This morning, I took Flash's new supplements from SmartPak to the barn. They arrived yesterday, a day earlier than promised, which is...well, promising. They came in a super fancy storage drawer, which was free. I was expecting some cheap dollar-store-like piece of plastic that would break after being opened and shut twice, but instead I got this heavy duty drawer that looks like it will last a very long time. So far, I'm impressed, but the true test will be Miss Flash. Lately, when I turn her out, she doesn't want to run around like an idiot, and she looks so stiff when she moves. I'm going to keep tabs on her for the next few weeks and see if she improves. (And she better, because Mama wants to go trail riding this summer!)
Flash's SmartPak consists of SmartFlex Senior Pellets and SmartVite Senior Grass Pellets. She's been eating orchard grass, but I might switch to local grass, if I can find a consistent source that's a decent price. My truck is teeny tiny, so I can only get up to four bales at a time. If I had a bigger rig, I would drive to Deer Park where my mom and stepdad have a 70-acre hay field. They grow some really nice grass hay out there, but it's six hours away.
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| That's a looooong way to get hay when you can only fit 4 bales! |
Yesterday, when I got to the barn, I noticed Miss Flash had a huge scrape on her poll. Not a terribly bad wound, mostly just skin rubbed off, but there was a bit of scabbiness and a few scratch marks. I looked everywhere to try to figure out how she did it, and the only thing I could come up with was maybe, just maybe, the corner feeder and/or the board on the wall above the corner feeder. She's been in this stall for quite a while now. I was pregnant when she was moved to this stall, and my baby is now almost one year old. So I wouldn't think she would be scraping herself on the same feeder she's been eating out of for so long, but who knows.
I'm not a fan of the corner feeder, anyway. It's just wood, built into the corner of the stall. The bottom collects dust like mad. James once shoveled a ton of dust out of it. Most horses seem to pull the hay out and put it on the floor of the stall, which is where I'd rather she be fed. Given this new injury that may or may not have been caused by that corner feeder, I moved her water bucket to the feeder side, raked, scraped, and swept all the nastiness away from the mat in the opposite corner of the stall, and left instructions for her hay to be placed there instead.
Of course, now that she (hopefully) won't be scraping her poll anymore, I got there this morning to find a little scrape on her nose.
It seems Miss Flash is becoming accident prone in her old age. I'll have to pad the entire stall next, I suppose. Maybe wrap her in bubble wrap.
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