Hoof Adventures & Other Equine Experiences

My worst fears have come to life...my special Moli has succumbed to the laminitis that she has so valiantly fought for over two years. My heart is heavy today, broken by the loss, but full of comforting memories at the same time. My renewed hope that we may have found an answer to providing some recovery was changed once again to disappointment on Sunday, September 12.  Moli looked comfortable, and was moving well when I released her from the small pen where she gets the portion of her meal that is not to be shared with the others.  She stepped out quickly, excited (as always) to be moving on to the second course...little piles of hay dispersed around the 2.5 acre turn out, the twice daily event that all three of my horses look forward to - like a group of excited children being released for an Easter Egg Hunt.  A couple hours later I glanced out my kitchen window to see her hobbling over to the water trough and my heart sank.  Her movement was worse than I have ever seen it and my f

There is a strange thing going on in the “pasture” these days.  The standard brown dry dusty dirt lot has more than the random pile of aromatic horse  poop – there is grass growing!  Yup!  Bonified shoots of green stuff, sprouting in happy little clumps all over the 2+ acres that make up the horses’ turn out.  Mostly on what I think of “Moli’s side” of the area, but there are traces throughout.  I’m not talking about blowing in the wind, knee high, ready to bale grass – but there is a definite green hue to the ground.   We have been blessed with an abundance of rain, and I have been trying out a new method of feeding the grass hay portion of the horses’ diet.  Instead of putting the hay in the feeders I am leaving small piles all over the turn out.  I wonder, can grass grow from the small pieces that are left?  Crazy…I spent the first three years we lived here trying to grow a small patch of grass..bought new seed every year, put in a watering system, no luck. On the subject of my p