Creating my horse barn

[EarPlug]

Find a good Veterinarian now and post their phone number in the barn for emergencies. Get a health and shots checkup.

They will also advise you on feeding requirements. Feeding can and will vary based on general health, age and the quality of your pastures. It is possible that you will need to feed little or no grain/feed. Feed requirements also vary greatly with activity level.

 

[bobm6996]

The barn looks great, like the tack room. Glad to see that the horses have found a great home. I am like you, I ride once in a while, but really just like looking out in the pasture and seeing them. Our horses are very calm and friendly, they love attention. Enjoy brushing on them and seeing how much they enjoy it. We have 3 and they are quite "healthy" looking, meaning they eat well. The wife, daughters and grandkids ride them and they have been trail riding horses for several years. The comments here regarding feed are very true, a horse will eat itself to death. We give them grain twice a day, half oats and half sweet feed, but only about the equivalent of 2 or 3 big manly handfuls. They get about 2 flakes of grass/alfalfa hay in their stall at night when we put them up and we have feeders in the "sacrifice" lot that we put a bale of hay in when they are put out for the day. If the pasture is in good shape and letting them in it won't tear it up we do not give them hay because they will be eating the grass all day. We never leave them out on the pasture at night because we have a very rich pasture and they would end up sick. They primarily need two things; access to clean water and forage, feed is great, but if they have good pasture they can get by without it.
We will be moving this year from our 4 acres to 15 acres, building a new house and horse barn and giving them a 5 acre pasture compared to about 1.5 acre they have now. Can't wait to see how happy they will be and there will be a lot more room to ride without having to leave the property.

 

[ultrarunner]

When my brother bought his place it came with an old horse that had 50 acres to roam... horse belonged to a now deceased friend of the previous owners.

Old Maggie loves kids and if you have a carrot or apple she will be your friend for life... she is 18 and only forages... no supplements and the only item provided is water from the spring... she's been living this life for 5 years.

The local vet looks in on her from time to time as she was somehow related to the horses original owner...

It's amazing at how well she does living the natural life and good she can live out her days...

My brother's 3 steads are Rush Creek Arabs and raised on the prairie free to roam until needed for the cattle operation and they have much less space because he will not put them in the big area due to have t-post and barb wire...

 

[EddieWalker]

Thanks again for all the great advice and insight.

The horses have about 4 acres of grass that's just starting to come in. There are some pretty good sections of it that Oscar has tore up and another area that we cleared of trees and I graded with the dozer that was planted last year and is still pretty thin with grass. They spent the first four days eating constantly. Today they have stopped eating non stop and have begun to play, run around and seem to be just watching what's going on around them. Karen went for a run around the outside of the fence. Four laps and they ran along with her the whole time. Seeing them just take off and run for no reason got her to thinking about going for the run. We've also cut down on the extras. Four small piles spread out in the trough that they all eat together and finish up in a few minutes.

Eddie

 

[tcreeley]

Read up on founder, colic. Bute is good for inflammation and pain - vet sells it. Good luck.

 

[/pine]

Very enjoyable thread to date...! (typical for E.W.)
Personally I know nothing about horses other than they like sugar cubes and apples...

Have a cousin in the Timpson/Tenaha area that's a hotshot calf roper...

 

[tallyho8]

Eddie, my stalls are covered with 3/4 treated plywood coated with brown Halt Cribbing coating and though they are 10 years old now the plywood is in great shape and has not been chewed or kicked through. My experience is that horses only kick walls when locked in and will not kick in run-ins like you have. The brown coating is an excellent wood preservative besides also keeping the horses from chewing and looks pretty nice in the stalls but since yours are painted now this coating is out of the question.

I have seen horses easily kick through 1/2 plywood but 3/4 is much harder and nearly impossible (not impossible) for most horses to kick through.

I covered my hay storage stall with treated 3/4 plywood and was one sheet short and used a sheet of untreated that I had and it lasted 2 years before termites destroyed it. Hopefully, you don't have the termite problem we have down in south Louisiana.

 

[EddieWalker]

Termites are bad here. I'm hoping I'll be already because I have all the wood sitting on concrete.

Worse case is that I just have to do it again!!!

Eddie

 

[mark02tj]

Barn looks great, Eddie!

And now that you have horses, maybe you can teach them to dance! :cool2::dance1::cool2::dance1:

From what I can find, the video was shot at S. Padre Island, so there's a good chance it's a Texan horse! They might be teaching it to two-step to some Jerry Jeff Walker music instead of Billy Ray Cyrus! :thumbsup::laughing:

 

[EddieWalker]

Woke up to a big surprise today. I was in my truck, leaving for work when I noticed something odd about the horses. There where five of them instead of 4!!!!! Bell was pregnant and we knew it was coming, but for whatever reason, we thought we had another month.

Best guess is that our new baby is a girl.