Serene Sunday- Northern Lights from October 2024!!!!!

 I never posted about this event!  

Pictures are amazing, in real life it was still pretty cool, a moving reddish haze with some light greens.  Not quite the spectacle we saw with the naked eye in Iceland but seeing any aurora this far south is amazing!

Ice Ponies January 10th and Snow Ponies Feb. 19th

In January we had a couple icy days where it was mostly sleet or freezing rain.  This makes our driveway a perfect sledding hill!

Sledding on the driveway!  This time with a proper sled that I use to lug horse hay onto the track for the horses.

Now the virtual experience.....

The really cold weather and freezing precipitation makes picking up around the barn nearly impossible.  The poop is turned immediately to poopsicles.

The horses don't seem to mind, once the rain is done they can be naked again and go on about their routines.

February 19th we had a really nice snow.

There was no sleet or freezing rain so the snow was actually nice and fluffy!

Daenerys and Seamus....apparently shelter is not something they desire right now.

Chance doesn't seem to care about shelter either....

We didn't get to sled since it was pretty cold and we had also received 3 pallets of wood flooring we had to move into the house and garage.  We were exhausted.  I spent some breaks just watching the fluffy snow fall.

This snow made me think about Colorado and the beautiful snows at my parents house, even during the torrid times near the end of my dad's life (unbeknownst to us all)  My aunt Keri calls the big fluffy snows a "Jack snow".  She wanted to see him as much as she could in the hospital and was always worried a snow storm would prevent her from making it from Larkspur to Castlerock's hospital. The day after he died it snowed 14 inches, and was a big fluffy snow.  She called it a Jack snow since it had held out until she was back at the house safe and sound.

This snow today in North Carolina was a Jack (Dad) snow.  Made me think about my dad and my mom.  I miss Colorado but also realize, I've gotten used to the mild climate here in NC!  Not the summers yet though!

Still it's so nice to have the occasional snow like this to stay inside and think of how fortunate I am in this life.

Stay warm!!

Snow? Maybe? Some Winter Safety Reminders

As we prepare here in the south for Snowpocalypse.......erm....1-2"of snow....I think about some easily overlooked safety tips in caring for horses during winter.

Blanketing: Make sure they are familiar with the procedure before you have to blanket them.  You think dressing a 2 year old child is difficult....just you wait when a 1,000+lb creature decides it doesn't want to wear that "sweater"!

With multiple horses, a lot of us horse peeps blanket them in the field with no restraint, not even a halter....make sure you can do this with your horse and that you are safe! It's highly recommended to either halter and tie or cross-tie your horse but I just run out there with the blankets and get each horse set....uh, yeah.  Here's a great video of the proper, proper way to do it!

The safest way is to fasten all the connections from the front of the horse working towards the back, this is imperative if you don't have your equine in cross-ties or tied to a post.  Velcro and buckle the chest strap first!  If your horse moves or walks off they are less likely to then have a half secured blanket tangle in their legs if they decide to bolt.  Next work your way to under the belly and if there are two straps make sure they are crossed in the middle.  If there are three straps, the front and back straps should follow that same crossing pattern under the belly. Then to the tail end, some blankets have leg straps some just the tail strap.  For the tail strap DO NOT use a bungy one (yes Rambo's $400 horse blankets come with a bungy strap, these can get caught on something and then snap back hard and fast to injure your horses leg....ask me how I know!).  Then you are done!  Just watch as your beautiful, expensive horse blanket turns to the color of mud!

Stock tank heaters: Through the years I have gone through the various types.  I've settled on drop in heaters will a cage and have also learned to rig up a silly gelding proof PVC power cord protection device.  I'm not so concerned about chewing of the wires, since these heaters come with a good wrap but the fact that silly shadow pony (aka Seamus) likes to pull the heater completely out of the
water to play with! Not a safe toy in the least!

The cord for the water heater goes through the PVC pipe and then we also have the an extension cord plug keep that prevents water from coming into contact with the contacts, the extension cord and the water heater.

There is also another part of this set up, a grounding wire. It's important to make sure plastic stock tank water is grounded. Grounding Your Deicers We've attached a copper wire that wraps onto the heater cage a couple loops and then runs through the PVC tube and down to a lightning rod installed at least 2 feet into the ground.  Sometimes heaters can malfunction and charge the water or worse leak enough electricity to give your grounded horse a lethal dose of electricity.  I've never had this happen but every winter I have seen articles about this from various equestrian newsletters and post, so we've decided to be extra cautious. 

In the same theme of protecting my silly Seamus from himself, I have another PVC pole to cover up the lightning rod so he doesn't accidently gouge himself while trying to play with it on the other side of the fence.  

Oh that boy, he just looks for places to cause mischief!