??? About Purchase, Care and Tack for Miniature Horses

Gale Hawkins · Aug 10, 2013

This is a photo of a printout of the Bolt's father

This is a shot of the stud of hopeful 2014 foals of each mare

On left is Silver/Lilly (head not showing) and Midnight/Bolt on the right where we keep them when not grazing down in the pasture area

Better shot of Lilly the filly

Shot shows both mares

Closeup of Silver

A nearby barn we borrowed for hay storage this year and 130 bales of hay to unload

A grazing ring down in the pasture area we snapped together using five 16' long and 50" high cattle panels. It takes about 3 minutes to build. We moved them down there using the brush forks we rigged up on the JD backhoe. We just keep moving it some each time. Just not ready to do any long term fencing.

Wagtail · Aug 10, 2013

Thank you so much for the pictures Mate. They're all beautiful & have nicely rounded rumps! Not fat at all, you're all doing well!

Your fencing is great too. What we Aussies call 'star pickets' with cattle panels tie-wrapped on. Brilliant.

Gale Hawkins · Aug 10, 2013

Thanks Wagtail.

This herd came from our first only farm visit looking for some mares so we went from no horses and no fences/barns to four horses and no fence/barn within three hours of leaving the house. TSC (Tractor Supply Company was our first stop on the way home and the cattle panels jumped out as our fastest/cheapest option to hold the horses that were to show up in 2 hours. The US cost is $100 per 80 running feet or $20 per 16' panel so the ring you see in the photo cost $125 as the connectors were $2 a piece and needs NO posts to be stable and secure for miniature horses.

The dark paint? that the daughter named Midnight (age 16) was the one that was in the ad we responded to and after we traded for her and the colt and where leaving he hit us up to buy the silver dapple (age 10) and filly. I liked her looks, is registered but the filly line is unknown. Silver is on the mean side when it comes to sharing hay or grain even with her own filly and wants to be hard to catch. The daughter got tagged by a hoof perhaps meant for the other mare and she wanted to sell her. I told her first we need to see if Silver can be a 'learning' experience.

I never knew horses of any size were high volume fertilizer plants. I grew up with a mule that I worked in the tobacco fields and rode bare back to get the cows and to the tobacco fields but he ran in the pasture so there was no stable to clean up most of the time.

Since both mares are nursing and are to foal next spring the wife and daughter are working to get the best feeding options based on them being minis. Being on a dry lot most of the day (grazing 2-4 hours a day) they can run through a square bale in two days. We did plan for one bale a day when we bought hay to get to next May.

The weight loss is a plan that I came up with after getting the horses and they are a help too. Leaving off processed foods including cakes and pies along with more walking is helping. The ring you saw down and back to the house where we hold the horses is about a quarter mile. In the process we are learning how to lead them. We just got short leads so the babies are fasten to mom's halter as we move them. I move Silver and the daughter Midnight. Two leads are easier to deal with than four. The young ones are learning fast how to lift their foot high if a lead gets between their front legs. I think we may wait until spring to start working with a cart and wagon. The colt and filly are starting to become real pets. We have a German Sheppard/Lab mix and even the colt and filly have the bluff on her. The little Jack Russel terrier you see in the photo is our neighbors and all four ignore both dogs for the most part.

We have had three summers of rain already and if the rain stops today we are going to work on fencing more of a woods lot where we will put up some shelter before winter. The hay bags are hung in a small grove (four) of small but old cedar trees so that keeps them out of direct rain/wind.

Wagtail · Aug 11, 2013

Gale Hawkins said:
Thanks Wagtail.

The daughter got tagged by a hoof perhaps meant for the other mare and she wanted to sell her. I told her first we need to see if Silver can be a 'learning' experience.

In the process we are learning how to lead them. I think we may wait until spring to start working with a cart and wagon. The colt and filly are starting to become real pets. We have a German Sheppard/Lab mix and even the colt and filly have the bluff on her.

I never knew horses of any size were high volume fertilizer plants.

Good stuff Mate & you are very right about your daughter, and family, needing this to be a 'learning experience'. It is and there are many books on the subject. Your family are going to have to learn the nature of horses... how to be around them, interact with them and, eventually, train them.

You might look up Tom Dorrance (book: True Unity, pub 1987), in it, he talks about his response to the riders who came to him because they thought they had a horse problem. He summed it up in the phrase,'I tell them that the horse is having a "people-problem".' In other words, as far as the human is concerned, the horse may not be doing the right thing - but as far as the horse is concerned he/she always is, for self-preservation is his/her inevitable motivation. (I'm paraphrasing another author - Mary Wanless: For the Good of the Horse, pub 1997) [a VERY good book]

Other knowledgeable people to research are; Ray Hunt, John Lyons, Pat Parelli and (my favourite) Monty Roberts. You'll need to learn 'Equus' - The language of training... Probably as yet another home schooling subject.

It really is 'magic' when you and your horses start to communicate, both on the ground and in the saddle (or driving them with a cart).

As to the production of manure... that seems to me to be their primary function. And they're darn good at it! :laughing: I try to pile it up for future garden/pasture use, but sometimes I just hop on my tractor and chain-harrow the droppings in place IOT future improve the paddock.

Gale Hawkins · Aug 25, 2013

That is a good point about horses can have a people-problem.

The silver dapple can be a hand full and the daughter would sell her if her mom was not so attached to that mare. Well today the daughter washed them and said the silver dapple was the best behaved of all standing for the washing. She may be bored so we will try to work her more.

All four of us are better off in a mental/physical way due to getting the horses. I am down 20 pounds of the 75 I decided to loose working the the hay loft back in July.