Tails From Provence

Torture and Torment with Tricklenets

Last winter, I definitely fed my horses way too much. It was quite a mild, dry winter – so much so that Aero only wore his rug a handful of times, while Flurry never needed his.

They have two big apple crates (pallox is the French word, FYI) in their shelter, and I made sure that they got generous amounts of hay every day.

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During our previous winters here, they needed all that hay to keep warm. Digesting hay is a very warming process… but this year, they didn’t need to work so hard on keeping warm, so all that energy generated by digesting the hay got turned into FAT. By the end of the winter, I had two Big Fatties on my hands. One of whom was quite a Fizzy Fatty with all of that unused energy whizzing around his body. Not mentioning any names. But he’s dun. And fuzzy. Hmm, a Fuzzy Fizzy Fatty. Sounds quite cute really! It wasn’t.

We were hitting the end of the hay around the time the grass started to grow again. The last of the hay was dusty, and brought on Aero’s cough. Rather than have the hassle of soaking his hay – it was also becoming clear that water shortages were likely – the two Big Fatties got turned out in the grass paddocks. Much to their delight.

They didn’t get MUCH fatter, thankfully. And I managed to keep them exercised, more or less. But I knew I had to sort something out long term. I had to find some way of making their hay last longer.

Once they returned to their normal field, I took to hanging a haylage net (that’s a hay net with smaller holes, for the uninitiated) from a tree, while at the same time reducing the amount of hay I put in their palloxes. They seemed to get through the hay net in no time, and I got the feeling that Aero was starting to get fat again.

Enter the TrickleNet. I’d read about them on the internet. They have lots of teeny holes, so the horses have to work much harder at getting the hay out. They seemed to have good reviews, although they were expensive. About €50 each, once I’d paid for shipping as well. Let’s hope they work…

Lovely clean unused tricklenets

They seem a funny shape but they hold a lot of hay. I hung one from a tree and made sure I put a decent amount of hay in the palloxes, just in case the Boys couldn’t figure it out. DSCF2503

I needn’t have worried…

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Slow but steady feeding… that’s the idea, anyway.

Then it rained. (Rain is Good News!!)

The next morning I extracted the formerly lovely tricklenet from the mud, but I was pleased to see that the Boys had almost finished all the hay.

Unlovely Unclean used Tricklenet

I think this will work, so long as I tie better knots…

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I am trying to get them to move around their field more, too. I moved their salt and mineral blocks from the shelter to a tree further down the field, but they don’t seem to be using them. Now, if I find there is some hay left in the net, I shake it out beside the blocks, to remind the boys that they DO actually have access to salt and minerals and are NOT neglected and unloved.

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So this is my approximation at Paddock Paradise at the moment :

From Google Maps – Flurry and Aero’s field

There is a teeny bit of growth after the rain, so in addition to hay in the palloxes and the tricklenet, there are some green shoots to nibble on at the moment. I will see how it goes, but if I feel the Boys are becoming too ~~FAT~~ sedentary again, I might make a couple of passages or zig zags that they have to go through to get from one place to another.

I do love their field 😀

Meet the Inmates Part 5 – Caline and Grisou

Caline and Grisou are the most insufferably photogenic residents at the farm.

Grisou

They’re just so damn cute!

Caline

They’ve been living at the farm longer than any of the other residents. Alexandrine inherited them along with her partner -“Love me, love my pony and donkey” sort of thing.

Grisou is the donkey, Caline is a miniature shetland mare. It’s hard to know who the boss is – I’ve seen Caline push Grisou away from food, but I’ve also seen Grisou plaguing Caline unmercifully, with Caline putting up with his roughhousing, despite being clearly unimpressed. She’s a tolerant little lady. I’ve had to dose her with a painkiller a few times, and she just accepts it like a little trooper. Grisou is less tolerant of human interference, but he can be bribed to tolerate foot-trimming and similar unpleasant things with a few carrots or a handful of barley.

For as long as I’ve been around, the two little munchkins shared a paddock with Victoire, an elderly TB mare. But Victoire was put to sleep at the start of the summer – she was diagnosed with cancer a few months earlier, and her owners chose to call it a day before she started suffering with the heat and the flies.

Victoire

So the two little guys have been on their own for about two months now, and it’s been the best thing for them. They’ve moved into a smaller paddock, but their food and water are at opposite ends, so they are moving around much more than before. Caline is laminitic, and the enforced exercise has done her the world of good. She’s moving better than I’ve seen in ages, and hasn’t needed her painkiller dose for several weeks now.

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Their new paddock is closer to the barn, and Grisou seems to enjoy keeping an eye on the comings and goings all day long.

Grisou in surveillance mode

No, really!!

“Asleep? Me? I knew you were there!”

They’re elderly. I have no idea how old, but they’ve been around a long time. I hope they’ll be around for a lot longer.

Two cuties.

Cute whiskery muzzles in the snow

MEET THE INMATES PART 4

Meet the Inmates Part 4 – Ayko and Valentine

While I feed the stabled horses, Valentine and Ayko wait impatiently, Valentine at the gate; Ayko keeping a respectful gap between them. You can see straight away who the boss is with this pair! They live right beside the barn, so they are next to be fed.

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Valentine has already appeared in this blog a few times. She made a minor appearance in my very first trip to spectate at a French dressage competition, which was also her very first outing. Then there was the trip to a much bigger dressage competition in Aix and the weekend adventure when I went along as groom to the international centre at Vidauban.

Valentine and Alexandrine

Valentine is seven now. She arrived at the farm to be broken for a client in 2013. She was not a difficult horse, but it was clear straight away that she was very sensitive! Not long after she ‘graduated’, she and her owner had a difference of opinion, with her owner unfortunately falling off and breaking her shoulder. So she came back to Alexandrine, to continue her education while her owner recovered. But her owner had a long hard think about things and decided that, with two small kids, she’d be better off with a ‘made’ horse rather than a youngster, so Valentine was put up for sale. Alexandrine forms a bond with every horse she works with, and by now her connection with Valentine was huge! So she did the logical thing, and bought her. Much to everyone’s delight, really.

Valentine is officially Selle Francais, but in fact her breeding is pure Hannoverian, with the renowned Weltmeyer II appearing in her pedigree – he’s her paternal grandsire. By one of those weird quirks of fate, she was born at Les Bayles, the very first Gite Equestre where Anne and I stopped when we did Le Big Trek.

Right now, while Alex continues to adjust to Life With Julia, Oriane is working with VaVa. She’s been competing in dressage and showjumping competitions and attending lots of clinics and generally just learning loads from her. In fact, she has learned so much that she has now been accepted into the instructor training course at Saumur!! Cool, eh? So in the autumn, Oriane will head off for new adventures and Alexandrine will pick up the reins again. She will surely be adjusted to Life With Julia at that stage. Mind you, my two are in their twenties, and I’m still not sure I’ve adjusted to life with them. It keeps CHANGING!

Anyway, now let me introduce Ayko.

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Ayko is Oriane’s retired old boy. He’s a 23 year old French trotter. I wouldn’t have guessed it from his build – he seems quite chunky and solid, to me. The only other ex-trotter I knew was very light-boned, but I guess there are many difference types, like with TBs.

Oriane has had him for eleven years. She credits him with igniting her interest in training and managing difficult horses. Which is to say, he was not a straightforward ride when she started out with him as a teenager! He went from the racetrack to someone who did Spectacles Equestre and from there to Oriane. He still couldn’t canter when she bought him, but he learned eventually! Oh, and I forgot to mention that he was her first horse. Yup, it could have been a disaster. It wasn’t.

He went to Haras La Cense with his mom last year when she went to do her Equitation Ethologique diploma. Now, he’s at the farm while Oriane provides the rest of the maternity cover for Alexandrine (yes, it takes two of us to replace her!). He’s a sweet old boy who moves stiffly around his paddock, following Valentine wherever she goes – and ducking when she takes a swipe at him!

He and Oriane have just started to learn clicker training. After one brief session, he understood that he was to ‘touch’ the flag. So while the body may be rusty, the brain definitely is not!