/16/2024

https://www.webmd.com/balance/news/20240314/playing-with-dogs-helps-people-concentrate-and-relax-study-says

The study found that walking a dog relaxes people; brushing the dog improves concentration; and playing with the pooch does both.

02/20/2024

Wonderful afternoon ride

02/20/2024

Early morning trip to farrier. Followed by trail ride!

02/12/2024

I am not complaining.

02/11/2024

To the casual observer it might appear the extent of our reclamation journey.
If one was able to take a long view, The meaning of LONG VIEW is an approach to a problem or situation that emphasizes long-range factors. If one took long view they would see we have actually been very good remodelers.
The Old red barn in July 2003 this was a delipidated old hog barn. The south end was a 60 foot long hog feed trough made of old pine (not oak). Behind the barn was an overgrown mess of field fence (not horse safe). There was no “barnyard” or any type of fencing to keep livestock out of the back yard.
The silo was full of mice, spiders, and crap the sellers left behind – an old heavy yellow table and assorted pulleys and metal.
The well house was full of more mice and had NO freeze protection for the pump or the pipes.
The yard had not been w**deat in year with 6 foot w**ds long fence with government land.
The shop was full of heavy old crap tables and shelves – one was so heavy the junk men hauled it out of loft in 2024! Mice and piles of dust. The 10 HP air compressor that we were told was bolted down and conveyed -was gone, seller took it.
We had the realtor tell the seller h must remove a salvaged Jeep from behind the barn and two dogs he could not catch or we would not close.
On move in day we identified a 2 acre paddock behind the silo and put horses in the paddock. While enjoying our first new farm BBQ the horses walked up the patio because the front fence had a large gapping hole into the front yard. Hole is misleading – there was not fence for a 100 foot stretch – no T posts, not wire, nothing.
We left of vacation a week after closing and trusted a pool company to install an affordable pool (mistake – way to close to trees).
Fast forward 20 years and we had an extremely productive 11 acre hay field and two sustained grazing paddocks. Secure fences and numerous gates to more easily move the horses. Barn, silo, well house, and shop were functioning safely.
In 20 years only a handful of injuries and all were avoidable. Silo mostly rodent free along with shop and well house. Easy access to ride the government land and never had burst water pipe. Two sources of water. We are not Bob Villa (This Old House) but God has blessed us with ability to do a lot with limited resources and now we begin our new Adventure.

02/08/2024

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02/08/2024

4 weeks on new Narrow Gait farm.

10/30/2023

I’ve been reading research on aging horses by teeth and the science shows that after 10 years of age teeth are very inaccurate way to determine age.

Breed differences, such as those outlined in the Belgian study, are but one reason for the inaccuracies… aging horses using Galvayne’s formula is, at best, an educated guess and hardly the exact science that we have been led to believe it is… influence of management factors on the wear patterns of horse teeth has been overlooked in standard aging guides. Horses on pasture, for example, are constantly using their incisors to crop off grasses. The abrasiveness of forage varies with the amount of silicates (silica-based minerals) it contains, and grazers’ incisors wear faster or slower depending upon forage type and the amount of their grazing. Stall-kept horses, who use their front teeth primarily to pull hay from a net or rack, usually show less wear of the incisors than pastured horses. Mineral deficiencies are another cause of abnormal patterns in the teeth and can lead to errors in aging. Belgian research study found that hooks apparent in only two of the 15 seven-year-old horses, and in both cases they appeared one side of the mouth only. As for the famous groove, Belgian researchers found no consistency in the size, length or even existence of?

Study of 400 horses (known age) upper corner incisor and Galvayne's groove proved to be of no value when estimating age
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8533255/

Study of 80 horses (known age) found There was a good correlation between the actual and apparent age of the horses up to five years, but older horses showed much greater variability and accuracy declined markedly after 11 years of age.

Age prediction in horses greater than 14 years and less than 8 years was not accurate. Journal of Equine Veterinary Science study

Dental features are commonly expected to provide an accurate estimate of a horse's age. In this study the dentition of 434 thoroughbreds was photographed and the individual dental features documented, the true age of all the horses was known. For each dental feature the correlation with true age was...