Re: Goodbye FjordHorse List
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah Steve McIlree wrote: All good things must come to an end. Some of us have been here since March 29, 1998 and a few have arrived only recently. However I have come to the conclusion that the traffic on the list has dwindled to the point that it no longer makes any sense for me to continue to fund it. So when the current year's server subscription runs out, the FjordHorse List will be no more. Well, danged! But, that seems to be the way things are going---my favorite lists drying up, my favorite magazines getting thinner or going out of business I was almost an original member---got my invitation and subscribed on March 30, 1998, introduced myself on March 31. Back then, we had 3 Fjords, two of which we rode fairly regularly; now I'm down to only one old retired gelding---not much to write about, any more, although I have continued to enjoy reading others' stories. Technology flows forward, and although I find the current offerings of social media to be somewhat of a black hole for people's time, I am in the minority like the Luddites of the 19th century. For that reason, I must say goodbye to all of you who I have come to know online, because I will continue to refuse to become enmeshed in either Facebook or Twitter. I'm with you there, too---no Facebook for me. It has been a pleasure sitting around Steve's "kitchen table" and chatting with my Fjord friends all these years. Thank you, Steve, for starting and maintaining this list!!! Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- han...@ai.sri.com anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon Important FjordHorse List Links: Subscription Management: http://tinyurl.com/5msa7e FH-L Archives: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw FH_L Shirts: http://tinyurl.com/8yky94l
re: Fjord Minds
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah "me.kint" wrote: can Our Fjords read our minds? That's one of those things that is hard to prove (or disprove), but can generate a heated discussion! I know that, in one of Lynn Miller's books, he advances the idea---he had had some experiences that he could only explain by one horse of a draft team "hearing" what he was thinking. There have been a few instances where our Fjords seemed to be "reading minds"! Of our equines, my old Nansy mare had the best "connection" to me. I recall one of our early rides on old ranch roads; I was mentally debating whether to turn back at the creek, or the fork in the road, vs going to the meadow. Nansy, who had been going along quietly, stopped abruptly, and tried to turn around---expressing the opinion that, if we were going to go home on the same route, we might as well do it now. I thereupon decided that, since **I** was in charge, we were going to the furthest point on my list. She gave me some old-mare attitude about it---not fighting the turn, but not responding to my go-forward cues. So, I mentally pictured us in the meadow, pictured myself dismounting, and pictured her grazing there. She considered the idea, gave up her "objections", and we had a quiet ride to the meadow, where I made good on my "promise" of some grazing. Hmmm Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- han...@ai.sri.com anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon Important FjordHorse List Links: Subscription Management: http://tinyurl.com/5msa7e FH-L Archives: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw FH_L Shirts: http://tinyurl.com/8yky94l
Fjordhorse age
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah The question has come up as to how old the FJORDHORSE list is. Being an "electronic packrat", I rummaged around in my stored email. There I found a message from Steve, dated 30 March 1998, inviting me to join his newly-formed list. I did, and have been on it (with a brief interruption when we moved to Oregon) ever since. Thanks, Steve! Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- han...@ai.sri.com anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon Important FjordHorse List Links: Subscription Management: http://tinyurl.com/5msa7e FH-L Archives: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw FH_L Shirts: http://tinyurl.com/8yky94l
[WARNING - NOT VIRUS SCANNED] Re: bring it back
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah Steve McIlree wrote: I certainly wish we could "bring back" the List. Whenever I have to renew the mail server or the URL I wonder if I should just pull the plug, but then it seems we always have a flurry of activity like we are now experiencing and I let it live. Well, many thanks for starting the list, and for continuing it! Knowing something was decidedly wrong, Teddy retraced my path from the feeders to the hay barn hoping to find where I had undoubtedly dropped the alfalfa. Some of them do try to "solve the problem for themselves". Tank [...] marched across the pasture to where I was standing. He stopped directly in front of me, lifted his nose until it was just inches from mine, and stared straight into my eyes as if to say, "Where the is our alfalfa!" LOL! Others "take it up with Management". My old Nansy mare had a behavior that we referred to as us "being picketed by the Horse Union". When things weren't suiting her (e.g. Room Service was being slow), she would circle in her stall, whuffling under her breath and bumping the stall door with her shoulder on each circuit. We could sort of envision her holding a signboard over her shouder, reading "Management unfair to Horses" stomped back to the feeders and started to eat his inadequate breakfast. Yup, Fjord alright---let nothing interfere with eating. ;-) Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- han...@ai.sri.com anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon Important FjordHorse List Links: Subscription Management: http://tinyurl.com/5msa7e FH-L Archives: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw FH_L Shirts: http://tinyurl.com/8yky94l
Re: Bring it back
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah Count me among those who "don't do" Facebook, et.al! I continue to read FJORDHORSE, just don't have a lot to say. My only remaining Fjord, my gelding Sleepy, is thoroughly retired---he will be 29 this summer. He has Cushings and is on Prascend. He's not really shedding a lot yet, but at least this year, he has what I would consider a Fjord-normal winter coat. Some years, he looked like a yak, and had Clydesdale-like feathering on his legs! Since starting him on Prascend, I have seen a marked decrease in hoof abcesses, and he's not losing his molars as fast. (He eats hay pellets, and shredded hay, plus 90 minutes of pasture access per day.) He shares his barn with my pinto donkey, who will be 34 this spring; I think her eyesight is dimming, which has made her VERY spooky! Interestingly, when we lived in coastal California, my 3 Fjords would start shedding between Solstice and New Years. When we moved to SW Oregon, they started shedding later. My suspicion is that they are keying off of absolute day length---whenever the days get the right length for "spring in Norway", they shed. ;-) Sorry to hear that others are losing favorite Fjords. Been there, and "it's no fun". Hugs Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- han...@ai.sri.com anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon Important FjordHorse List Links: Subscription Management: http://tinyurl.com/5msa7e FH-L Archives: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw FH_L Shirts: http://tinyurl.com/8yky94l
Re: Fjord Crossbreeding
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah Amy Evers wrote: Yes, there have been a VERY few cases of mare mules having foals. Something like a 1 in 100,000 chance, or there-about. I have always heard that if this does happen, the resulting foal would be genetically pure either horse or donkey depending on what the mule was bred by. Not sure if that's true, but it's what I have been told... I guess it's something about the genes matching up. My other equine is a donkey, so I've been following the "fertile mule" articles in the American Donkey and Mule Society's publications for many years. There are occasional reports of a molly (mare mule) having a foal---I can think of 3 that were reported in the past 30 years (US, China, and somewhere in northern Africa). The one in the US was studied extensively---genetically, she was a mule, and her offspring (two, by her donkey father, whom she was pastured with, because everyone said "of course mules aren't fertile"!) were also genetically mules. There was a famous fertile mule back in about the 1930's, I think. When bred to a donkey, she produced what appeared to be mules, and when bred to a horse, the foal appeared to be a horse (although was not fertile). So, that would say that the "fertile mule" had chromosomes that were horse-like, rather than mule-like. As I recall, the original prohibition against Fjord mules came about when zebra hybrids were popular. Fjords were seen as an excellent "canvas" on which to "paint" the zebra stripes. This offended some folks in the Fjord bureaucracy, so they threw out the useful Fjord mules with the "designer" Fjord "zorses". All this did was guarantee that mule breeders would use unregistered (or Canadian, or FBA) Fjords---the fastest way to get a mule man to do something is to tell him that he can't. ;-) Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- han...@ai.sri.com anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon Important FjordHorse List Links: Subscription Management: http://tinyurl.com/5msa7e FH-L Archives: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw FH_L Shirts: http://tinyurl.com/8yky94l
Re: Fjord Smarts
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah Steve McIlree wrote ...Tank whinnied pitifully, "Please come and save me!" I went to where he was standing to find he had managed to stick his hoof through one of the lower openings in the field fencing which surrounds the pasture. He had been standing patiently for some time, waiting for rescue. He gave me total control of his foot and I was able to easily get it back through the fence with absolutely no harm to his leg. We've had 3 Fjords, and each of them exhibited that behavior at least once. My old mare, Nansy, for whatever reason, decided to walk out onto a cattleguard, and slid in, up to the knees of both front legs. She just stood there, until I noticed her, walked up to check out the situation, returned to the house to call for help, then sat there with her while my husband (30 minutes away, at work) contacted neighbors. The first neighbor tried to hack-saw the cattleguard bar out---too tough. The second neighbor brought an oxy-acetylene torch. He lit it cautiously; Nansy flattened her ears at the sound, but stood quietly. It took some fiddling around to cut the bars without burning her; once the hole was enlarged, I simply told her "back!"; she half-reared, pivoted, and came down on solid ground. The neighbor wanted to know, "What kind of horses are these?!?" My husband's gelding, Rom, managed to hook his halter noseband on the hose bib next to their water tub (scratching his nose, in the 5 seconds that it took my husband to take the halter off of the other gelding). But, Rom just stood there, even when my husband yelled at him and swatted him to move over---Rom was stuck blocking the stall doorway, so hubby had to go out another door, and around, to free Rom. My gelding, Sleepy, didn't come into his stall for breakfast one morning, so I went into the corral---to find him wearing a cinder block stuck on one hoof. (It had been a gate prop block, left nearby when the gate was closed; apparently Sleepy pawed at it to get one more blade of grass behind it.) I went to get a hammer; Sleepy carefully clomped into his stall behind me, with his not-so-easy boot. I had to bust the cinder block to remove it; the hoof had a only few cosmetic scratches on the surface. My vet once arrived late for an appointment, saying that the emergency of the day was sewing up a horse that had lost an argument with a board fence. She then commented that the only thing she saw my equines for was routine maintenance, and complemented me on my "nice safe fences". I looked at her, and pointed out that I had barbed wire, on T-posts, with cattleguards. I also had nice, safe HORSES The neighbor who gave us riding lessons (whose tastes ran to Arabs, TBs, and crosses thereof) opined that we had probably ought not own any breed other than Fjords. She said they had us spoiled, and had let us slip into laid-back horsekeeping habits that would get us or our horses killed with "normal" breeds! OTOH, my pinto donkey has also had a couple instances of getting hung up, then standing there patiently with an "Oops---um, Mom, could you fix this..." look. Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- han...@ai.sri.com anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon Important FjordHorse List Links: Subscription Management: http://tinyurl.com/5msa7e FH-L Archives: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw FH-L Shirts: http://tinyurl.com/8yky94l
Re: postings
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah Steve McIlree wrote: Then we need to isolate the bad receiver. If anyone not using a flavor of Outlook is seeing the bad characters, please pipe up. My computer speaks Linux; my email reading program is RMAIL, which is part of the EMACS text editor. I basically see all emails as the raw character stream. Increasingly, I am getting more emails (not just on this list) with strings of "unprintable" characters (which RMAIL presents to me as, for example, /240 i.e the character "/", followed by the octal code for the character that is not in the standard ASCII 7-bit character set). Apostrophes seem to be the worst offenders, but back-quote, full-quote, and some hyphens come out as multiple (usually 3) unprintable characters. I'm guessing that these are codes to some text-processing program, which the "fancier" newer mailers think they need to use. IMHO, the solution is for folks to use the "plain text" mode, whenever possible. Or, maybe Steve can tweak his filter to throw away any character with an octal code greater than /200. Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- han...@ai.sri.com anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon Important FjordHorse List Links: Subscription Management: http://tinyurl.com/5msa7e FH-L Archives: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw FH-L Shirts: http://tinyurl.com/8yky94l
Roundup'ing
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah jeanne.mil...@pnc.com wrote: I wanted to ask how long do you keep your horses off pasture after spraying Roundup?? It depends Roundup seems to be quite "tasty"---if given a chance, my equines (a donkey and Fjords) will seek out areas that have recently been sprayed and nibble off the sprayed leaves. Roundup isn't particularly "dangerous" to equines, but it is expensive (both $ and the body aches that result from applying it with a backpack sprayer). If the plants haven't had adequate time to absorb the spray, the equine nibbling will negate the effects of spraying. In decent weather, I like to give the spray about 7 days to be absorbed, and the plants start to die. This time of year, it may be much longer---however long it takes the plants to start to turn that characteristic yellow-orange color. (Yeah, I know that a lot of you can't find the weeds for your snow. Here in "wetter'n" Oregon, the weeds are already doing altogether too well.) Another thing to note. Many toxic plants, when green and growing, taste bad enough that equines don't mess with them. When sprayed with Roundup, or even just hoe'd off, the dying/dead plants become more palatable, yet still toxic. Some things just plain need to be physically removed from the pasture before equines are turned back out there. Know thy weeds Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- han...@ai.sri.com anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon Important FjordHorse List Links: Subscription Management: http://tinyurl.com/5msa7e FH-L Archives: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw Classified Ads: http://tinyurl.com/5b5g2f
Re: Electric horse fencing
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah Kelly Trirogoff wrote: Winter has been relatively mild this year in Qualicum, BC, Canada... [...] I come to you all with a question regarding electric fencing...We have had our fence in place for 3 years, and I have never been satisfied with it...Where we live it is rocky and sandy...We were never able to get the grounding poles in the full 10 feet. [...] I am concerned about the charge for the electric fence...Is there another way that the fence can be grounded so the charge can go further...Also the fence is only at it's strongest when the ground is very wet...as it dries out it gets weaker and weaker. [...] I know I am kind of rambling, but this stuff is greek to me, so if I don't fully understand it [...] Or does anyone have a good site I can look at...I tried looking up "simple horse fencing" and easy fencing instructions... Contact: Premier 1 2031 300th St Washington, IA 52353 1-800-282-6631 or 319-653-7622 www.premier1supplies.com i...@premier1supplies.com Ask them to send you a copy of their catalog, "Fences that Work---from folks who use them...every day!" It covers the fencing requirements for various species (horses, cattle, sheep, chickens) and how to keep predators out (from pasture or garden). Interspersed around the info on their products are very good tutorials on how electric fencing works, various ways (with detailed illustrations) to construct fences, troubleshooting, etc. Their products are very high quality---not cheap, but they last. And, the company has always been helpful on the phone when I had questions. As others have mentioned, in your situation, it is important to keep the ground moist, especially around the ground rods (Premier recommends at least 3 rods). And, you'll probably want to use a "positive/negative" fence, where only half of the wires are "hot", and the intervening ones are "grounded". That way, the animal gets shocked when he simultaneously touches a hot and a grounded wire, rather than depending on hoof-to-ground-to-grounding-rod to "complete the circuit" and deliver the shock. Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- han...@ai.sri.com anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon Important FjordHorse List Links: Subscription Management: http://tinyurl.com/5msa7e FH-L Archives: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw Classified Ads: http://tinyurl.com/5b5g2f
Re: Responses to starting under saddle
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah > Kathleen Prince wrote: > > You all agree I need to wait and let my girl mature > physically and mentally. My gut had been telling me that but I felt a > bit of pressure from outside sources. Since I'm so new in the horse > world it's sometimes easy to be confused by what those with much more > experience say. The idea of teaching her to drive is excellent! Well, maybe. All of the comments that were made about mental maturity apply as much, or maybe even MORE, to driving as to riding. When you're riding, you are right there, with the animal, "supporting" it (mentally) with your legs wrapped around it. For driving, the animal is out there in front, "all alone", which can be overwhelming to a young animal. The physical contact of riding also allows you to better read what the animal is about to do, hence make minor corrections in a timely manner; it is much harder to "see what is coming" when driving, so the mistakes tend to be bigger, hence the corrections bigger---which can upset an emotionally immature equine. Also, driving (actually pulling something) puts a fair amount of stress on the hocks, which mature even later than the knees. Now, it's fine to begin the preliminary training for driving (learning to wear harness, learning voice commands, learning to ground drive, etc), but I would postpone actually hitching her to anything until at least 3 years old, and any real work (such as driving on sand) until 4. Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- han...@ai.sri.com anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon Important FjordHorse List Links: Subscription Management: http://tinyurl.com/5msa7e FH-L Archives: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw Classified Ads: http://tinyurl.com/5b5g2f
Re: oz does a clinic
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah crystal...@aol.com wrote: i realized, after it was all done, that i have now been riding for almost 9 years. i guess it's time i stop thinking of myself as a rank beginning and accept that i do know something about what i am doing. now i just need to apply it with confidence and we will both improve. laurie, and oz LOL! Then there are those, like me, who are "experienced beginners"---I've been "practicing my mistakes" for nearly 30 years, now. ;-) Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- han...@ai.sri.com anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon Important FjordHorse List Links: Subscription Management: http://tinyurl.com/5msa7e FH-L Archives: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw Classified Ads: http://tinyurl.com/5b5g2f
Re: magazine cover & hock question
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah Interesting---I got an error message, "Sender IP address not resolving" on the version of this message that I sent earlier today. So, let's try my other mailer. Apologies if this comes thru twice sandra church wrote: while in Tractor Supply today, I saw a CUTE fjord on the cover of the Jan. 2010 cover of Horse Illustrated. [...] I didn't have time (or my reading glasses) to locate any info in the magazine about the cover photo. LOL! Well, if you found such photo credits, it'd be a first! Horse Illustrated is notorious for NOT describing their photos. I need some advice about my 19 yr. old Loki. His hocks have been bothering him (arthritis) [...] I can easily retire him to hang out for the rest of his life but I was wondering if he might still be comfortable being driven? [...] is driving a horse easier on their hocks than riding? I'm guessing that it is Unfortunately, no---from what I've read, driving tends to be hard on the hocks. Think about the "power train" required to engage the hindquarters to PUSH forward on the collar (whether breastcollar, or neck collar). Ditto for the stresses required to plant the hind feet, to stop the vehicle via breeching. It takes sound hocks to do both. OTOH, I can tell you from experience that retired, somewhat arthritic Fjords make great "pasture pets", a.k.a. "teddy ponies". ;-) Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- han...@ai.sri.com anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon Important FjordHorse List Links: Subscription Management: http://tinyurl.com/5msa7e FH-L Archives: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw Classified Ads: http://tinyurl.com/5b5g2f
Re: rideability
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah > Gail Russell wrote: > > I believe there are some lines of the sweet, draft Fjords that are > "born to bolt." I have no idea why, but I think it may be true. I > saw a video recently of a Fjord for sale. The horse had a look in > his eye that led me to believe that he was a "born to bolt" Fjord. > I looked at the pedigree, and it had the bloodlines that I > suspected. Hmmm, I'm not sure that I want to start publicly "dis"-cussing such bloodlines, although I AM curious However, there are a couple of possibilities. Years ago, we bought a gelding, R, who we soon discovered had a bunch of behavioral quirks, the most distressing of which was bolting. Some time later, I had an extended e-conversation with the new owner of R's sire. Interestingly, for every quirk of R's that I mentioned, she had a similar story about his sire. Some aspects of their temperaments were clearly inherited (R never met his sire, and had been sold in-utero by the original stallion owner). A couple years after R's purchase, we bought a gelding, S, and while shopping, had also tried out his 3/4-brother, T (same sire; dams were mother/daughter; they were born 2 months apart, and spent the first 4 years of their lives together, as they moved thru 4 owners). T was bunchy, and clearly just barely holding things together (windy day, laundry flapping on the clothesline). Given my negative experiences with R, I asked the seller to head T so I could get off safely, and said "no thanks". OTOH, S was "Mr Steady Eddy"---totally at ease with that windy situation, calmly doing what he was told. The most obvious difference between them was conformation. S had fairly good "definition" to his back and withers, which meant he could be comfortable in more types of saddles. T (like R!!!), was an "oil drum with legs"---very flat back, low withers, round barrel. Many saddles "poke" behind the shoulder blades on such conformation, and indeed, we had to get R a custom-made saddle (which did improve his rideability). Conformation can also be inherited, although clearly these two closely-related Fjords had gotten different pieces of their parents' conformation genes. Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- han...@ai.sri.com anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon Important FjordHorse List Links: Subscription Management: http://tinyurl.com/5msa7e FH-L Archives: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw Classified Ads: http://tinyurl.com/5b5g2f
Re: rideability
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah > Anthea Thacker wrote: > > I'm new to the list and Fjords and was wondering how they ride? > I've had some horse people tell me that Fjords ride like a pony - > very jarring. It's an individual thing. My old Nansy mare had a glass-smooth trot and a rocking-chair canter---lovely to ride. My husband's gelding, Rom, had a jack-hammer trot and a "can I bolt now" canter that we didn't use much. Try before you buy Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- han...@ai.sri.com anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon Important FjordHorse List Links: Subscription Management: http://tinyurl.com/5msa7e FH-L Archives: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw Classified Ads: http://tinyurl.com/5b5g2f
Re: rubbing off his halter
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah > crystal...@aol.com wrote: > > does anyone have a solution for this? oz can remove any halter and/or > grazing muzzle. [...] most times i find them at the base of a tree > where he rubs them off, but he's often seen with one ear out of the top > strap, and you just know it's going to go missing. > > laurie, and oz the naked, and gizmo, who keeps his clothes on, too A similar discussion comes up from time to time, regarding how to keep a bridle from being rubbed off. One possibility is adding a "throat collar"---a common nylon dog collar (it'd take two big ones, buckled end-to-end, or a cow collar, to reach around a Fjord throat!) installed at the throatlatch. Then, you run the poll strap of the halter under the collar, at the top of the neck, or otherwise tie the halter to the collar. This, of course, defeats the concept of a break-away halter---i.e. the animal could get the collar hung up. OTOH, given Fjord strength, my guess is that a break-away halter (or collar) would merely be regarded as a challenge---let's see how long it takes me to lose this! And, my experience with Fjords is that, if they do get hung up on something solid, they'll simply stop and wait for help. Of course, if you put a cow collar on him, you can simply teach him to lead by the collar (all of mine do, and can be tied up that way as well), and forget about the halter. I find it quite useful to be able to lead an equine a short distance by just draping a rope over the neck, and holding both sides of it---good training for the critter to have, anyway. Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- han...@ai.sri.com anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon Important FjordHorse List Links: Subscription Management: http://tinyurl.com/5msa7e FH-L Archives: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw Classified Ads: http://tinyurl.com/5b5g2f
Re: those special fjord gaits . . .
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah > "safreivald" wrote: > > the grass is really really high along the fields where I can ride/drive and > which I have to navigate to get to the woods. Mr. Venn has perfected the > grazing walk and the grazing trot--not hard when the grass comes half way up > his head! Has anyone developed a "muzzle" that is light and open for > breathing, doesn't interfer with bit or reins and keeps the grass out of the > mouth? I think there may be a niche market here. I've played around with a > few things, but don't have anything really satisfactory yet. My Norwegian Fjord gelding (riding horse) spent part of his youth as a packhorse, so had become very adept at "in-flight refueling". I tried a variety of advice (smack him with a crop when he grabs, drive him forward, etc); nothing kept him from snacking his way down the trail. I finally made him a "trail muzzle"---sort of a nose-bag (made out of fiberglas window screen mesh, edged with cotton binder tape), which tied to his bridle; there were slots down the sides, so it fit around his bit. He could still get a drink thru it, and it didn't hamper his breathing (unless it got sneezed on a lot, then collected too much dust!), but he couldn't put food into his mouth. After a few tries at grazing, he would usually give up, and go down the trail a lot more politely. If I were doing it over, I'd probably make the muzzle out of fly-mask mesh, which is sturdier. Part of why the design worked so well was that his bit was a little too long (he needed a 5-3/4", but I could only find 6"), so I had a set of rubber bit guards on it, to take up the excess length. That kept the sides of the mesh (around the bit slot) away from his lips---less chance for a rub, and less chance he'd figure out how to eat the muzzle! Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- han...@ai.sri.com anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon Important FjordHorse List Links: Subscription Management: http://tinyurl.com/5msa7e FH-L Archives: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw Classified Ads: http://tinyurl.com/5b5g2f
Re: perennial wildflower seeds for horse pastures??
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah > "Debby" wrote: > > Anyone know a great source of wildflower seeds, for horse specific > pastures. I'd found one, but thought I'd see if anyone on the list > had a reputable catalog/company they purchased from. And what > wildflower seeds many like. Proceed with caution. I've found that some of the wildflower seeds sold locally contain things that are not native to this area. In the catalog, the description just says they "will naturalize well", which is a polite way of saying that once it's planted, you'll have a hard time getting rid of it---which is the basic description of an invasive weed! Other wildflower seed mixes contain things that are actually poisonous to livestock, like larkspur and lupine. Make sure that whatever you buy has a list of what "wildflowers" are actually in it, then research each one, to see if it's really something you want your "eats anything" equines to have in their pastures. Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- han...@ai.sri.com anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon Where common pasture "wildflowers" include feral daffodils and lawn daisies! Important FjordHorse List Links: Subscription Management: http://tinyurl.com/5msa7e FH-L Archives: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw Classified Ads: http://tinyurl.com/5b5g2f
Re: Feeding fjords
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah > spiek...@isu.edu wrote: > > Use a bathroom scale if you don't have anything else.� get on the scale, > weight yourself.� get off and pick up your� hay ration and get back on.� The > weight of the hay, within about a half pound, is the difference between the > two. Before anyone relies on that method, I would strongly recommend that they first check how accurate their bathroom scales are in that mode! We got an Aussie puppy this year, so I was weighing her regularly. At first, I just put her onto our bathroom scale, and that was fine. One day, she was being wiggly, so I picked her up, weighed us, then weighed me. The difference was 15 lb, which was significantly less than she had weighed the previous week, so I managed to get her on the scale alone---21 lb! Being of a scientific bent, I got an unopened 15-lb bag of puppy kibble, weighed it on a good kitchen scale (15.5 lb), weighed it alone on the bathroom scale (16 lb), and by the delta method (12 lb). Obviously, my scale is not "linear" in its response to weight. Your mileage may vary Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- han...@ai.sri.com anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon Important FjordHorse List Links: Subscription Management: http://tinyurl.com/5msa7e FH-L Archives: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw Classified Ads: http://tinyurl.com/5b5g2f
Re: Feeding fjords
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah > Barbara wrote: > > on this weighing of hay. What do you all use for a scale I'm > guessing some sort of a hanging scale but would love more detail on > how you do it. Barb Midddleage Spread Eagle Creek OR I have done it a couple of ways. I first got a baby scale, which had a 25-lb capacity, and sort of a "cradle" on the top. I sometimes just laid a flake of hay on it, or put the hay into a xerox-paper box lid, or a paper grocery bag. However, that scale wasn't really robust enough for barn use---the plastic cradle eventually broke, where it attached to the scale. I now use an ordinary kitchen scale, again with 25-lb capacity. I also use a firewood carrier---a rectangle of canvas, maybe 24x48", with 2 dowels in pockets sewn on each end as a handle. I first put the empty carrier on the scale and zero'd the scale to that weight. Then, I add hay to the carrier, and put it back on the scale, adjust the hay, reweigh, iterate. Either of these types of (analog) scales might be had at garage sales. My baby scale had been sitting on the very-top shelf in the hardware store for years, and they were happy to make me a deal on it. The kitchen scale came out of my mother's estate. Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- han...@ai.sri.com anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon Important FjordHorse List Links: Subscription Management: http://tinyurl.com/5msa7e FH-L Archives: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw Classified Ads: http://tinyurl.com/5b5g2f
Re: Hay ... Quantity?
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah > Heather Baskey wrote: > > Henry [...] is now at a farm which feeds square bales [...] The > Barn Manager asked me how much to feed him.� She currently feeds > horses in that paddock, 1 bale of hay per day per horse. [...] > feedback on the quantity that you feed?� is it per pound? per flake? > per bale? > > Henry is a large, draft Fjord model and is still growing (he won't > be 3 until the end of May). The baseline hay ration for most horses is 2% of body weight, per day. So, for a 1000-lb horse, that would be 20 lb of hay. I'm of the opinion that for most Fjords, the baseline is more like 1.5% of body weight. IMHO, "bales" and "flakes" are very "flakey" units of measure! In California, the 3-wire square bales that I bought weighed anywhere from 90 lb (over-cured meadow grass) to 150 lb (alfalfa). Here in Oregon, I get 2-string bales that weigh anywhere from 40 to 55 lb (grass hay). Even at the light end of those bales, a bale per horse per day is REALLY overfeeding---unless the feeding situation is such that the horses trample, hence waste, a lot of hay. As to flakes, well, I've seen bales that gave me 2-lb flakes off of one end, and 7-lb flakes off of the other---so much depends on the texture of the hay, the speed at which the tractor moved with the baler, etc. Needless to say, I weigh my hay! My equines (2 Fjord geldings and a standard donkey) get fed hay at somewhere around 1% of body weight per day, plus an hour of pasture time (plus enough alfalfa pellets to "carry" their supplements). When they're completely hand-fed, I aim for 1.5% of body weight. Now, these are elderly retirees (the youngest is 23), who don't do much but lounge around in their dry lots, and gain weight on high-calorie air. For a younger, growing animal, or one in moderate work, more hay or some supplemental feed (pellets, grain, whatever) might be needed. > So, we decided to start with the other horses' regiment and if too > much, we can cut back. That's a good start. I would suggest that you take up measuring Henry's girths---both heart-girth (just behind the withers and elbow), and rib-girth (at the widest part of the ribs) about once a week, at the same time of day, with him in the same stance. (I do mine with a narrow carpenter's tape, first thing in the morning, just after I put the hay into their feed tubs, while they've got their heads down, eating.) Record these numbers in a notebook or on a calendar. They'll "wiggle" around a little, so you'll need to look for trends--- up several weeks in a row, or down several. Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- han...@ai.sri.com anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon Important FjordHorse List Links: Subscription Management: http://tinyurl.com/5msa7e FH-L Archives: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw Classified Ads: http://tinyurl.com/5b5g2f
Re: hog panels
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah > "Willows Edge Farm" wrote: > > Anyone have experience using hog panels for fencing??? > > Corinne Logan I've not used "hog" panels as such, although I have used a couple types of "cattle" panels (older ones were 4x8" mesh, vs 6x8" mesh on current ones, both 52" tall) and what were called "bull" panels (4x4" mesh, 60" tall). My recollection is that "hog" panels are quite short (under 36"?), which wouldn't be particularly useful for equines. Cattle panels worked OK for containing my donkey when she was alone. I used bull panels (on wooden posts) on the corrals for my Fjords in California, but had problems with them. We were in an area with lots of ticks, and the Fjords soon learned to "sit" on the fence and waggle their butts, to scratch those otherwise unreachable itches, to the point that the fences started to lean. I had to install a line of hot wire at butt-height, to protect the fences. They still managed to rub on one end post enough to break the post, and broke some of the welds holding the bull panels together. I also had one "wreck" with the bull panels. As near as I could figure, the donkey pawed a trench next to the fence, apparently while using her shoulder to push the panel outward (frustrated that someone else was on pasture, and she wasn't). She then must have left her hoof in the trench, but removed her shoulder, allowing the panel to spring back toward her, then tried to remove her hoof from the now-narrower hole. One of the upright rods (which protrude below the bottom horizontal rod) of the panel dug into the hairline of her hoof, making a T-shaped tear in her upper hoof wall when she jerked her hoof out of this "trap". That took a year to grow out, but fortunately left no permanent damage. I had some "temporary" corral fences made with cattle panels on T-posts. The Fjords (probably mostly Sleepy) managed to rub or "walk" on them sufficiently to work many of the wired connections apart. They then walked across the now-down fence, without getting caught in it, and had a fine picnic on spring grass. We reinstalled the fence, with twice as many T-posts, AND an interior hot wire, and had no further problems. As I've said before, Sleepy has taught me a great deal about how NOT to build fences Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- han...@ai.sri.com anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon Important FjordHorse List Links: Subscription Management: http://tinyurl.com/5msa7e FH-L Archives: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw Classified Ads: http://tinyurl.com/5b5g2f
Re: Senior Feed Question
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > I need to start my 29-year-old stallion, Ivan, on Senior Feed by > Purina. While he eats moistened hay cubes and pelleted grain well, > he is starting to have some problems eating hay. To supplement > that, I want to feed the Senior Feed, but I am just not sure at what > amount to start him on. I would be extremely cautious about feeding any of the "senior" horse products to a Fjord. Years ago, I had an e-chat with the veterinary nutritionist who helped formulate Purina's Equine Senior. It was intended for elderly TBs that couldn't keep weight on ANY OTHER WAY! The breeder of my donkey put her elderly jack onto Equine Senior when his teeth started to give out, and damn near foundered him. ES has entirely too many calories, a lot of them from grains and molasses, which is NOT what most "air fern" equines (like donkeys and Fjords) need. Particularly if there is any indication of insulin resistance or Cushings. My old Nansy mare also got "tooth challenged" in her later years. I mostly fed her hay pellets (made from oat hay when we were in California, from rye grass hay here in Oregon, with some alfalfa hay pellets mixed in, in her last couple of years). I did use some Equine Senior, in lieu of grain, but not more than a pound per day. Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon Important FjordHorse List Links: Subscription Management: http://tinyurl.com/5msa7e FH-L Archives: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw Classified Ads: http://tinyurl.com/5b5g2f
Re: mangers
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > "Claudia" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I am tired of my horses wasting hay, and I'm tempted to have some > old-fashioned mangers built in, to keep some of the hay off the floor. I am > thinking of putting one big manger along one whole wall of my loose area, and > perhaps one in each stall. The slanted wood ones, fairly deep, is what I > want. The kind in old wooden tie stalls. > > I don't remember having this problem other years--they ATE their hay. So it's > possible they just don't like the hay I got this year, and therefore push it > around and waste it. I've handled feeding hay in a variety of ways. When we lived in California, two of my Fjords got their hay just tossed into a corner of their rubber-matted stall (no bedding, no feeders, and the outer door was always open to their adjoining pen); they pushed it around some, to get the best stuff first, but rarely was there any left for them to mess in. The third Fjord ate his hay out of a galvanized water tub (the oval kind, 2' wide by 4' long by 2' deep), tied to the fence of the pen, again on rubber mats. (I had 3 Fjords sharing 2 "run-in stalls".) This one invariably flipped the flake of hay around (trying to rattle out the leaves and seeds first), and usually managed to flip it out onto the rubber mats. On a windy day, some of it would blow away, but if it stayed in the pen, someone would track it down and eat it. The donkey had separate quarters, with a galvanized box feeder, mounted low on the wall (top at about 4' high). She was more opinionated about her hay---if it was particularly coarse, she'd pull the straw out onto the ground and pee in it! Oat hay (grown under irrigation) was the worst, as she'd pick off all the grain and leaves, leaving the straw. When we first moved to Oregon, their quarters were pipe-corral pens, a part of which extended into a pole barn---basically a "mare motel"; feeders were watering troughs or galvanized washtubs. Everyone soon learned to leave their hay in the feeders, as if it was out on mats, the prevailing wind would carry it away, under the fence, out of reach! Now, they're in a hybrid barn---stalls with 3 walls, but no outside wall, leading out thru a roofed "porch" to adjoining corrals. Each has a watering trough feeder (the donkey's is only 1' tall, as she was having trouble getting to the bottom of the deeper ones). For the most part, they leave the hay in their feeders. The exception is the donkey, especially if there are "bears out there" (e.g. cattle almost visible in the fog). She'll grab a big tuft of hay, go out to where she can keep an eye out for "monsters", stand there and eat most of it (dropping some), then going back for some more. But, usually, she vacuums up most of the crumbs. Granted, here the hay is better than what I could get at "hay stores" in California. We bought from a guy who does "custom farming", i.e. leases places (like ours) to run cattle or cut hay. I tell him what I want (grass, no clover, few weeds), and he tells me when he has successfully baled an appropriate field. First cutting can sometimes be over-mature and a little strawy by the time the fields dry up enough to cut it; second cutting (grown under irrigation) is cut when it's all leaf. Usually, if my equines leave any of either, it's because of a spot of mold or "mystery meat". I rake it out and leave it where I'd like them to pee; that works for the donkey, less so for the 2 Fjord geldings. It is probably relevant that I feed hay at about 1% of body weight per day (i.e. the 400 lb donkey gets 4 lb of hay, divided into 2 meals), NO grain (a small amount of alfalfa hay pellets, to "carry" supplements), plus 1 hour of pasture time. I.e. mine are always hungry, so the hay goes away. (They're also always fat, so they don't need any more.) Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon Important FjordHorse List Links: Subscription Management: http://tinyurl.com/5msa7e FH-L Archives: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw Classified Ads: http://tinyurl.com/5b5g2f
Re: Names
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > "M. Denmark" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Can someone please help me figure out what the reference or name "Purdy" > comes from as relating to fjords? As you look up in the NFHR registration > search there a numerous references in lineages to "Purdy mare". Does Purdy > mean something in Norwegian or what? > Milli Ann The short version is that circa 1965, Robert Purdy (28 Ranch, Buffalo, Wyoming) acquired several Fjords that had been imported from Norway in the late 50's and early 60's. He bred Fjords until about 1974. After his death, his herd was dispersed without adequate documentation. (No Fjord registries existed in the US until the late 70's.) In some cases, owners had hand-written pedigrees, or word-of-mouth ones; in other cases, there were conflicting stories, or reconstructed guess-timates of ages and pedigrees. So, there were lots of what everyone agreed were pure Fjords out there whose pedigrees were "well, Purdy bred her, and I'm pretty sure Solvfast was her father, but we're not sure which mare dropped that filly". Hence the notation, "dam unknown (Purdy mare)". Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon Important FjordHorse List Links: Subscription Management: http://tinyurl.com/5msa7e FH-L Archives: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw Classified Ads: http://tinyurl.com/5b5g2f
Calendar photos
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Our driving club's order of the Mischka Press driving calendar arrived today. "Mr December" is Phil Odden, with a big photo of his "pair" to a bobsled in a light snowstorm, and a smaller photo of the same horses to one of his carved sleighs, on a sunny afternoon. Lookin' good! Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon Important FjordHorse List Links: Subscription Management: http://tinyurl.com/5msa7e FH-L Archives: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw Classified Ads: http://tinyurl.com/5b5g2f
Re: Ballot for new logo
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > [EMAIL PROTECTED] quoted/wrote: > > > ballot for the new logo that was supposed to be with > > the BOD ballot. > > I don't think they were sent. I sure didn't get one either Check the NFHR web site. The BOD has put off voting on the logo, to give time to attempt to incorporate some of the suggestions folks made. Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon Important FjordHorse List Links: Subscription Management: http://tinyurl.com/5msa7e FH-L Archives: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw Classified Ads: http://tinyurl.com/5b5g2f
Re: Grabb / Sverre
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > "Willows Edge Farm" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Having quite a bit of Grabb in our background, I am curious to know about > Sverre ... one of his great-grandsons. We have two mares that are daughter > and grand-daughter (but not mare & foal), who both have absolutely stunning > heads. Is this part of the Sverre lineage? Don't know about the Grabb part of his background, but Sverre 228-B had even more Solvfast in his pedigree, mostly thru King Harald. Sverre was somewhat closely bred (his dam and paternal grandsire were full siblings), which would tend to concentrate things. I owned his paternal grandmother, Nansy, for 15 years (more close breeding---her only grandfather was Solvfast). No one would have mistaken her for an Arab, but she certainly had a GREAT temperament! > my mare Elsie Rose > .. that when shed out and clipped has almost an "old" style Arabian type > head/ears. When non-Fjord horse people see her they almost always ask if she > is a purebred. Strange, but true. Over the years, there were assorted rumors about Fjords that "had an Arab in the haystack". When I mentioned this to one of our neighbors (who bred Arabs and half-Arabs), she looked pensively at our somewhat squirrely Fjord gelding, and said, "That could explain a lot about Rom" Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon Important FjordHorse List Links: Subscription Management: http://tinyurl.com/5msa7e FH-L Archives: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw Classified Ads: http://tinyurl.com/5b5g2f
Re: Nibblenets
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > "Eileen Perry" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Too bad they don't come in pasture size :) (My horses rub the BestFriends > off on the irrigation uprights, etc). An acquaintance of mine used to be a harness maker. One of the things that she developed was a driving equivalent to the Australian "stockman's bridle". It has two crownpieces---the traditional one, with the usual throatlatch, plus a second one that sits a little further back and buckles directly around the throat, rather like a dog collar. One of her customers had a problem with his percherons rubbing their regular bridles off, when standing around at events. My friend made this guy a pair of stockman's bridles, and said that his horses could NOT rub those bridles off (they tried)! So, get yourself a nylon "cow collar" (or a couple of heavy nylon dog collars, buckled end to end, to make a longer collar). Put that on one of your Fjords, snuggly around his throat, and then put on the grazing muzzle---but tether the crown strap of the muzzle to the collar, either at the top, or at both sides (about where the browband would attach, on a bridle). And, let us know the results Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon Important FjordHorse List Links: Subscription Management: http://tinyurl.com/5msa7e FH-L Archives: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw Classified Ads: http://tinyurl.com/5b5g2f
Re: Why aren't Fjords as spooky
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > Reading "Natural Horsemanship Explained" by Dr. Robert Miller, and thought > this really applied in many ways to our Fjords - at least to mine. This > section was talking about why donkeys are less flighty than the average > horse. > > "It evolved in steep, arid terrain. Blind flight, so effective for the > plains dwelling horse, could be fatal here. Donkeys, therefore, make > decisions > rather than blindly fleeing. Another component is the relative availability of food and water in the various habitats. Most horses evolved on rich plains; if they ran away from every suspected predator, it was no big deal---the calories and sweat that they expended could be easily replaced. Donkeys were on more barren lands, with fewer sources of water, so a strategy that conserved calories and sweat had survival value. Likewise, it takes energy to paw thru snow for buried grass, or eat (hence melt) snow for water; the Fjords that ran at the drop of a snowflake probably had trouble finding enough replacement calories to make it thru the winter. This also favored their tendency to store every spare calorie for later use Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon The FjordHorse List archives can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw
On-trail fan clubs
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > "jen frame" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > when you ride [...] out on trails, does just about > everyone you encounter stop and exclaim "ooH! How cute!" ? > I have become great friends with the woman I purchased my Fjord from, > and I told her that everyone was thrilled to see us on the trail. > During the winter I got comments like" Look at that cute little velvet > pony!" Years ago, we used to ride our two Fjords on trails near our place in California, going out with a neighbor who had an endurance-bred Arab mare. We rarely met other riders, but often saw hikers or bicyclists. Most were well aware of the Open Space District's rules, so would step off of the trail to let the horses pass, but it was interesting to watch their expressions. They usually were a little surly about having to give way, and would glare at the neighbor on her Arab. Then, they would look somewhat puzzled when my husband rode past, on his 14.1 Fjord gelding (Rom). By the time my 14.3hh Fjord gelding (Sleepy) and I got to them, it wasn't unusual for them to be smiling. Comments ranged from "What are they?", to "Cute!", to "He looks like a cartoon horse!" (this with a British accent, i.e. probably a reference to the Thelwell cartoons), to "Ohhh, can I pet him?" This was fine, as Sleepy is Mr Personality, just exuding Fjord charm, and happy to accept admiration from his new-found fan club. He was especially popular in late summer, when his incoming winter coat was at the "plush stuffed toy" phase. However, I did find that I had to keep a little tension on the outside rein, as Sleepy sometimes would try to frisk backpacks for apples or carrots Our neighbor was somewhere between bemused and mystified by the hikers' response. She saw our Fjords with eyes calibrated to her Arab, her daughter's TB, their Anglo-Arab, etc. And, she had ridden with us enough to know that our boys were slow (especially on hot days), opinionated (at rest stops, Rom often suggested turning around and going home), etc. Urban hikers, however, saw "teddy-ponies". ;-) Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon The FjordHorse List archives can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw
Re: Questions from the Newbie
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Heather Baskey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > 1.� How do you inoffensively (i.e., he is "sensitive") get a Fjord out of > your personal space?� My arms are getting tired from the "chicken dance".� > Henry responds well to the chicken dance (me flapping the boundaries of my > personal space without "contact"), but it does get tiresome - LOL� any > other suggestions?� Clicker training! With a "sensitive" equine, sending him away makes him feel insecure, so he immediately wants to come back and "cuddle up with Mommy" for comfort. It is more effective to reward him when he is doing the RIGHT thing. First, establish that CLICK (a mechanical clicker, a tongue TOCK-sound, a word like YES!, or whatever sound you can make easily, quickly, and repeatably) means that you're very happy with him, and that the sound will immediately be followed by a small treat. A good first behavior to teach is to have him turn his nose away from you. And, make sure that you feed the treat with his head in the away position---don't inadvertently lure his face into the cookie jar! Then, gradually "increase duration"---he has to turn his head away and HOLD it away for a second to earn the click/treat, then two seconds, etc. After you're sure that he has the idea, go to "random reinforcement"---sometimes reward a second, sometimes 5, or 10, or 15, but vary your requirements. The idea is to make him "gamble" that, if he stays away another few seconds, that will earn his reward. Now, start asking him to stand a little further from you. This is a new task, so you will need to go back to reinforcing him soon and often, at first. Then, gradually increase how long he has to stand there, etc. But, again, make sure that you take the treat to him, vs letting him come to you for it! Now, work on having him stay a little further away---but increase distance OR duration, NOT both at once! > 2.� What "size" halter are you using?� Henry is 2 years old and the > Horse halter "just" fits him, it could fit better!� I never knew how > big his jowls were, until now.� I tried a "horse" fly mask and that was > a bust.� Had to return it for a "large" size. My Fjords have been at the large end of the breed standard. The smallest one (14.1hh) can squeeze into Large Horse halters and fly masks; the others (14.2 and 14.3hh) needed Extra Large. Yes, Fjords have a wide forehead (for containing extra brain cells) and a big jowl (the better to chew anything that resembles food) Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon The FjordHorse List archives can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw
Re: mowing pastures
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Count me in the "don't mow" crowd. This time of year, I forbid my husband and his tractor-mounted brushhog to come anywhere near my horse pastures, no matter how tall and "ragged" they look. The problem is that the brushhog creates big "drifts" of coarsely chopped straw, usually in the "ruts" where the tractor tires have mashed the grass flat to the ground. The equines won't touch this chopped up stuff, preferring new growth in exposed areas. So, the drifts of straw get rained on, and mold into a smelly mess, which smothers any grass that tries to come up under them. I would much rather turn the equines out on tall grass. Yes, they'll pick and choose, leaving some of the tall stuff. But, as it finishes going to seed, they'll knock the seed down, to reseed the pasture. And, once they've thinned it out, then I can mow it (late in the summer, when it has all dried up) with my regular lawnmower, which chops things finely and scatters the clippings broadly---no ruts, and no mold. As with all things equine, "Your mileage may vary" Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon The FjordHorse List archives can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw
Re: Saddle fit
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Kimberly Kinney <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Thought I had the right saddle for both my very drafty mare > and I, but now I'm not sure.� We went on a two day (very easy) trail ride and > finally she got sweaty under the saddle.� Dry along spine (good, right?)� but > also palm sized dry spots right behind shoulder blades (bad?)� If I remember > correctly, that indicates saddle is too tight there. There are two kinds of dry spots. Cool-dry, especially along the spine, is good---that indicates that the saddle does not touch that sensitive area, i.e. there's enough air flow that sweat evaporates there. Hot-dry (often found right behind the shoulders) is bad, as it indicates that the skin is inflamed from too much pressure. Basically, the pressure cuts off circulation to the skin there; if it occurs for long enough, your horse will get sores, leaving white hair, or even bald spots there. The usual culprit on a Fjord is that the bars of the saddle do not "flare" enough at the front---there isn't room for those massive shoulders, so they keep running into the bars of the saddle on each stride. I ended up having OrthoFlex saddles custom-made to fit my Fjord geldings. Sometimes, the problem is that the saddle is being placed (or works its way) too far forward. Since Fjords don't have much in the way of withers, and do have rather (ahem) rounded rib cages, saddles tend to drift forward until they run into something, like shoulders. I found it necessary to put cruppers on my saddles, so that they didn't drift forward, especially on steep downhill trails. > � We are in a full Q/H > bars roping saddle.� I have another saddle, also full Q/H roping but�slightly > wider.� Am I on the right track? I was riding with a Professional Choice Air > saddle pad. Kind of a cordura backing with black furry stuff next to skin, but > thin. Maybe different pad?� Despite what pad manufacturers would like everyone to believe, various veterinary researchers have shown that putting a "special" pad under a saddle that has "issues" about how it fits, usually tends to make the saddle fit WORSE! Think about it---if you're wearing a pair of hiking boots that pinch somewhere, thicker socks are not likely to help If the saddle fit is close, a saddle-maker might be able to take it apart, reshape the bars somewhat, then re-assemble the saddle. > She went well the entire > weekend, really seemed to be enjoying herself.�� But these were shorter, easy > rides compared to what we've got coming up so I want to make sure we get the > fit right for her! On long rides, saddle fit is very important. Fjords tend to be somewhat stoic---they can "put up" with a lot of little hurts that would drive a hotter-blooded horse nutty. In my mind, that just puts a higher responsibility on the owner, to make sure everything is right Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon The FjordHorse List archives can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw
Re: Keeping a senior fjord
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Kelly Trirogoff <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > [... our new fjord [...] is deffinetly a senior citizen (deffinetly over 20). > [...] I don't know much about keeping the oldies...He is having a > hard time keeping/gaining weight. He is getting a ton of food, and it may be > helping (just slow). He gets senior pellets, complete pellets, beet pulp, oil, > alfalfa cubes and regular 1st cut hay. Plus the occassionl graze on the lawn. > I don't give him ton, as I am increasing the amounts so I don't shock his > system. Now Andy (Narnia fjords Andros???aka "Grandpa") is too thin for my > liking he is probably a 3 on the body rating. His pelvis protrudes, his ribs > are just slightly visible and his mane won't stay up as the weight of his hair > too much( it just flops over). I know this guy will probably never look like > his plump former self again, but I want to make sure he is comfortable for the > coming years. He has had his teeth done and was just wormed. Any suggestions > on keeping the older guys would be appreciated. At this point, all of my equines (2 Fjord geldings and a donkey) are over 20, and my problem is keeping weight off of them! The only one of my Fjords that ever got skinny on me was my old mare, Nansy. It turned out that her problem was teeth---my vet had been "doing" Nansy's teeth regularly, but it seems that Ms Vet didn't know as much as she thought she did about the dental issues of older horses. By the time I caught on and got Nansy to a real dentist, her molars were worn into such extreme "ramps" that the best he could do was "make her more comfortable"---pull the loose molar and take the seriously over-long ones out of wear so that they couldn't poke the gums exposed by the worn-down molars. That meant that she no longer had enough working molars to grind up hay, so I shifted her to grass hay pellets (oat hay in California, ryegrass hay here in Oregon), plus a little Equine Senior, mostly as a "condiment", and a little leafy alfalfa hay, because she still seemed to want something to chew on. In just a few months on that diet, she put back all of the weight that she had lost over the previous 5 years! Note that, if your guy does have residual dental issues, hay cubes could be a risk, if he can't chew them well and tries to swallow them whole. There are some other things to be aware of with older equines. Many of them become insulin resistant, or start to get Cushings syndrome, which means that sugars and starches should be limited in their diet. (The breeder of my donkey darn near foundered her jack on Equine Senior---too much sugar for a 27-year-old fat donkey.) Read the labels on your pellets, and steer clear of anything with a lot of molasses or grain. As equines age, their immune systems decline somewhat, expecially when Cushings is involved. Unfortunately, this sometimes manifests itself as severe reactions to vaccinations. After one such reaction, the vet advised that we stop giving Nansy anything but the most important ones (tetanus, EE, rabies when we were in California, now West Nile), and that we spread out her vaccinations (some in the spring, some in the fall), rather than give them all at once. (Nansy is regretably long gone---I lost her at age 32---but my remaining elderly equines are getting just the few essential vaccinations.) Enjoy him---older equines can be very rewarding! Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon The FjordHorse List archives can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw
Re: round pens
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > "william M. Coli" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > We have had a 50 foot powder-coated metal pen with gate [...] > Ours has rounded corners to each panel, and some > folks have suggested that this is a problem if a horse were to rear or try > to scale the fence since there is a gap that a hoof could get caught in. > They do make round pens that have square corners to each panel that > would not allow the potential problem to happen. I don't have a round pen, but have made my corrals (run-out pens, attached to the barn) from pipe-corral panels. Mine are the type with square top corners, which are implemented by having the top horizontal rail welded to the sides of the upright pipes, then putting a plastic plug in the top of the uprights (Powder Mountain brand, I believe). This year, I noticed a couple of places on bottom rails where a sheet of the powder-coating had come loose, and was flapping in the breeze. Closer inspection revealed that the lower pipe rails had bulged and split there! Apparently, the plastic plugs allow a little water to get into the pipe panels; over the years, this had built up to the point that it filled the lower pipe rail, then freezing weather burst that pipe. My husband's suggestion was to drill a few little holes in strategic places to let the water back out. Indeed, some brands of pipe corral panels have such holes, on the underside of wherever horizontal pipes connect to verticals. We have one gate of that variety---on which we had to plug the holes, because it became wasp habitat, and they got PO'd whenever anyone opened that gate. My neighbor, the brand inspector, says that defensive resident wasps are an "occuptional hazard" of loading cattle out of pens made of some brands of panels. Priefert panels seem to have addressed these problems by running the vertical pipes up past the top rail, then bending them over, mashing the ends flat, and welding the end to the top rail. That design should prevent water from getting in, without creating the hoof-trapping "Y" shape where 2 panels meet. However, Priefert panels are not particularly "inexpensive" Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon The FjordHorse List archives can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw
Re: shafts how wide
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > "Janet" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > How wide do the shafts need to be for a 14-14.2 hand fjord? measuring at > the narrow end. > > How should the shafts fit? i.e. how much space between the horse and the > shaft? Your second question is more relevant than your first! There should be about 3" to 4" of space between the animal's sides and the shafts, on BOTH sides, at ALL points (and even more to the rear of the shafts, for turning room). On most Fjords, the widest part is at the ribs, so the shaft tips are not a good place to measure. ;-) To measure the width of your equine, use two carpenter's squares (L-shaped metal "rulers", usually 18" on one leg and 24" on the other). Lay them together, so that they make a big C shape, with the long legs of the L's overlapped and their edges aligned. You can use this as a very big "caliper" to measure body width, or neck depth (for instance, if you're trying to figure out the size for a neck collar). Or, "try on" a cart---lay one shaft firmly against the animal's side, and measure the space between the other shaft and the animal. Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon The FjordHorse List archives can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw
Re: Stay At Home Fjords
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > Do any of you just like to stay home with your Fjords? [...] > I like to ride around our farm and trails, but the effort of > trailering rarely seems worth it I've pretty much transitioned from being a rider to being a "horsekeeper". However, back when we were riding semi-regularly, the rides that were the most "fun" were the daily pasture deployments. Our place in California was steep, with somewhat scattered small areas of grasslands, such that there was nearly a mile of winding 1-lane gravel road from the barn out to the property line. After work, we would bridle (or sometimes just halter!) the Fjords, get on them bareback, and ride/lead them (1 or 2 riders moving 3 Fjords and sometimes a donkey, too) from the barn up to the top of the property, then turn them loose to graze. A couple hours later, we would hike out and catch them (usually they had worked their way somewhat closer to the barn), and ride/lead them back to the barn. Once a week, we would ride with a neighbor, either riding out from our barn onto the adjoining Open Space Preserve, or trailering to other nearby Preserves. Sometimes, it was fun seeing new territory, but "getting there" could sometimes be a pain. By the time we moved here, the old Fjord mare had gotten arthritic enough that I was walking and leading her to pasture, while my husband rode/led the geldings. The pastures here were much richer and near the barn, so the horses mostly got turned out and rounded up without any riding. Plus, we got busy building our new house here, and everyone got out of training, so riding basically ceased. Both my husband and I occasionally comment about how we fondly remembered those little daily pasture rides. Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon The FjordHorse List archives can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw
Re: fjordhorse-digest V2008 #29
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > I have tried both tennis balls and some yellow T post toppers and my horses > play with them, chew on them, rub on them, etc. until the tops are off and on > > the ground. Years ago, I had a problem with my Fjords rubbing on the tops of T-posts, mostly to try to scratch places under their jaws where ticks had attached. Because some of the posts had sharp edges, this resulted in assorted scraped, or at least "shaved" areas on their heads. I tried the T-post caps (the yellow ones, intended for electric fencing insulators), which they just found to be another interesting form of scratching device, and yes, the caps were as often on the ground as on the posts. So, I installed a strand of galvanized electric fencing wire thru the "tabs" on all of the post caps, and connected it to the nearest fence charger. Funny thing---they suddenly decided that fence post caps weren't fun anymore Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon The FjordHorse List archives can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw
Re: Very quiet Fjord
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > "Reena Giola" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > He has become more verbal this last year, and nickers at me at lot more. I found that how "talkative" our Fjords were has changed over the years. My first Fjord, Nansy, started out quiet, then gradually started greeting me with a whuffle. As she aged (got more "opinionated"?), there was more grumbling, and even whinneying, most of which translated to "Room Service!" ;-) When we acquired each of our young Fjord geldings, Rom and Sleepy, they seemed content to let Nansy "do the talking" for the group. It was only after we had to put Nansy down (age 32) that I started to hear whuffles from Sleepy and whinneys from Rom. In more recent years, both of the boys have taken up "answering" me when I step out of the house and say "Hi, guys!" > Early last month I took a lesson on the horse in the paddock next to Gus and > he was so jealous.. [...] > lady was there and saw it all. She couldn't believe it, how upset he was > that I (his person!!!) had taken out another horse and not him!. LOL! When I first got Nansy, I had already had my donkey, Shadow, for 5 years. The first time I got on Nansy and rode off, Shadow was at first frightened---she had had a couple of weeks to get used to the look of this interloper, but not with a saddle and rider on her. I spoke to Shadow, to reassure her, at which point her fear turned to disbelief. She came up to the pasture fence that we were riding along, for a better look, then bray-roar'd in outrage, that I would "go for a walk" with that HORSE, and not take her! Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon The FjordHorse List archives can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw
Re: Discerning Tastebuds
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > "jen frame" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I am curious as to why your Donkey needs Magnesium? Is it > for the ability of Magnesium to manage Insulin Resistence? Or is it > the calming effect? A couple of years ago, during their annual dental work, the vet kept reciting, "less food, more exercise, and get some magnesium into them" as she examined each of my (admittedly plump) equines. The soils in this area (hence the forages grown on them) are known to be deficient in selenium, magnesium, and other water-soluble minerals. The local grasses are also very good at accumulating sugars, to better enable them to grow during the cooler parts of the year. This is a bad combination for "fuel efficient" equines like donkeys or Fjords. I have not noticed magnesium having any particular calming effect on the donkey. She has gotten spookier as she has aged, which is probably due to some age-related cloudiness that the vet can see in her lenses---she just isn't seeing things clearly, any more (she's 26). > I have a Donkey too, and she has a strange and strong sense of justice > (or, more acurately; INjustice) and she throws tantrums when the > horses get any attention that she doesn't get! Yup, mine too. I know better than to feed the Fjords first, as Shadow will bray in protest. After all, she is Queen of the Barn, and how dare I ignore her! She can get really upset when the farrier comes to trim the Fjords, and doesn't visit her (I trim her hooves myself, by rasping them lightly every couple of weeks). Well, she was my first equine, so I cater to her---she goes out to pasture first, comes in first, occupies the stall closest to the door (so gets greeted first), is fed first, etc. I keep her separated from the Fjords at feeding time, as she is so dominant that she would probably drive them away from their hay and overeat, trying to keep it all for herself. She is such a princess (to which my husband snorts, "prince-ASS"). > I am thinking of teaching mine to drive, but she is still sketchy on > leading! She'll lead great if we are near her Fjord, but if I try to > lead her away from her Fjord, the donkey forgets how it all works and > gets stuck!!! Years ago, I taught Shadow to drive, by the "reins in one hand, book in the other" method. We sort of muddled thru, although I now think that things would have gone better if one of us had known what we were doing! However, Shadow never really liked driving; she would greatly prefer that I am the one out in front---so that if there are "bears in the bushes", I can protect her. But, yes, leading is a necessary skill, before even thinking about teaching an equine to drive. The animal has to be willing to move forward on command. Trying to force a donkey forward is about as effective as trying to "push a piece of string"! The good news is that, having learned equine-keeping on my very fuel efficient donkey, I was in good shape to understand how to manage Fjords. Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon The FjordHorse List archives can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw
Re: Discerning Tastebuds
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > I have decided to put the ponies on a weight management supplement > (Quiessence). It comes in a powder, and they get one little scoop. Interesting---I didn't realize that Quiessence came as a powder. I get their pellets, which my donkey and 2 Fjord geldings happily consume (mixed with their Horse Guard vitamin/mineral supplement pellets and a small quantity of alfalfa pellets, served first thing in the morning when everyone is hungry). I knew from experience that the donkey was going to leave behind any powder in/on her food (ick, there's DIRT in my food!), so didn't even try giving them straight magnesium oxide powder (which would be much cheaper!). The only way I can get anything powdered into the donkey is to stir it into a bran mush, which she will happily lick up out of a big dog bowl, or mix it with some molasses and administer it via a worming syringe. Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon The FjordHorse List archives can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw
Re: to Fjord Drivers: any advice on hitching posts?
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > "jen frame" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > ideas about the best hitching situation that will allow me to harness, > put-to, and drive off by myself without needing help from a Header (my > husband!) to hold my horse? For a beginning driver, the most important part of the "spares kit" can be an "able-bodied passenger, capable of rendering assistance"! > My Driving Teacher likes cross ties, but I don't like them--I have > seen horses panic in them. Fjords generally aren't given to panic about "hard restraint". And, at least the ones I've had, are unlikely to waste the energy required to stand on hind legs long enough to get front legs hung in cross-ties! The trick is to have the ties at the right height---about withers-high. If they force the horse to hold his head too high, he's more likely to object. > If I do a horizontal post, how high should it > be? breast high on the horse? higher? Roughly the height at which the horse carries his nose, when standing relaxed. For a driving horse, the two most important "gaits" are WHOA and STAND. Ideally, your horse should be trained to stand quietly where you put him, untied, while you walk around and hitch him. I've not driven my Fjords, but I hitch my donkey in the barn aisle, loose (reins in my hand throughout the hitching process, in case I need to reinforce STAND), then open the barn doors and drive out. At an event, with more going on, I tie her to the side of the trailer (via a dog collar, around her throat) while I harness and hitch. Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon The FjordHorse List archives can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw
Re: ASK 113-A
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > "Steve/Meredith Sessoms" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Ask (Grabb X Mette by Vitol) is a stallion you see in many pedigrees but I > don't > know anything about him. [...] His thirty-five get are mostly > bred by Mr. Bauer and a fellow from Montana named Dave Parker. [...] > I am also curious about a mare named Sally 2022-A AFS (King Harald X mare from > Broadmore Hotel STK). Apparently she was owned by Dave Parker from MT. Dave Parker was an early "player" in Fjords, although I first heard of him in the context of American Spotted Asses (i.e. pinto donkeys)---he founded a registry for them! When I was first looking (early 1986) for a Fjord, I sent him a note; he wrote back that he no longer had Fjords, and predicted, "You will love the horses." >From what I can glean from the old NFA studbook, Dave Parker probably picked up some Fjord-looking mares at sales, and bred them. Two of his mares (including Sally) were originally registered with NFA as having "Sire: unknown, Dam: unknown, Breeder: unknown". (It would be interesting to know when, and how, her pedigree "improved" to what is shown in the NFHR database!) Parker's original acquisitions came in the days before there were any Fjord registries in the US, so the only way one got pedigree information was if it was handwritten by the previous owner. A lot of probably purebred Fjords from that era were separated from their recorded ancestry when they went thru various sales. Looking at Ask's progeny in the NFHR database, I get the impression that Parker probably owned Ask until 1983. Before that date, the only horses sired by Ask were bred by Parker; Bauer's name shows up as the breeder for horses born in 1984 and after. That was about the time that both NFA and the fledgling NFHR made rules against inbreeding; my guess would be that, when Parker retired, Bauer snapped up Ask, as one of the few stallions in the US that were not related to the mares Bauer already had. > Sally [...] was the dam of [...] the mare, Sala who is also in > lots of pedigrees. For most of her breeding career, Sala 2025-B was bred to Ulvar 161-B. Unfortunately, Ulvar's sire (Hei 131-A) was Sala's full-brother, so all of those foals are unacceptably inbred, by today's standards. Ulvar, BTW, was the only foal of my good old mare, Nansy 2071-A (who was also unacceptably inbred---her only grandfather was Solvfast N-1557). In the days when there were only a handful of Fjord stallions in the country, a LOT of that happened! Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon The FjordHorse List archives can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw
Re: Do any of you reccomend supplementing?
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > "jen frame" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I was wondering if you add supplements to your Fjord's feed? [...] > Since Fjords manage to pull calories out of thin air, do they also > pulls nutrients out of thin air and therefore do not require > supplementation? Or, since they don't eat much, do they tend to > require supplemntal vits and mins ? If so, which do you use? Somewhere I read/heard that Norwegian Fjords "stay fat on sticks and seaweed". The thing is, there's a lot of nutrition in seaweed! ;-) I've always supplemented my donkey and Fjords with a general vitamin and mineral product, "for insurance", because the "low calorie" hays I was using were close to straw in their nutritional profile. When we lived in California (San Francisco Peninsula), I used Sho-Glo. When we moved to SW Oregon, I was advised that soils (hence forages) in this area were deficient in selenium, so to be sure that one's supplement contained that. The recommended product was Horse Guard, which I continue to use. I've noticed an improvement in hoof quality and tail growth since we moved here, but can't say if it's the supplement, the soils, the hay, or what. At one point (in CA), a vet had me put my old Fjord mare on Platinum Performance (which has a lot of flaxseed in it). That certainly improved her hoof and tail growth, but the price matches the name Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon The FjordHorse List archives can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw
Re: fjords & fence
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > "jen frame" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Has anyone successfully kept a Fjord on a tie line? Or are they strong > enough to pull their way out of that when their insatiable stomach > demands a foraging excursion?!? Many years ago, I took my old Fjord mare on a group trail ride with a local club. They had strung a high-line at the lunch stop area, to which everyone tied their horses. Well, after that morning's hike, my mare was hungry, and there was grass underfoot, so she put her head down, and started to graze, first near, then leaning further away. I could see that this downward and sideways pull was putting quite a strain on the line (and the trees it was tied to), so quickly untied her and took her elsewhere. By then, there weren't any good trees left to tie to, so I made do with a big bush, and went off to get a plate of food. I returned to find that she had pulled enough to break off that part (several grouped branches!) of the bush, and was happily grazing, with it dragging along at the end of her lead rope. However, some of the other horses were looking with alarm at this Thing following her, so I quickly untied that, and proceeded to eat lunch while standing on her lead rope. And, she was my "easy to contain" Fjord Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon The FjordHorse List archives can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw
Re: fjords & fence
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > "jen frame" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Do you have to "school" a horse to an electric fence (and if so, how > would you do that?) or do they teach themselves through trial and > shock? If the fence is highly visible (for example, the white-and-black tape or rope---twine is harder for them to see), the horse usually notices it, wanders over, says "What's that", sniffs it, gets a shock on the nose, and resolves never to touch the stuff, again! Various sources that I've seen claim that e-fence is most effective if the first contact that the animal has is on the face (nose to eyes), as animals will naturally recoil from a shock there. If first contact is "behind" the ears (either top of neck, or chest), the animal will naturally bolt forward from the shock, going thru the fence. What you do NOT want to happen is for the animal to graze near the fence, then stick the nose under it, then the head, then the neck, etc. My "Houdini" Fjord has learned that, with some chargers, he can use his mane for an insulator, and push on the fence hard enough to either break the tape or pop insulators off of T-posts, grounding the fence. I eventually learned that, when he was hungry, the charger had to be a strong one, properly installed, with good grounding, etc. I.e. it had to be able to shock him thru his winter fur. One acquaintance would teach her horses about new e-fence by draping long blades/stems of juicy, fresh grass across the top wire. When the horse tried to sample the grass, he'd get shocked, and back off of the fence. Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon The FjordHorse List archives can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw
Re: Are you Fjords Houdinis?!
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > "jen frame" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I camped this past weekend with my Fjord, and [...] > brought portable panels to make a small paddock for my Fjord mare. I > reinforced the pannels with T-posts. > Both nights, during the early morning, she pushed her way out of the paddock. > [...] > Is pushing-their-way-out-through-fencing a common Fjord behavior? [...] > How do y'all keep your Fjords safe It's an individual thing. I've got one Fjord gelding that has taught me a great deal about how NOT to build fences! Sleepy has taken down electric fencing tape, galvanized e-wire, and mesh cattle panels on T-posts. Pipe corral panels have to be tied (baling twine or wire) together (so he can't undo the chains that connect them) and staked to the ground (so he can't "migrate" the corral over to reach some grass). If a gate gets left ajar, he is always the one to notice OTOH, my old Fjord mare was so fence-broke that it was sometimes hard to give her a new pasture. I would have to halter her and lead her thru a new gateway (or somewhere that I had taken down e-fence), because once that fence was on her "internal map", she would stay within it. For the most part, electric fencing is a good thing. But, train the animal to it at home, and given that your mare has Houdini tendencies, make sure that your charger is always HOT!!! Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon The FjordHorse List archives can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw
Re: social behavior in Fjords
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > "jen frame" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > My Fjord doesn't ever seem to meet a horse that she doesn't like. She > seems to like all equines. Again, I am wondering if this is a Fjord > characteristic, or is it just unique to this particular mare? It's individual. One of my geldings is very leary of non-Fjords. I've had him spin out from under me to avoid "killer Arabs"---ones displaying normal "expressive" Arab body language, which apparently translates into Fjord-ese as "I'm pissed off and on my way over there to kill you!" He's also leary of horses that are gaiting with a lot of motion, like Pasos. Yes, this is the horse that's at the bottom of our pecking order. > 1). The TWH mares are aggressive with any new horse added to their pasture. That might be a problem. My Fjords have been pretty much easy going with other horses. However, be aware that several centuries ago, Fjords were used for stallion fighting. If another horse "starts something", a Fjord might retreat, or might decide to "finish it"--- permanently. Again, the mismatch in "dialects" of body language might be an issue---Fjord body language is subtle, which another horse might mistake for passive, and a Fjord might interpret "normal" horse body language as overly aggressive. > 2). My TWH's get way more hay than I feed my Fjord since she is an air > fern. So I am worried that if she lives with them she will get too > fat. That is a serious concern! Fjords tend to have "Hoover" for a middle name---they'll vacuum up every crumb! IMHO, you'll need to separate them, at least at feeding time. > Have you any experience with keeping Fjords with other breeds? Do the > other breeds treat them strangely like some do when they meet a Mule > or Donkey? Hard to say---my "other horse" is a donkey! Two of my Fjords were quite leary of the donkey when they first met. The third one figured that, since the donkey was smaller than he was, that put him above her in the hierarchy. WRONG!!! For years, the donkey ruled my "herd"--- when she flattened her ears, everyone ducked. ;-) It's pretty funny to watch a 400 lb donkey round up and chase off 3 Fjords, totalling 3000 lb. In more recent years, the geldings have realized that they can just ignore her. I've seen a couple of horses that we met on the trail seem upset about our Fjords. However, the Fjord in the lead that day was wearing his fly mask, which may have been part of the problem. Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon The FjordHorse List archives can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw
Re: has anyone fed Magnesium to their Fjord?
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > "jen frame" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I recently bought an adorable Fjord mare who is over weight and wears > a grazing muzzle. > I was wondering whether any of you have experience controling your > Fjord's weight with magnesium? On the advice of my equine veterinarian, I put my Fjords and donkey onto Quiessence, which has both magnesium and chromium. (See http://www.foxdenequine.com/quies.htm ) At first, it seemed to help---although I simultaneously cut their grazing time, so can't say if it was the magnesium that did it. However, this year, our hay is better than usual (changed fields), and my equines are looking a bit more plump than they were (same weights of hay, just more protein in it). My guess is that magnesium won't hurt, and probably helps. But, it is not a cure-all; it needs to be combined with the traditional recommendations of "less food, more exercise". Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon The FjordHorse List archives can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw
Re: recycling
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > I hope you don't mean you're dumping those black walnuts in the REAL DUMP but > just dumping into something else to sell or give away. Aren't they the good > ones to eat? Cheryl G. Beck Nope---English walnuts are the good ones. Black walnuts come in a shell so tough that, by the time you've whacked it hard enough to crack the shell, you've pulverized the nutmeat. When we were building our house, numerous loaded concrete transit mixers ran over nuts on the driveway, and all they did was push the whole nuts down into the packed gravel. We call them "organic rocks"! If we dump them somewhere else on the property, we get fat "digger squirrels" (don't need to encourage them!) and/or black walnut tree sprouts (ditto). Plus, black walnuts come in a thick "wrapper" that quickly rots into a disgusting, staining goo, so I want them gone out of my yard, ASAP. The "gleaners" for the local food pantry won't touch them. In the summer, it's a huge, lovely shade tree, or it would have been long-gone Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon The FjordHorse List archives can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw
Re: recycling
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Corinne Logan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I've been wondering what to do with all that twine hanging around :-) > No seriously, what does everyone do with their grain bags & twine? My grain sacks (the woven plastic kind) and baling twine (also plastic) eventually end up in the landfill, although much of it has a second "career" before getting there. I use baling twine in the garden for my green beans to climb, to support young tomato starts within their cages, to restrain the asperagus "ferns" within their fences, etc. Of course, it gets used in all manner of places around the ranch, to temporarily patch this, close that, and hold the other up, down, in, out, etc. Baling twine, plus a good pocket knife, can also qualify as the minimalist spares kit for carriage driving. ;-) "Grain" sacks (well, alfalfa pellets, as my fat Fjords and donkey don't get any grain) are actually in short supply around here. I had to beg some from a neighbor, for my next project---cleaning up under our black walnut tree. The woven plastic sacks are strong enough, but not too big---when filled with walnuts, they're still movable from ground to pickup to dump. And, of course, they get tied closed with baling twine However, talk to your local recycling center. Ours recently said they'd take "any kind of plastic", but I haven't checked to see if that includes twine and bags. Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon The FjordHorse List archives can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw
Re: I just bought my first Fjord! Many questions:
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > "jen frame" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > 2). She is overweight and the wonderful woman I bought her from kept a > grazing muzzle on her during the day, and dry lot at night. She does > not have a cresty neck, nor any scary fat pads at her tail head or > over her shoulders, so I am wondering if I can take the muzzle OF her > since she is much happier grazing. If the previous owner had a grazing muzzle on her, and you still think that she is overweight, I would probably leave the grazing muzzle in place. Yes, Fjords are much happier if they can eat more---but their metabolisms are geared to save every spare calorie for later. If you decide to try a period of time without the grazing muzzle, first measure her heart-girth (just behind the withers and elbow) and rib-girth (widest part of the ribs), and record it on the calendar. Then, redo those measurements under the same conditions (same time of day, same stance, etc) every week. If you see the numbers trending upward, then she's getting too much grass. In general, it is far easier to keep a Fjord's weight down than to try to take the weight back off, again! > 3). She gets REALLY PUSHY when I give her treats, so I think I will > stop giving them. But the question is: is this pushiness a > Fjord/coldblood thing, or just her individual personality? Fjords will generally be just as pushy as they think they can get away with. She is checking out where she fits in your hierarchy. Be aware that, if you aren't the Boss Mare, she will take on that role. Some Fjords are naturally polite about treats; others have to be taught the skill. If you're worried about your fingers, get a small cheap pair of pliers, and use that to deliver treats. It saves wear and tear on fingers, and gives the equine some feedback that the "fast chomp" technique has drawbacks. Or, feed treats via the grazing muzzle. My husband's Fjord gelding was a treat snatcher for years. With his grazing muzzle in place, he can only get the treat if he nibbles delicately at it as it comes in thru the hole at the bottom. (He gets a piece of a horse cookie for putting his muzzle on in his pen, before going out to pasture, and 1.5 hours later, another treat for coming to the barn door to have the muzzle taken off as he goes back into his pen.) When we got past the high-sugar grass season this spring, I stopped using the grazing muzzle for the summer---and found that he continued to gently nibble his treats, vs snatching at them. > 4). I don't clicker train my other two horses (they are Tennessee > Walking Horses) but am wondering if Clicker training is for some > reason a particularly great thing to do with Fjords? Fjords are highly motivated by food! One thing to be aware of is that Fjords generally have more subtle body language than you may be used to in other breeds. You will have to watch them more closely, to see the beginnings of a "try". And, you may have to "tone down" your body language around them, to keep from "challenging" them more than you intended. Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon The FjordHorse List archives can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw
Re: NFHR Board of Directors election
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > "Frederick J Pack" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > NFHR BOD ballots must be mailed by November 1st. Oh, really? The letter that came with my ballot said, "must be postmarked by November 15th 2007 to be counted". Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon The FjordHorse List archives can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw
Re: ... healing in the PNFPG
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> The first thing that comes to my mind is, "Deja vu, all over again." And, "Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it." In the beginning, there was the Norwegian Fjord Association (NFA). Disagreements arose as to how to run things, and the Norwegian Fjord Horse Registry (NFHR) spun off from NFA. Time passed, more disagreements arose, and the Fjord Breeder's Association (FBA) spun off from NFHR. Some US breeders got so P.O.'d at all this politics that they moved their registrations to Canada! When I tried to look into what had really happened, I found that there wasn't much on the public record about why the schisms occurred, but privately, they were attributed to "disagreements amongst stubborn old men". Part of why the regional Fjord "promotional groups" were formed was to try to reunite Fjord owners. The regional groups put on regional shows, at which ANY registered Fjord was welcome---Canadian, NFA, NFHR, FBA, Norwegian, Danish, etc---the point was to promote the WHOLE breed. The regional groups didn't want "national" groups to get into it, since that would require shutting out some of the local folks who happened to register with (or buy stock registered with) a different national organization. Fast forward to the present. NFHR has grown in size, strength, and prestige, and has reabsorbed NFA. I don't hear much about FBA any more; I suspect that the group withered. Now, it's the local groups that are having the schisms pop up. It appears that the Fjord breed tends to attract "strong willed" owners. Or, as one of my mentors wryly put it, "Only a Fjord could put up with some of these folks!" ;-) Fjord owners do tend to hold strong opinions---and whatever one thinks of the opinions, it appears that each firmly believes that s/he has the breed's best interests at heart. IMHO, it's about time that we started emulating some of the Fjord breed's other characteristics---calm, quiet, sensible, forgiving, Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon The FjordHorse List archives can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw
Re: Steel Toed Shoes
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > "Big Horn Forge Daniel Nauman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I've had the small toe on my right foot broken three times by being > stepped on. After a while, I learned to keep my feet out from under my > horse's feet :) (I'm a slow learner.) [...] I'm ALWAYS alert > and very cautious, and I wear a good, sturdy, waterproof pair of > leather boots that fit well. Toni I've also had some broken/cracked toes from being stepped on, including by my Fjords. Interestingly, the worst injuries have come while I was wearing traditional riding boots. When I've worn "riding sneakers" or just plain running shoes, I tend to get bruised toes rather than broken ones. I have a suspicion that the softer soles on running shoes allow some "give" under my foot, rather than a firm surface against which to "smoosh" the toes. I also joke that the running shoes allow my feet to "see the hooves coming" and get out of the way quicker. ;-) But, yes, I found that I got stepped on a lot less often once I made it clear to my Fjord geldings that my space was MINE, and not only did they not dare intrude upon it, pushing the other one into me wasn't a good idea, either. Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon The FjordHorse List archives can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw
Re: Quest Dewormer
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Sarah Clarke <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I also use a Strongid/Ivermectin rotation. Some years ago, a fecal > check revealed the presence of tapeworm and so we use a double dose > of Strongid once a year. My vet says that Quest is a solution in > search of a problem and does not recommend it. For many years, I've used only ivermectin, once a month. I got started on that when we lived in the San Francisco Bay Area---my equine vet recommended it when my Fjord mare had a bout with neck threadworm. Most worming programs talk about intestinal worms, but ivermectin takes care of a lot of parasites, both internal and external, that other wormers don't touch. I also found that monthly ivermectin killed off any ticks that tried to attach to my equines, which was important in an area where ticks carried Lyme disease. I have continued to use monthly ivermectin here in SW Oregon, where there are, as one vet put it, a lot of bugs. Once a year, I use Ivermectin Gold (which kills tapeworms), instead of the generic one. The down side is that ivermectin kills some beneficial insects. I have to compost my manure and till it into the garden, because I don't seem to have any manure beetles left to break down the "biscuits" naturally. My vet didn't have any strong evidence about Quest, but her gut feeling was that it probably wasn't a good idea in "alternative equines" like my donkey, or in older animals (who can react unpredictably to drugs). I have heard that one has to be very careful about the dose on Quest. Most other wormers can be given in double (or more!) doses with safety, but there have been a lot of reports of problems with Quest in smaller equines, where people were guessing about weights, or accidentally gave a full tube to an animal that should have had only half (or less) of a tube. Buyer beware Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon The FjordHorse List archives can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw
Re: MARES
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > It appears that you have either experienced or been told about mares > acting badly when in heat. Since we got into the Fjord breed over 15 > years ago now, this issue has basically been a non-issue. Not to say > that NO Fjord mare does not have hormonal moments, but that for the > most part, the " beast-on-wheels " when in season mares left us when > every other breed walked down our driveway. I found this topic to be very interesting. My first horse, my old Fjord mare, Nansy, was basically the same animal every day---no hints as to when she was in heat. I had figured that it was a part of her being a "poor breeder"---Jim and Nancy Clow had only managed to get one foal from her in many years of trying, via different methods, with different stallions, etc (she was 17 when I bought her). However, since Nansy was usually open, that meant that she got a lot of "time and mileage", hence became the beginner's horse that I needed. Yes, she could be an "opinionated old bat" (and we told her so!) on occasion, but it usually took the form of her telling us, "No, idiot, that's not the way to do that!", and she was usually right. My only other experience with female equines was/is with my pinto jenny, Shadow. When in heat, she'll mouthe, wink, squeal at the Fjord geldings or at me, refuse to do things on general principles, and generally earn her nickname of Brat. Shadow got so bad that, around age 5, her vet put her on OvaBan, to keep her from coming in heat; that allowed her to keep her mind on her training, vs her body. Nansy was a refreshing change from that attitude! I'm glad to hear that it's more widespread in Fjords. Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon The FjordHorse List archives can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw
Re: "Other Life"
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > And it's true what all my retired friends told me...this retirement gig > is OK!! Now that I'm into it, I really don't know how I found the time to > hold down a full-time job! I can relate to that! I figured that retiring would let me finally get caught up on my ToDo list; instead, it just keeps getting longer! We got our Fjords (and my donkey) back when we were both employed as Research Computer Scientists (translation---computer programmers with PhDs) in the Silicon Gulch part of the San Francisco Bay Area. Since then, we have "retired" and moved to SW Oregon. We lease most of our "ranch" back to the previous owner, who runs cattle and cuts hay on the fields, but we end up doing fence repair, deploying the irrigation, etc. My husband is also doing some consulting work for our previous employer; I'm "chief financial officer" for all of the above. Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon The FjordHorse List archives can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw
Dragging the arena
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > I would like to know if anyone uses their fjords to drag their arenas? I have in the past used my old Fjord mare to pull a light home-built harrow (known as a planker) around in our "arena". More often, I had my standard donkey pull it! However, that "arena" was a fenced area of pasture, with packed footing; the job of the planker was to flatten and spread out the gopher mounds, horse piles, etc. > I also need to know how I go about making a drag that I can attach to the > harness. I'm not clever enough to figure this out, but I know my husband > can > build whatever I need if I give him specifics. Can I buy a small (four feet > wide) harrow somewhere? > > Lisa Lucidi We also had a 4'-wide "blanket harrow", which we bought. Visualize a chunk of chain-length fence "on steroids"---with the "wire" being 1/4" rod, and with 6" holes in the mesh. At the point of each diamond, there was a tooth attached, at a front/back angle. One could adjust how aggressive the thing was, depending on how one pulled it. For light smoothing, it was used on its back, with the teeth in the air. For medium, one used it with the teeth pointing down and to the rear; for more serious work, one hauled it from the other end, so the teeth pointed down and to the front. I never tried pulling that one with an equine; we mostly used it behind our little Toyota pickup. I've also heard of "alternative harrows" made from shipping pallets, or from pieces of cattle panel mesh or chain link fence weighted down with heavy wooden fenceposts (attached on the top). To attach an equine, one attaches the ends of a chain to two points of the harrow (for instance eye bolts in the front corners of the structure of the planker). The chain should be at least a foot longer than the distance between the attachment points, i.e. you want it to V forward. At the midpoint of the chain, put a heavy snap, repair link, or whatever---this is where your singletree should attach (not the light one from a cart, but a real draft singletree). The traces on your harness then attach to the ends of the singletree. You will probably need trace extenders (medium-weight nylon rope will do), as you don't want the horse to bump his heels on the singletree when pulling. You will also want reins long enough that you can drive from behind the harrow. If you must use regular reins, stay to the inside. DO NOT get between the horse and the harrow, or between the harrow and the fence The book that I got the planker design out of showed the guy riding, i.e. standing on it, but that tends to cause you to hang on the horse's mouth, for balance---not a good idea. For light pulling, I have done it with breast collar harness, with the traces run thru the shaft tugs on the harness saddle---because that was all that I had for the donkey. A collar harness is better engineered to take the forces of pulling a harrow, and allows the animal to use its power better. But, yes, it is good training for you and the equine! Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon The FjordHorse List archives can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw
Re: low thyroid
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > "Onna Kulaja" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I searched the archives on Fjords and low thyroid. There seems to be a > difference of opinion on whether Fjords have lower thyroid levels than other > horses. Does anyone have or know where I can find information regarding this > issue. I don't want to give my horse too much thyroid, but don't want to > stop it if he needs it. Does anyone know what their level should be? Years ago, my old Fjord mare, Nansy, tested low on thyroid, with accompanying weight gain, cresty neck, and my favorite symptom, "a temperament so unflappable as to be almost non-existant". The vet suggested an initial dose, and we did a few retests whenever the vet was out for something else. Unfortunately, the results were all over the place, seemingly more affected by whatever else we had done at or before that particular vet visit (e.g. a recent dose of bute, or a breeding "exam"). The vet finally told me to "play with it", observe the results, and adjust the dose accordingly. Higher doses obviously made Nansy more active (and opinionated!), to the point of being almost spooky; lower doses allowed her to become lethargic, again. We eventually converged on a dose that was "just right", and allowed her to lose some of her pudge. In retrospect, Nansy probably did NOT have a "thyroid problem". I suspect that what we were seeing was either insulin resistance, or the preliminary stages of Cushings (which was later diagnosed, after she got really random about shedding). In any of those cases, a diet lower in starches and sugars (i.e. less grain and molasses) would be a good idea. Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon The FjordHorse List archives can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw
Re: backing out of trailer, and stumbling fjord
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > I teach my horses to back out and use the word "step" when they come to the > end of the trailer floor. One acquaintance would take hold of her Morgan mare's tail, and move it such that the tailbone "pointed" toward the step. As long as her tail was "aimed" backward a bit, she would back confidently; when her tail "pointed" down, she would slow down and start feeling for the drop-off with her hind hooves. The John Lyons magazines point out that, when training a horse to get into the trailer, one should not let the horse load all the way on the first try. It's far better to have them put one foot in, stop, stand, then back out; then two feet, stand, and back out; then 3 feet, etc. Essentially, you need to teach them HOW TO back out as well as how to load, and it's easiest when you break it down into a lot of little sub-behaviors. Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon The FjordHorse List archives can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw
Re: Reserved fjord personality--need advice
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > I currently have a very talented seventeen year old gelding who is a Gjest > son on a thirty day trial. [...] > My primary concern is his aloofness. He is nothing like my two year old, > very in your pocket gelding. That curious, friendly, people loving nature > is a > big part of my love for this breed and I am just not sure how much he will > come around over time. [...] He will join up with me when > I have a feed bucket, but aside from that, I have given him many > opportunities to approach me for a scratch fest, and he will invariably > mosey away. If > I approach him, he will tolerate my affection while looking straight ahead, > but sometimes flinch if I surprise him or bump me with his nose in a "get > away" kind of gesture. > > I am just really struggling with this decision and would appreciate any > advice from long term Fjord owners/breeders or those who own Fjords that > might > fall into a more aloof category or have suffered mistreatment. [...] > Kris in NC Many years ago, I bought my first horse, a Fjord mare named Nansy. She was 17 at the time, and it was the better part of a year before she regarded me as anything more than Room Service. Technically, she had had only one previous owner, but she had been leased out for breeding, hauled to various events and expos, been used by beginners, etc---my guess is that she figured that I was just another "one night stand". It took her a while to decide that maybe I was going to be in her life for long enough that it was worth investing "emotional capital" in a relationship with me. Over time, we developed the closest connection that I have had with any of my equines. Fjords can get very bonded to "their person"---to the point that some of them border on being "one man horses". I suspect that your on-trial gelding senses that the current situation might not lead to a "forever home", and is holding back, emotionally. What I can't say for sure is whether he will eventually warm up to you. But, as long as there's a question in your mind, he'll probably continue to hold back Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon The FjordHorse List archives can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw
Re: overweight fjords
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > "Lola Lahr" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > re: the grazing muzzle and I have heard really good > things about this method. It keeps them doing what horses naturally do > (grazing) so reduces stress and keeps them moving. I have read in several > places that the old dry lot trick can actually cause problems at the > cellular level and is really not a good idea. A word of caution to those just starting out with a grazing muzzle--- you will probably have to fiddle with the fit. I found that there was a fine line between adjusting it tight enough to keep it on the horse, but loose enough that it didn't cause a rub on the bridge of the nose. Rom got his off once, but because he was only out for an hour, he didn't have enough time to "do much damage" to his diet. I have a sneaking suspicion that, if I had continued to muzzle Sleepy, he would have figured out how to deliberately remove his grazing muzzle---he's just that kind of horse. The only drawback that I see to a grazing muzzle is that it might give the owner a false sense of security. If it does come off, the animal could well engage in a laminitis-inducing pig-out on spring grass!!! Sleepy has figured out how to "graze" on his drylot. He does a lovely bow, to get his neck down to ground level, so he can reach under the bottom rail of the pipe corral panel for a few nibbles of grass. And, he looks longingly at the donkey, whose head is small enough to fit between the rails of her pipe corral, to stretch for a little more grass. It does keep them occupied, and provides a bit of gymnastic "exercise" Their 1 to 1.5 hours of pasture is accompanied by mixed grass hay, at approximately 1% of body weight per day (split into 2 feedings). They also get Horse Guard vitamins (for its selenium content), and Quiessence, plus a couple cups of alfalfa pellets (in lieu of grain) to motivate them to eat the supplements. Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon The FjordHorse List archives can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw
Re: overweight fjords
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I know that other people have had over weight fjords and would like more > information on a safe way to get the weight off. We recently acquired several > fjords who were just left on pasture and as a result, imagine, are VERY obese. > I don't know anything about their level of training so riding isn't an option, > yet. Their feet are recently trimmed to the best of their condition and are a > bit ouchy. We figured that hand walking will help with weight reduction as > well as being on a dry lot. > [...] > Teresa Farley in MO To quote my vet, "Less food, more exercise, and get some magnesium into them." She recommended magnesium sulfate (epsom salts!) which is available in about half-gallon-size containers in many large grocery stores' "health" aisles. An acquaintance prefers magnesium oxide, available in 50-lb bags from the farm supply. My equines (2 Fjords and a donkey) didn't like the taste of epsom salts, and the donkey simply won't eat anything powdered, so I now use Quiessence pellets, available from http://www.foxdenequine.com (Quiessence has about 8mg of magnesium, mostly oxide, in the maintenance dose, twice that in the "loading" dose.) Poke around on their web site for info on overweight equines and laminitis. Another good (but large) site to help you understand what is going on is http://www.safergrass.org The vet thought I ought to acquire a hot-walker and put my equines on it for an hour per day. Instead, I shortened their pasture time from two hours to only one hour, which meant that they spent the other hour pacing the fencelines, complaining about Room Service. ;-) The fattest one gets his turnout with a grazing muzzle, so he works harder for less grass. The combination worked last year, but we've slipped some this year Good luck! Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon The FjordHorse List archives can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw
Re: fjordhorse-digest fencing
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > "Kelly Trirogoff" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > We have recently purchased an acre and > a bit for my 5 year old fjord, Skovy. We will be moving to the house on the > property sometime in the next 2 weeks. The land needs to be cleared, fenced > and cross fenced. What have people found that they liked for fencing. > There are many options out there, and I am just wondering what are some good > choices. How do you decide about electric fencing? I don't know what size > "out put" box would be an appropriate size. or whether electrical is even a > good choice. > [...] > Kelly and Skovy in Beautiful Qualicum Beach BC, Canada Fjords vary greatly in their respect for fences. I've got one gelding (Sleepy) who has taught me a great deal about how NOT to build fences Most of the fencing here was built to contain cattle and sheep, so it's "field fence" mesh (39" tall, vertical wires 6" apart, horizontal wire spacing varying from 2" at the bottom to 6" the top), with 2 strands of barbed wire on top. At our place in California, the fences were 5 to 7 strands of barbed wire. Most horsemen will shudder at that, as there are a variety of ways that equines can get hung up in it, but for the equines that I have had (3 Fjords and a donkey), it has worked just fine. However, it should be noted that they now spend most of their time in "dry lot", which is surrounded by pipe corral panels---on which I've had to wire down the connector chains, and stake down every-other joint, lest Sleepy remodel the facilities for me! I do use electric fencing (1/2" tape) for internal fences, to subdivide pastures for rotation grazing. However, I would NEVER use just electric fencing as the only thing between my equines and a public road. One of my Fjords wouldn't dream of touching it; the other (see above) waits for it to be turned off, or weak (when I used a solar charger and battery), or shorted out (deer jumping fences), and heads for the nearest greener spot. For a tutorial on fencing, especially electric, contact http://www.premier1supplies.com and ask them to send you a copy of their "all species fencing catalog". It explains many different fencing systems, in detail. When you're ready to order, you can call them, explain your fencing situation and needs, and they will help you choose a cost-effective system. We have some fences that are made from "cattle panels" (6"x8" mesh, welded out of 1/4" rod) on T-posts. Sleepy managed to dismantle one of those, rubbing his butt on it until things came unwired. When combined with an electric fence wire at butt-height, it worked much better. Actually, just about any fence works better with a "scare wire" or two of electric fencing to keep the animals backed away from the fence. Some of the fences here are high-tensile electrified wire. My horses are rarely near those (a tangled horse can slice himself up rather thoroughly on them), but they mostly work on the cattle---when the charger is on And, when I keep the weeds sprayed down under the fence HT electric fences are also reputed to encourage wildlife to go around your place---the previous owner here put it in to keep out the occasional passing cougar, bear, or elk. Note that a badly frightened animal can go thru almost any fence. Some people would rather have fences that will fail "cleanly", without making jagged edges or entrapping snares. Like so many things about horsekeeping, it's a tradeoff Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon The FjordHorse List archives can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw
Re: got shedding?
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > last wednesday evening after i rode, my instructor's daughter (age 10) and i > each took a brush to a side of oz.20 minutes later there was enough fur > on > the floor to construct a small poodle. forget brushing it up, i had to scoop > it up with my hands to get it in the trash. > laurie LOL! My old mare, Nansy, was a champion shedder. My husband and I would put her in the barn aisle (concrete, so easily swept up), and each start on one side of her, with different tools (shedding blade or wire dog-slicker brush). When we had each "finished" our side, we would swap sides---and our different tools/techniques would get more hair out of the already "done" side! When we finished, there was so much hair on the floor that I had to make several "gathers"---far more than I could transport to the trash barrel with only two hands! A couple of days later, we would do it all over again There were weeks when I would accuse her of growing it faster than we could brush it out. ;-) Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon The FjordHorse List archives can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw
Fjord PR and care
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> I get the impression that Fjords might be falling victim to some of the publicity that they get. They are often touted as "perfect for beginners" and "easy keepers". Well, yes, and no Adult Fjords in light work do need some help "watching their waistlines". My 2 geldings stay quite well-rounded on grass hay at 1.2 to 1.5% of body weight per day, an hour or so of "pasture" (more about that in a minute), and NO GRAIN. However, if I had pregnant or lactating broodmares, or growing youngsters (or animals that actually worked for their livings), the requirements would be significantly higher. If anything, Fjords are harder for beginners to manage successfully, because it is such a balancing act between enough nutrition and not too many calories. Matters are further complicated by the climate and geology here in SW Oregon. Newcomers to equines or to this area look at the green-all-winter fields and think that is good horse pasture---nope. Grass only "grows" when the nighttime temperatures consistently stay above about 40F; below that, the grass just "survives". When we do get a few warm sunny days, the grass manufactures and stores sugars, especially fructans. But, in the absence of warm nights, the grass can't do anything but hang onto that sugar for later. Unfortunately, fructans is reknown for inducing founder ( http://www.safergrass.org/ is not an easy read, but has a lot of very valuable information on its many pages). That explains why there is so much winter grass founder in this area, especially to animals that are "easy keepers". Anyway, it is common in this area for responsible stockmen to store and feed reasonable quantities of hay to pastured animals this time of year. This both keeps the animals in good health, and spares the pastures, because if you let your stock trample or "strip mine" the vegetation (and we all know that Fjords will!), there won't be any grass plants left to regrow when the weather does change. The bad news is that, this year, we had crappy weather during the growing season, so hay is in short supply. Good hay is very expensive, and even being rationed by some providers. Hay that is readily available at "good" prices should be treated with suspicion, as it's probably moldy, weedy, or otherwise unsuited for horses. To make matters worse, we had an unusual cold spell this winter, which increased everyone's need for hay, as well as totally shutting down the grass (which was even buried under snow for a while---very unusual here). Newcomers to equines or to this area also need to realize that that weather pattern increases the owner's responsibility to provide water. Normally, water stays liquid here all winter, so horses raised in this area haven't learned to cope with iced-over water tubs. During the cold spell, twice a day, I was breaking ice off of tubs. For my California-raised donkey, I was even topping up the tub with a couple gallons of hot tap water from the house, as she seems disinclined to drink very cold water---as opposed to my Alberta-bred Fjord, who clearly remembered how to "soften up" water that had gone cold and hard on top! Lack of enough water can play a part in some impaction colics, so I made sure my equines had drinkable water at least twice a day. This area has rather stirred-up geology, and gets a lot of rain in the winter. The combination has led to soils (hence pastures and hays) that are majorly deficient in some minerals. When I moved here, horsemen and vets cautioned me that I would need to supplement my equines, especially with selenium (which wasn't a problem in central California, where there is sometimes too much selenium in the soil). Further research indicates that magnesium is also often deficient. This ties into the grass founder problem, as magnesium is needed for proper metabolism of sugars. Such supplementation is doubly important for pregnant broodmares or growing youngstock, as magnesium (in correct balance with calcium) is necessary for good bone formation. Anyway, the short version is that, in this area, Fjords are NOT "set `em and forget `em" animals. New owners need to be educated (and be willing to BE educated) about the local problems and procedures. "The only thing more expensive than education is ignorance." Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon The FjordHorse List archives can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw
Re: gelding for sale
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > an old rancher [...] now wants to sell the other gelding [...] > You can look up his sire Andre 221-B and his dam Heidis 2096-B on the NFHR > website. > > He is asking $2500 US I know nothing about this horse, other than the fact that he is a full brother to my gelding, Sleepy (Trondlief). If he's half the horse that Sleepy is, he's a steal at that price Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon The FjordHorse List archives can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw
Re: bits
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > CHERYL GARNICA <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > After asking and reading the same bit Q&A's over time, my philosophy > ( flawed??) was if the horse was more comfortable with his bit, I > (hoped) would have a more willing, relaxed and thus listening > partner. My collection is a snaffle, Level One Myler Comfort > Snaffle and latest is a French Link Full Cheek Snaffle (best) which > seems to give my fjord the extra reminder. My guy is young,green, > strong and learning. I've heard the Mullen mouth bit mentioned > before, but nixed it cause it looked so severe (in my mind). I'm somewhat puzzled why you thought a Mullen mouth bit looked severe? The mullen mouthpiece is simply a variation of the smooth bar mouthpiece, just with a shallow, gentle curve to it. This curve allows more space for the horse's tongue, so the bit rests (and can act) on the tongue and the bars of the mouth, spreading the pressure somewhat. Two of my Fjords (and my donkey) had noticable objections to bits with single-jointed mouthpieces, and went much better in bits with bar mouthpieces, such as the mullen-mouth. > Is the Mullen mouth a kinder bit but give you the extra leverage on > a strong neck? Rubber or metal preferred? I have kind hands with > the other horses, but the fjord takes some strength and leg. I think you may be confusing the effects of the mouthpiece, and the effects of the cheekpieces. A mullen mouthpiece can be accompanied by loose rings, or by full-cheeks, or by leveraged cheekpieces with a curb chain (such as in a liverpool). It is the cheekpieces that make a bit a snaffle (no leverage) or a curb (leverage) bit, not the mouthpiece. And, it is the leverage that can magnify your hand signal into something noticable, or painful---depending on how you use it. Most mullen-mouthed bits are metal. I suppose one could be constructed of the newer plastics, but a rubber one wouldn't maintain the curve. (Or, I suppose one could say that a rubber bar bit turns into a mullen-mouth, i.e. curves, when the reins are pulled!) Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon The FjordHorse List archives can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw
Re: 'Bye to Sven
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > "Karen McCarthy" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > After all this time, it's finally over. On Sunday Dec. 11th Sven made his > way up the rainbow, trotting, swinging his tail...�He was 28 years > old, Oh, Karen, I'm so sorry to hear that! Virtual hugs, to you and the rest of Sven's family > I also welcome any memories of him that anyone who had known him > might want to share I didn't get to see Sven often, but many of those times were memorable. In September of 1989, Karen competed Sven at a Combined Driving Event at the Horse Park in Woodside, California. I was scoring the event, so didn't get to see as much of their performance as I would have liked to. I did, however, happen to be nearby when they were judged for Presentation. The judge questioned the use of a side-check rein on such a nice, quiet pony, and Karen made some comment about it possibly being a safety item if Sven had a "stallion moment" about something or other. The presentation judge looked startled, and had to move Sven's ample tail aside to verify his gender! Now, that's my kind of stallion In November of 1991, my husband (Lynn) and I went to a Fjordings West meeting at Karen's place near San Andreas, California, with a trail ride/drive afterwards. Karen tacked up Sven for Lynn to ride, which raised my eyebrows a little---Lynn wasn't all that good a rider. Karen noticed my expression, and reassured me that "Sven will take care of him", which Sven did. But, the most memorable part was the kitten. Karen got Sven out and brushed him, then went to get the saddle blanket. Meanwhile, one of her kittens climbed the fence, hopped onto Sven's back, and curled up for a nap. Karen returned, pushed the kitten back onto Sven's rump, and put the blanket on Sven's back, then went to get the saddle. By the time she returned, the kitten was again curled up on the saddle blanket, so Karen again deposited the kitten on Sven's rump, and put the saddle on. When Lynn went to mount, the kitten was still there, so I suggested Lynn might want to remove this extra passenger. Throughout this, Sven was Mr. Cool. In either 1994 or 1996, we saw them compete at Skandifest in Turlock, California. The Ride and Drive class is usually done under English tack, but Karen chose to do it Western. Sven did an excellent job of showing the proper driving frame and gaits, then transitioned to a lovely Western Pleasure frame with nice jog and lope. He was an excellent example of the versatility of the breed. He will be missed Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon The FjordHorse List archives can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw
Re: Carrot Storage
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > "Jill E. Fishinger CPA P.C." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I'm looking for advice on the storage of carrots. I picked up a 25lb bag > of carrots at the grocery store yesterday. My intention is to store them in > our root cellar. My question is do you store them in newspaper like you > would cabbage or do you store them open to the air? >From the book "Putting Food By", p.287, Root-Cellaring Vegetables: Carrots may stay in the garden after the first frosts. After digging, handle like beets. Beets. Harvest in late fall after nights are 30F [...] but when the soil is dry. Do not wash. Leave tails and 1/2" of the crown when removing the tops. Pack in bins, boxes, or crates between layers of moist sand, peat or moss; or line containers with a large plastic bag that has 1/4-inch breathing holes cut in about 12 places. Elsewhere, it notes that moist sand "shouldn't be at all puddly-wet: if it's cold to the touch and falls apart when squeezed, leaving a few particles stuck to your hand, it should be the right degree of dampness. Don't fill containers so deeply that the produce at the bottom is ignored in the periodic examinations for spoilage." Ideal storage temperature is 32--40F, with 90--95% relative humidity and slight air circulation; storage life is 6 months. Of course, no Fjord worthy of the name would let carrots last 6 months ;-) Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon The FjordHorse List archives can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw
Re: spare parts kits
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > "Frederick J Pack" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I am aware of a spare parts kit for sale at: >http://www.summitview.on.ca/lamps.htm . > > What would you add to this kit, or what is not necessary? > [...] > What do you folks carry with you (not a first aid kit) but tools and > things to repair your harnesses and carriage while in the field? A couple of months ago, our local driving club had a short trail drive, during which it became obvious that no one had brought a spares kit. We muddled thru, with creative use of lead ropes and a good pocket knife. So, at the next club meeting, I orchestrated a demo on spares kits---had several people bring theirs and explain what was in it and why. The minimalist spares kit is a good pocket knife or Leatherman-like tool (e.g. something with a hole-punch blade), and several hanks of baling twine. A good farmer can fix a lot of things, given enough baling twine. ;-) At the other end of the scale was the tool box belonging to folks who used to go on week-long wagon train drives. They had the usual hole punch, wrenches, hammer (except theirs was actually useful---a small farrier's hammer, to go with the horseshoe nails), plus a box of things like rivets, conway buckles, tools for setting the rivets, several chunks of seatbelt-like webbing (patch material), and probably a lot of other stuff that I've forgotten. One person brought a kit like the one pictured at the above-mentioned web site (which appears to be identical to the kit in the Smucker's harness catalog). That's the officially required Pleasure Driving spares kit for the show ring (plus a halter, lead rope, and cooler or quarter sheet). IMHO, there's stuff in there that's not very useful. For instance, the things at the far left are the rein splice and trace splice. Except, a driving acquaintance once pointed out that a rein will usually break either at the bit (where the leather is corroded by saliva) or at the terrets (where the rein wears back and forth)---and the double-buckle rein splice won't help in either of those places. Similarly, most trace breakages happen at the "eye" that goes onto the singletree, where again the "required" splice won't do much. The wheel wrench pictured (item at far right) is only helpful on a wooden- wheeled carriage; many modern metal carriages will need different wrenches. My personal spares kit is somewhat different. The case is kind of like what I've seen for wrench sets or sets of wood auger bits, except mine is heavy denim, folded up at the bottom and sewn to make a bunch of vertical pockets, to fit various things; the top then folds down to keep things in, and I can roll it up into a compact, non-rattly bundle. I've got the obligatory vice grips, screwdriver/hammer, hole punch, and hoof pick/knife. My "rein splice" is leather lacing, plus a roll of electrical tape---overlap the broken ends of the rein, punch 2 or 3 holes, lace the pieces together, and cocoon the splice with tape, so it can slide thru a terret, or otherwise not get hung up on things. (I've also seen folks come in off of a drive with their failing carriage-rubber tire held on a wooden wheel by frequent wraps of electrical tape.) I've got some light nylon rope, sufficient to replace a trace if I have to, plus extras of the "lynch pins" that I use to retain my traces on the singletree. Since my cart is a pipe-cart with bicycle style wheels, I've got 3 different skinny wrenches capable of getting into the narrow spaces to deal with the inside wheel nuts, plus the funny tool needed to put my solid-rubber tires back on the wheel if they decide to slip a bit. I also have a spare bit, since I drive with a rubber one which can, in theory, break. I don't have horseshoe nails, since my donkey isn't shod. Of course, every spares kit should include a halter and lead rope. You should have wrenches to fit every bolt on the vehicle, and if there are parts (nuts, cotter pins, etc) that can get lost, carry spares. The most important "spares" on most drives are the "able bodied passengers capable of rendering assistance". Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon The FjordHorse List archives can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw
Re: Pjoska; Brave Pony #1
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > "kate charboneau" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >�My family�agreed to go on a trail ride with another couple, had agreed upon > "trail ride rules" since I was worried about the man's idea of safe & > smart.� He immediately forgot about our agreements; I ended up being > bucked off my AQHA gelding when�neither he nor I�could handle the antics > of our trail-ride partners. [...] > Since then, I have never gone on a trail ride with anyone besides > immediate family.� What do others do when�a trail ride gets dangerous? Yeah, been there. We had had our Fjord geldings for a few years, and had done a lot of trail rides with a neighbor on nearby Open Space lands. So, when an e-acquaintance suggested meeting her near where she boarded, to go on a "wildflower" ride, I agreed---with the understanding that we were strictly walk-trot riders. We arrived to find that the "outing" had escallated---our hostess had invited her boyfriend and another e-acquaintance, who brought her husband and a friend---so our 2 Fjords were outnumbered by 3 Pasos, a TB, and an Arab. My gelding, Sleepy, was rather tense about being with all the stranger horses (we later figured out that he has "translation" problems with horses that have "expressive" body language); my husband's gelding, Rom, became super-tense when he discovered that the lake we were riding near was "infested" with numerous power boats and jet-skis (Rom has always had "issues" about small engine noise). When we got to the first hill, the other horses all got excited---they were used to blowing off steam by cantering up it. In deference to us, the other riders tried to keep their horses at the trot, which mostly meant that there were a lot of horse/human arguments going on about the preferred gait, with the Pasos doing a lot of gaiting, the unfamiliarity of which served to make our Fjords even more tense. Things came to a head when our hostess's Arab mare did a bunch of nose-flip protests, whereupon Sleepy shied violently---sideways about 6' with a 90-degree turn. I ended up well up his neck and a bit off to the side; fortunately, his packhorse training kicked in, and he froze long enough for me to get back in the middle of him. I announced, "That does it---end of ride!"; my husband and I dismounted, bid our hostess good-day, and led our horses back to our trailer. In retrospect, our calm, quiet Fjords had led us to overestimate our riding skills. The fact that we always rode on the same, quiet, familiar trails near home, with the same few horses, meant that our boys weren't used to figuring out "new" places and horses. And, our boys had both been in Fjord-only homes for most of their lives, i.e. were "reading" normal expressive hot-horse body language as extreme threats (which they would be, if one Fjord "said" that to another). Fortunately, that day, I realized that things had escallated beyond my ability to control my horse and to ride-through what he was doing, plus that he was at the limit of his ability to control himself. At that point, self-preservation kicked in, so we got ourselves back in control (on the ground) and got away from as much of the problem as we could (the other horses). We still had to cope with the jet-ski sound and the unfamiliar surroundings, but at least we and our Fjords could concentrate on each other and work thru it. Afterwards, we discussed it with our neighbor/trainer, then started doing more "away" rides, adding others of her family to the group when possible. However, we never worked back up to doing rides with large groups, or in "busy" parks. Turns out, we're really hermits at heart, and enjoy our quiet solitude---as, apparently, do our horses. Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon The FjordHorse List archives can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw
Re: Bottom Line
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > "John & Eunice" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I've often wondered if fjords took on the personality or > attitude of the owner as revealed in some of these emails. > > Our fjords [...] are loving, affectionate, adorable Many years ago, when I was new to Fjords, I was discussing some of the "registry wars" with my Fjord-mentor. I inquired how such a sweet, kind, affectionate breed ended up with such contentious owners. My mentor grinned, and allowed as how Fjords were likely the only breed that could put up with some of those folks Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon The FjordHorse List archives can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw
Stories....
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > 'You are never gonna believe what happened!' Yup, my PRETEND > story came true. They had been riding a new trail and came to THAT bridge. > His > Fjord told him twice, 'UMM, I don't think it is safe, Dad,' so they went > around > and proceeded down the trail. A short time later there was a commotion > behind them and they turned around to see what was wrong. Yup, the people > behind > him had pointed their horse at the brigde and insisted and - THE HORSE FELL > THROUGH!! > > I do have other stories (I have lots of them!), but won't bore you with all > of the details. > > Gayle Ware Aww, why not? IMHO, that kind of "stories with a lesson" are just the thing to exchange around the "virtual kitchen table" on a soggy weekend! Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon The FjordHorse List archives can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw
Re: The bottom line
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Robin Churchill <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I will not be purchasing from or recommending any of the people that I > perceive to be rude or nasty on this list. So whether you realize it > or not, your behavior on the list may be hurting your own bottom line > in the future [...] > Maybe some of the breeders need to think about how you sound to the > others on this list who may be buying or recommending sources of > quality fjords before you start your next attack. As breeders and > spokesmen for the breed, you should strive to make your behavior > above reproach which is certainly not how it appears to the rest of > us. Yes!!! Well-said! When I was Fjord shopping, I found it useful to ask questions at each of the farms I visited, getting them talking about some of the OTHER farms that I had/would visit. It's amazing what folks "tell you about themselves" when they think they're talking about someone else Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon The FjordHorse List archives can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw
Re: slobber question
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > "Dave and Patti Walter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I got a horse(fjord sad to say) in for training that has the STRANGEST bad > habit, at least I think it's a bad habit. She SLOBBERS all the time. Or more > so when stressed it seems. She was tested for ulcers, scoped and x-rayed and > all kinds of tests done. Tests found nothing physically wrong with her. > [...] > Oh, and it's not from Red Clover, I"ve seen that and that is much more watery. > THIS IS THICK, plus no Red Clover at her place or mine. My old mare, Nansy, was a champion slobber-er. It was thick and ropy, copious to the point that she couldn't eat a watery mush, because she couldn't keep it in her mouth! We've discussed slobbery Fjords here a time or three, and several folks have told tales of "Pavlovian" horses---ones that start to slobber the minute they think food is coming. That might have been the cause in Nansy's case, because most of the time when we went to the barn, it was to feed or turn them out to pasture, so she could reasonably expect the presence of humans to lead to food. ;-) Quiz her owners about their management routine, i.e. did they give treats every time they went near the horse? Is there someone in your barn sneaking her treats? On one occasion, when Nansy was having what we eventually figured out to be a vaccination reaction, she got even more slobbery. So, yes, stress might make a slobbering problem worse. Nansy's slobbering increased with age, and she did have a lot of dental issues. (Nansy had gotten regular floating by my equine vet, but it took me a while to catch on that the vet didn't know nearly as much about the fine points of dental work as she pretended to!) If you know of a well-respected equine dental specialist, you might have him take a look Otherwise, I think it falls under the heading of "can't be cured, must be endured"! Give her an extra hug, from those of us with slobber-ers (or fond memories of same). ;-) Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon The FjordHorse List archives can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw
Re: H-U-N-G-R-Y
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > Woody the Wide and Toby the Tub are HUNGRY. We live in So. California, > where our choices are alfalfa, Timothy ($21.00 a bale!), Orchard, Bermuda > and > straw. Bermuda sent my TWH to the vet with impaction, so that's off the > list. > Toby reaches over my backyard fence and picks lemons to eat. Woody strains > at the front yard fence for any plants that might grow near. There is no > "grazing" in this dry area of California. Would giving them STRAW to chew > on > between meals be harmful? Low calorie and something to chew...or am I > looking > at potential impaction and bloating with straw? LOL---sounds like Fjords, alright! Straw impaction has been discussed here before (albeit from the point of view of a horse eating its bedding); I am attaching a copy of one of our resident vet's reply to that question. Fjords have a reputation for being able to "get fat on sticks and seaweed", i.e. process whatever you put in front of them. The one disclaimer that I would put on that is to make sure their teeth are up to the task. It's not straw per se that's the problem, but poorly chewed food. For tubbies, consider adding a magnesium supplement to their diets. Many Fjords are borderline "insulin resistant", and magnesium is supposed to help in the metabolism of "sugars" in their diets. (OTOH, you might want to have your hay analyzed, first, as some California hay is actually too high in magnesium!) Anyway, I'd say get a bale or two of straw, and try it. It is sometimes recommended for donkeys, who share the Fjord's "air fern" metabolism! My problem is that my donkey yanks strawy hay out of her feeder and pees in it---social comment? Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon begin forwarded message- To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Wed, 9 Dec 1998 11:21:45 -0600 Subject: Re: straw impaction... From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Steven A White) This message is from: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Steven A White) Has anyone personally had a horse get impacted by eating straw? I sure don't know of any. I think in theory that it may be possible if it ate enough (i.e. a starved horse where that is all there is to eat). I've done a lot of colic surgeries and can say that I have never found straw to be the source of impaction on an adult horse. I did find one foal that had some straw in an impacted small colon but there was lots of other stuff too. It seems he was over curious and was eating anything he could get in his mouth. Also, I had just read in a recent veterinary publication where they suggested bedding a foaling mare on straw because (for one of many reasons) the mare may ingest some straw which will add more fiber to the colon. This then holds water like a sponge and makes the manure easier to pass, thus reducing the chances of post-foaling colic. I would appreciate anyone letting me know if they have had a problem with straw bedding in the past that DEFINATELY caused and impaction (not just suspected). But unless I hear otherwise, I don't think you should panic and change your bedding routine. Steve White Waterloo, Nebraska, USA end forwarded message- The FjordHorse List archives can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw
Re: reaction to vaccines - could it be inherited?
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Carol Rivoire at Beaver Dam Farm <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Last year we had a mare experience a serious reaction to her spring shots. > The single injection contained - flu, tet., E & W Enceph. -- The mare > developed a lump at the injection site on her neck almost immediately, and > that lump got bigger by the day. -- Soon she was showing other signs of > illness [...] I've just heard about another Hostar > daughter that had a serious reaction to her spring shots. This one didn't > manifest itself as an abscess, but more (as it was explained to me) a mild > anaphylactic reaction. I've had a couple instances of serious vaccination reactions. The first was with my donkey, who got regularly got lumps on her neck whenever she was vaccinated, and they got bigger each time. I checked with Shadow's breeder, who told me that BOTH of her parents had reacted to shots, and that their reactions had gotten dangerously worse over time. When I passed that information on to my vet, she said that the problem was most likely the "rhino-flu" component of the vaccine, and recommended that "we only vaccinate her for things that I can't fix"---tetanus, sleeping-sickness, and in that area, rabies. That eliminated the vaccination reactions for many years; now that Shadow is in her mid-20's, she is starting to get a small, managable lump after vaccinations (about the same as my 2 Fjord geldings get). Some years later, my old Fjord mare, Nansy, had a scary episode, just hours after her spring vaccinations. She exhibited profuse drooling (far worse than her normal "yum, dinner-time slobbers"), elevated temperature and heart rate, loss of appetite, and what I took to be colic symptoms---shifting her hind feet around a lot. An emergency vet visit yielded the opinion that the symptoms and clinical signs didn't add up to colic, or anything other "routine abnormality". Banamine helped, and I was unwilling to further stress Nansy by transporting her to their clinic, so we just took a watch and wait approach. Banamine, time, and babying (to coax her to eat) "fixed" whatever it was, so we concluded that it was probably a vaccination reaction. The vet recommended dropping the rhino-flu component of the shot, and breaking up the other shots---tetanus/EE in the spring, rabies in the fall---plus giving her a shot of a steroidal anti-inflammatory before administering any vaccinations. Nansy had no further vaccination problems. In the case of the donkey, heredity was involved, in a sense. Many donkeys have a problem with shots formulated for horses, which are NOT tested for use in donkeys. I suspect that several things were going on with Nansy. One was her age; she was in her late 20's at the time, so her body had had a lot time to build up an "allergy" to the vaccine. We later found that she was also in the preliminary stages of Cushings, which is known to mess up the immune system---in her case, making it over-reactive. I doubt it was "breeding", as Nansy was from "foundation American stock", with no obvious relationship to Hostar's ancestors. I can get away with not vaccinating for rhino-flu, as I'm not breeding, and my animals rarely go off of my property. When the donkey does go to a show, I show off of my trailer (refusing to put her into a "public" stall), and try to keep her from sniffing noses with other equines. Breeders have to worry about rhino causing abortions, which complicates their vaccination decisions. Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon
Re: Team Hitch "observation"
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > "Ron & Sherrie Dayton" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Just reading threw the Herald, and noticed something kind of strange on page > 42. Here is a pair hitched to what looks like a Roberts carriage. Now, I'm > not an engineer, but shouldn't the side checks go OVER the horses head > rather than under the neck? It looks to me like he has completely removed the sidechecks from the bridles, and he seems to have thin black rope halters on the horses, under the bridles. The cheek-pieces of the halters just happen to line up with the drops for the sidechecks, and those are the tag ends of the tied-off rope poll-pieces that are sticking out to the sides of their necks. > shouldn't the pole go threw the center ring on the neck yoke ? I don't have much experience with pair-to-pole attachment, but it looks like it could be a carriage-style pole-head that "grasps" the ring on the draft-style neck yoke. Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon
Re: hay storage
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Carol Makosky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I will be storing my small sqs. of winter hay in a very dry shed with a > cement floor. There has never been a moisture problem or water issue in > this building. My question is: Should I put down a barrier of some > sort anyway rather than having the hay sitting directly on the cement floor? The one time that I put hay directly on a concrete floor, I lost the entire bottom layer to mold. Concrete continues to "cure" for many years, and the hay "wicked" enough water out of the slab to cause mold. We had some used plywood available, so I built a raised floor---put thin strips of plywood around the edges and a few in the middle of each sheet of plywood, so there was a 3/4" air gap between the slab and the sheets of plywood. End of problem with mold! When we moved here, the pole barn had a dirt/gravel floor, so I stacked the hay on shipping pallets. For a while, I had a problem with mice/voles living in the pallets and hay, until I acquired a "mouse patrol team"---a barn cat and a 4' gopher snake, both volunteers! When I built my new barn, I simply gravelled the hay area and continued to use pallets under the hay. Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon
Draft horse rules
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> I've got a question for those of you that show (or have shown) draft horses. I have been "volunteered" to set up a driven "obstacle course" at a show/demo that our local club (Umpqua Harness Driving Club) is putting on at the County Fair. Trouble is, my experience with "obstacles" has been of the CDE variety. What are some of the standard obstacles at draft horse shows? Are there any online rules, diagrams, etc? Thanks! Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon
Re: Feeding Fjords, again
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Has anyone on the list fed out bluegrass straw? I'm wondering where to > get it, and if I can feed it just like hay? Don't know about the straw, but around here, we can get "ryegrass pellets", which I assume are a by-product of the grass seed industry in the Willamette Valley. (My guess is that they're made from grass straw and seed cleaner leavings---chaff, weed seeds, etc.) My equines will eat them, but aren't exactly thrilled by them. I make a point of buying slightly over-mature "pasture" grass hay, which has a lot of straw---more chewing satisfaction for the same calories. > On a similar note, I ran across some early clinical trial results that > suggest that horses that are insulin resistant may be lacking in > magnesium. [...] Has anyone used magnesium > for their tubbo ponies? It's too early to tell if it's working for my > mare , I just know that she thinks it's *not* yummy at all. > > Eileen and Jane, who's off all grass :(, in eastern WA About 18 months ago, my vet sort of went down the row of my plump equines (2 Fjord geldings and a standard donkey), chanting "less food, more exercise, and get some magnesium into them". I had heard good things about Quiessence (magnesium and chromium), from Fox Den Equine, so gave it a try. It's expensive, but they eat every crumb of it. My equines have slimmed down noticably, but I can't say for sure what part the magnesium played, as I also cut back on their pasture time. This had the side effect of increasing their exercise, as they spent that "missing" hour pacing the corral fencelines, complaining about Room Service. ;-) The fattest one also has to wear a grazing muzzle for his pasture time. And, I removed Equine Senior from their diets; it was only a cup or so, meant to "motivate" consumption of supplements, but I now use alfalfa pellets, instead---less sugar in their diets. It should be noted that many of the cattlemen in this area supplement magnesium to their stock. In many parts of western Oregon (and undoubtedly Washington), millenia of heavy rainfall has leached many of the minerals out of the soil. The grasses here also tend to accumulate sugar in cool weather---a good strategy for being ready to grow when things warm up, but not good for insulin resistant equines. Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon
Re: FH-L Archives
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Steve McIlree <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > It's been a couple months ago that I promised archives were coming > for the list. I'm pleased to tell you the service is working well > enough that I think it's safe to let you have a look. You can find > the archives at: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw. Check it out, but don't > complain about anything just yet. Hey, great Just last week, I was wishing I could get to the archives, when my email was down (but my browser OK). Now, I can. Thanks for that, and thanks again for the whole FjordHorse list! Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon
Re: protective ponies
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > CHERYL GARNICA <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > My fjord has it backwards... easy going guy, non aggressive. The > other horses take advantage and pick on him (esp. the POA!!) [...] > I was wondering if other's fjords were passive? I figured it's why > he's at the bottom of the pecking order. (My other 2 aren't fjords). > Curious. > Cheryl in S. Cal My theory is that it has to do with Fjord body language. Fjords seem to have a more "subtle" body language than do many breeds---with them, a nose squinch and an ear flick speaks volumes. I've got one Fjord who is obviously afraid of Arabians and Pasos, and I think it's because their very "active" body language is always "shouting threats at him"! At our house, the #1 equine is my 11.2hh donkey. Shadow. I assume that her long ears "amplify" any signals she makes, so the Fjords back off. (She was also the daughter of the alpha jenny in the breeder's herd, so grew up with everyone deferring to her.) From there, "rank" is exactly correlated with how long I've had each of Fjords---each newcomer fit in at the bottom of the herd. Although, since my old mare (Nansy, who was #2) died, Rom (gelding, was #3) has gotten less willing to defer to Shadow. Even Sleepy (gelding, was #4) is less afraid of Shadow than he used to be. Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon
Re: saddle
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > "Beth Pulsifer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I'm a newcomer to the Fjord world and I think I'm getting hooked...:) Funny how that happens! > I need some information on saddle fit.. I have a wide tree dressage > saddle and hoped it would fit my new Fjord mare [...] > it looked like it sat just perfect [...] However when I > lunged her in it it rode way up on her neck. [...] She > doesn't have much for withers... Yup, sounds like a Fjord, alright. My first equine was a donkey, which gave me a good foundation for addressing the conformational challenges that Fjords can present. In the donkey and mule world, it is quite common for saddles to have either a crupper or breeching, to keep the saddle from drifting forward over the withers onto the neck. The problem is wide ribs, and no withers---too often if the saddle does stay in place, it's because the tree "catches" on the animal's shoulderblades---not good. I added cruppers to all 3 of the saddles that I had for my Fjords (the Western one required having a saddlemaker add a D to attach the crupper to; the 2 OrthoFlex hybrids each came with a D for a crupper). We rode in steep country a lot, and our geldings seemed to appreciate having their saddles "tied down" in back, so they stayed where they belonged. Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon
Re: Teddy in exile!
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > "Cynthia Madden" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Teddy, 2-3/4 years old, had to go to a friend yesterday for a temporary > stay. We had 60 mph winds here Wed. night and it ripped down several of my > plastic electric tape fence posts that I put in place after Teddy destroyed > most of a wire fence line. [...] He has learned to ignore the electric > fence. Hmmm, Teddy must be related to my gelding, Sleepy. Sleepy has taught me a great deal about how NOT to build fence! What currently works is pipe corral panels, with every-other joint staked down into the ground, so he can't "migrate" the corral this way and that to reach one more nibble of grass. In California, I used welded-mesh cattle panels (16'x52", of 8x4" mesh made from 1/4" rods), with 3 T-posts per panel, and a galvanized electric wire (on long offsets, and with nothing but that corral powered by that charger), to keep him from "sitting" on the fence. He could defeat either electric fencing, or panel fencing, but not the combination. Word of advice---don't do simple increments in fence strength, or he'll figure out how to defeat it faster than you can fix it! > The 60 mph winds also turned the inside of my house into a > beach property since I had two windows open and live in the Chihuahuan > Desert. I grew up in New Mexico. My dad referred to NM as "the state of the roving real estate". Gotta admit, I don't miss dust storms! Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon
Re: Feeding and Time
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > "Reena Giola" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > [...] We measure the horses flake of hay > by weight [...] each horse is different, so > each needs a bit different feeding regime, and adjusts say if the > horse is getting too fat/too thin, etc. Most places I've been at the > average time for a horse to eat would be about 1 1/2 hours [...] > [...] so like a horse that is done totally eating in a 1/2 hour, > to me is NOT getting enough food? > [...] > Reena > who has worked herself into a tizzy. Several things are possible. The horse in question may simply be "low man on the totem pole" who is used to being fed in a herd situation, i.e. he has learned that he'd better eat as fast as he can, so his ration is gone before anyone else comes looking for it! Another possibility is that the hay being fed is "too good". It's too easy to chew, so can be eaten very rapidly. In this case, the horse is probably getting enough calories, but may not be getting enough "chewing time"---which could lead to chewing up the barn, fences, his neighbor's tail, etc. IMHO, alfalfa hay falls in this category. I deliberately buy grass hay that is a little over-mature and strawy. To get the same nutrition, I have to feed a little more of it, plus the coarse texture takes more chewing. I think this is healthier for them---food goes into the system more slowly, and they can work at it longer, sort of simulating grazing. OTOH, Fjords are really good at making food disappear But, yes, the only valid test of "enough food" is whether the animal is maintaining a good weight on that ration. Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon
Re: In your face
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > "Cynthia Madden" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Loved this discussion! I have 2-1/2 yr old Teddy-in-your-face! He helps the > plumber unload his truck, the farrier as he trims the other horses, me as I > feed, and Zack the Giant Scnhauzer catch his kong. He also tips the > wheelbarrow full of rock and helps me fix the electric fence he tears down. Here's where I have an advantage. My first equine was my donkey, who combines all of the above with the fun of playing "Keep Away" with any tool or project parts that she can lay lips on. I learned early on the value of gates, halters, and food. Changes to her or the Fjords' environments happen while they are busy with their breakfasts, or put out to pasture, or caught and tied up for some "patience training". It really is quicker (and safer) to work on projects without "helpers"! Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon
Re: Best Friends Grazing Muzzles
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > "Linda Taylor" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I want to try a Best Friends grazing muzzle on Boombah and would like advice > as to size, Cob or Horse? It's going to depend on the individual animal. Rom is 14.1hh, and should wear a 5-3/8" bit (we make do with 5-1/2" ones). I bought a "horse" size Best Friends grazing muzzle for him, which seems to do the job. It may be a bit snug around the nose, as he keeps rubbing off a bit of hair on the bridge of his nose. Sleepy is 14.3hh, and should wear a 5-3/4" bit (we use a 6" with a set of rubber bit guards). I bought the "large horse" size for him, which seems to be a decent fit. Except, he got so frustrated with it that he stood around and pawed at the turf, ripping big holes in it. I decided that giving him a shorter duration of pasture, without the muzzle, would be easier on all concerned. BTW, Sleepy (the subordinate) likes the fact that Rom (the dominant) is muzzled on pasture. It means that Sleepy can eat wherever he wants to, because Rom can no longer nip him to "take over" the best grass! And, I find the donkey's grazing muzzle to be useful if I want to take her for a walk around the pasture without getting my arm ripped off, due to grass diving Anyway, unless Boombah is unusually "petite" for a Fjord, I suspect that a "Horse" size would be better than "Cob". I did my size estimation by "matching" the muzzle sizes to the sizes of halters that the individuals wear. Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon
Re: Heart rate for Fjords
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > "jgayle" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Who knows what the heart rate average is for Fjords? Vet was checking Gunnar > and could not get over the 30 rate. I suspect that it varies individually. I recall one time, a new vet was checking mine over, and commented that Sleepy's heart rate was "so slow!"---particularly compared to Rom, who gets tense for vets, so has an elevated heart rate. This is why vets recommend that owners occasionally check their animals' resting heart rates (under no stress), and keep that "baseline" information. (Yes, I have checked the heart rates on my equines in the past, but, um, I apparently put that piece of paper in "a good place") Of course, sometimes it's hard to do on a Fjord. I've not had very good luck feeling their pulses at all the standard places that vet books recommend---all that fur and subcutaneous fat muffles the feel too much. I can find it on the under side of the tail, near the body, but mostly I've had best luck using a stethoscope, right behind the animal's left elbow. Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon
Re: Estimating your horses weight
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > "Cynthia Madden" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > A few weeks ago I mentioned a Texas A&M method of determining your horses > weight that is supposed to be accurate within 50 lbs. I found the web site > describing it. See below > > http://tinyurl.com/syly5 Oh, goodie, another equine weight formula for my "collection"! However, their formula, weight = girth x girth x length/330 has been around for a long time. I first heard of it on the old newsgroup, rec.equestrian, in August of 1992---it was credited to an article in The Chronicle of the Horse. The above URL does have one small "wrinkle" on the old version---it defines the equine's body length a little differently (measures a little further around the "corner" of the butt). Note, however, that the researchers in the article tested it on 12 horses, all of QH, TB, or Arab ancestry. To my mind, that sample is rather small in size, and of insufficient diversity. It would be interesting for someone with access to a livestock scale and lots of Fjords to take data and "run the numbers". I'd expect a light-horse formula to be off more than 50 lb for our "chunkier" breed. The older formula UNDER-estimated the weight of my then-420-lb donkey (the only one of my equines that I can weigh on a bathroom scale) by 63 lb, which is a rather large % error!) OTOH, when I redid the calculations some years later, her scale weight had gone up a lot, but her measurements hadn't changed---donkeys store their fat further back on their rib cages, as do my Fjords, to some extent. That's why I measure and record both heart-girth and rib-girth, to track my equines' "weights". Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon
Re: Monthly Measurements
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > sharon knipe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I'm wondering if anyone else is using a monthly measurement of their Fjords to > keep track of their weight? We measure once a month using a tape measure > around the body just behind the front legs. We have found this is a great > barometer on their condition. We have been doing it for a year Yup---except I do it once a week, and measure both heart-girth (as you do) and rib-girth (the biggest circumference around the animal's barrel), and have been for 19 years. I've found it important to measure at about the same time of day, with the animal in the same stance (I do mine when they've got their heads down, eating their breakfasts, first thing in the morning). I don't worry if consecutive measurements change by an inch (or even two on rib-girth), because I see that much variation depending on when the animal last dumped manure, or slight changes in stance (not standing squarely), or even attitude (girths go up when the animal is tense). What I look for are trends---for instance, up a little, several weeks in a row. Having multiple years of past records makes it possible for me to see that they usually gain a little girth in the summer, and lose it in the winter. I consider that to be normal. But, yes, keeping track of girths, plus weighing their hay rations, is the best way I've found to manage Fjord's weights. Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon
Re: Harness Bag
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > "themercers" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I just spent a lot of time cleaning my leather harness and want to find a > bag to store it in so it won't collect dust between uses. Anyone have any > suggestions on what and where to use/buy one? > > Taffy Mercer > In VERY windy Kennewick, WA The first harness that I got for my donkey was usually stored on a harness hook, hung from the ceiling in my tack room. To keep dust off of the harness, I worked an old pillowcase up around the harness from the bottom, and tied the "neck" of it closed around the shank of the harness hook. Her new harness lives in a nylon duffel bag---handier to grab, toss into the truck or trailer, and set on the trailer fender while harnessing up. Another old "plow" harness that I got for my Fjord mare used to hang on a saddle rack in the tack room, with a cotton sheet draped over it, held closed at the sides and bottom by clothespins, to keep the dust off. BTW, I had to laugh today, as my Fjord geldings cantered out of the barn, onto pasture for their daily "ration" of grazing---leaving assorted long, loose hairs floating along in the sunlight, behind them. It had me thinking, "In a cloud of hair, with a hearty Hi-Ho, Silver, away" Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon
Re: 6" Kimberwick
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > "themercers" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I need a couple of 6" low port Kimberwick bits. Do any of you have > particular companies you have dealt with that you would recommend? There > are a lot of places to buy them online but I've never bought from any of the > companies. > > Taffy Mercer > In sunny, 38* Kennewick, WA Years ago, I got one thru Libertyville Saddle Shop's catalog. It was made in S.Korea, and took quite a while to arrive (backordered at the manufacturer). I had also tried to order it thru a local tack shop, which also had it backordered. FWIW, the local shop "lost track of" my order, but Libertyville not only kept it in their system, they also occasionally sent me post card updates, inquiring if I still wanted the item! I got the impression that the manufacturer only tools up to produce some of the "unusual sizes" of bits when there are enough orders in the queue to make it worth their while. Granted, that was before all the Warmblood craze set it---6" bits may be more standardly available, now. Good luck! Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon It's also sunny here, 46*. The grass is green, and the feral daffodils are blooming. They may regret that decision, as the forecast is for a few nights of lows in the 20's later this week!
Re: Gotta love them Fjords!
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > "Catherine lassesen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > We were working with the farrier today. Doing 20 + horses is an all day > adventure. [...] I haltered [pregnant mare] one while the other just > stood there. [...] Mind you the farrier is use to other breeds where it is a > struggle to get them to do anything. these two mares just hung out enjoying > the manicure and pedicures. and wanting more, more, more.. Yeah, Fjords can be that way! I recall back when we were in California, and my Fjords were kept shod (too many gravel roads for barefoot). The farrier would show up, and start working on one gelding, tied in the corner of a stall. I'd have to close the stall-guard chain across the stall's outside door, or the other gelding (loose in the corral) would come into the stall to try to "supervise". Even with the chain closed, he'd lean over the chain, trying to mess with the farrier's hair, pick up tools, etc. When we finished with the first horse, that one would go out into the corral, lie down in a sunny spot, and take a nap while we worked on the second one. I remember how bug-eyed the farrier got, the first time I went out and sat down on my dozing horse. The horse merely rolled from his chest down flat onto his side; I adjusted my perch accordingly, and continued to sit on him. Mr.Farrier said he'd never before seen a horse who would let someone approach while he was down, let alone use him for a couch! Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon
Re: Ultra Lite Driving Whip
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Taffy Mercer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Does anyone know who it is that makes the ultra-lite driving whip out of a > fishing pole blank and adds a lash to the top? A friend is looking for one > and I can't remember where I saw them. The business was originally Barbara Burr's "ULTRALITE WHIPS". As of May 2005, it was taken over by Jack & Marie McKee, and a new website was in the works. Netscape suggests: http://www.ultralitewhips.com Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon
Re: Itchy Udder
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Don Brackett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > My Fjord mare, Osa, has an itchy udder. She'll see any family member > coming and meet us at the gate, nickering and stretching out for us to > scratch. It's black crusty/greasy stuff. I've washed it thoroughly with > treetea soap and it'll be itchy and yucky again the next day. I tried a > weeks worth of washing each day with micro tech, but to no avail. What > is it? It's been going on for a long time, and I keep forgetting to ask > the vet when he's here as it's not a big prob. but must be somewhat > annoying for her. Any ideas on what else to try? > Jane in cold maine It's referred to as smegma---the same as stallions/geldings get in their sheaths and on the shaft of the penis. Like the guys, mares differ in how much they produce---some just get a little waxy crud now and again; some are real grease pits. My old Nansy mare was sort of in the middle---some crud, but not too gooey. However, she'd hardly ever turn down a good udder-scritch, and we used to laughingly tell her that she was an obscene hussy, the way she'd carry on while we were rubbing her udder for her. Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon
Re: Question on clippers
This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Barbara Sollner-Webb <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > be sure to clip only a dust/dirt-free horse, though, or the blades > wear out real fast. since washing a fuzzy guy, and keeping him from > rolling until dry, is pretty much of a fairy-tale, i recommend > getting one of those cheapie dust-beater hand-held vacuums > [...with...] a rotating brush, that you can run upward, beating > against the grain of the fur, and even the deep dirt beats out very > easily. I've got one of the small horse-vac's, and I find it to be relatively useless on my winter-hairy donkey or Fjords. I've had better luck brushing them a little to break up the mud clods, then taking a small shop vac, putting the hose into the exhaust port, and "blow-dusting" my equines. It works best in an area with a slight breeze---position the animal with its head up-wind, and nothing behind it that has to stay clean. Start at the head (being very careful not to blow dirt into eyes or ears), and "flick" the airstream back and forth across the animal's coat, small sections at a time. It's amazing how quickly and thoroughly the dirt goes flying away! My donkey hates being brushed or vacuumed (causes a lot of static electricity in her coat), but seems to enjoy being blow-dusted. The vac's exhaust stream is usually somewhat warm, which apparently feels good on a cold day. Marsha Jo HannahMurphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon
