Wow. This post has been in the draft stage about a year now....just forgot about it. It's something so simple and yet my life in the barn has become easier because of it.
What you ask? Stall door holdbacks. I have the swing doors in the barn that came withour property. It's always had these flimsy little holdbacks that really annoyed me since they take a lot more fine motor skills to get them hooked and unhooked. If you have a horse in the other hand it gets really annoying.
We'd redone an old trailer so I had come across trailer hold backs and one day it finally dawned on me....why not use something like that in the barn?
There is an "innie" and an "outie" part of the hold back, and yes those are technical terms. The doors are held open with a quick push as the metal piece goes into the rubber center of the innie part of the hold back.
It works perfect on my tack room door, the two stalls and then the gate to the barn area that usually is open.
Next was the "gate" for the one pasture, we could never get our tractor through it without having to hold up the grass shoot flap. It was a pain since it was a tight squeeze. Well come to find out that there are electric spring gates that can be used in a larger gap in the fence and viola (vola?)! We have a "gate" that is much easier to use when we need to mow.
Now I'm going to give a Public Service announcment.....DO NOT USE SPRING GATES!!! We had a crazy issue with this gate when we were in Iceland of course where Chance got is caught in his tail apparently. I'll post about that another time. Now I just use a string of hot rope and it works just as good.
AGAIN, DO NOT USE ELECTRIC SPRING GATES WITH SILLY HORSES!!!!
Both horses are doing well as I type this. I have a lot to catch the blog up on but things are getting a little bit back to normal here. Knock on wood. Happy Fall!
2 comments:
Holy crap, please give more details on this! Was the fact that it connected to a Tpost a problem, or was it just the "spring" effect that attacked the horse who got too close with his tail?
I have no idea since I wasn't there and none of the cameras captured it...go figure. There was a chunk of tail in it so he may have just gotten it caught on his tail and freaked out. I feel so bad for him. Now when in that area he hurries past it every time. I'll have to work with him on getting over that "gate" area since it's not gonna get him again. I'm soon to be getting a real gate in place in that area and will be making a post about our "track system" from Pasture Paradise that we've been using and continually improving.
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