Re: [IceHorses] Drought Affecting Horse Industry - my rant
I gotta get perennial peanut for my Jas who is having a thinness problem (oh wouldnt that be a nice thing for me!) and it is due in next week and the man will sell it for 6 dollars a square bale if you buy at least ten. SO thats a good deal I think... boy horses sure love it. I will get some for Jas and give it to the others in handfuls as a treat. I have four bales of alfalfa now I am doing that with, just got enough to last til the perennial peanut comes in. We have a BLM mustang adoption center near me, and I go to the adoptions to watch. last time I went all the mustangs were all docile and calm and just standing eating perennial peanut hay like pigs. I asked one of the worker guys was it ok to feed them such rich hay and he shrugged and said 'we always just get whats available locally when we are on the road and I said sheesh, perennial peanut is about the richest hay there is, its like giving them peanut butter and he shrugged and said they'd had no probs and sure were happy... and I was thinking... doesnt the BLM know anything about horses and food?? But hey, who am I to ask questions... maybe they are used to alfalfa? Janice-- even good horses have bad days sometimes.
Re: [IceHorses] Drought Affecting Horse Industry - my rant
I have long-term concerns about hay-supplies, and the cost of hay. I just filled my barn last night with hay for the year at $4.50/bale(approx 50-65 lb bales) - that is 50 cents higher than last year - and it's a great feeling to have a full barn. I feed oat hay and have been very happy with it - my supplier, who is nearby, showed me the analysis from last year and his oat hay was better than his fescue or orchard grass hay - the one drawback is that it is higher in sugar so not good for an IR horse. -- Laree in NC Doppa Mura Simon, Sadie and Sam (the S gang) Yet when all the books have been read and reread, it boils down to the horse, his human companion, and what goes on between them. - William Farley I ride ponies because heart is not measured in hands. - Steve Edwards
Re: [IceHorses] Drought Affecting Horse Industry - my rant
Renee Martin wrote: I am fully expecting to payat least $5 a bale for my standard grass mix, 50 lb. bales. (that's not delivered, but picked up off the wagon ourselves).- that is 50 cents higher than lastgt; yearLast year I paid $3.75 and $4.00 (depending on the cutting)gt; . . it's a great feeling to have a full barn.lt;-- HEy Renee, In Oct we paid $4.00 a bale and got 300bales then in Dec/Jan we $5.00ea.and we got a 150 bales. In the fall we start to gather about 400bales for the winter. We had hay farmers don't worry we got lots of hay for you all winter long. We have be screwed to many times wehere they run out in the dead of winter. Tweo yrs ago our farmer told us no problem I got lots of hay for you, then a month later the guy just varnished in thin air and no one heard or seen him sincegt;. It is getting scarey with hay prices. Thank goodness we now can give 1 meal with fresh grass and the other meal with hay. It another month or 2 we will have get a 100bales. I don't even want to think on how much the hay is going to be? Yes I like to have MY HAY paid in full sitting waiting for our 9horses to eat it. SO now by Oct we like to about 400 bales in the barn. ANne nbsp;
Re: [IceHorses] Drought Affecting Horse Industry - my rant
So I'm glad drought and high hay prices don't affect you, but they affect us out here. I didn't say that, Susan. The drought affected us in the southeast seriously - last year. I said earlier that I don't ever expect to pay what we've been used to paying for hay. Last year, we had to scramble to bring in hay at over double the price we normally pay, and we were darned lucky to find it for that price. I had 23 horses last year - 2 more this year. Last year's drought caused a hay crisis unlike anything I've seen in this area in 20 years of owning horses, and it hit us REALLY hard in the pocketbook. That particular weather pattern - the drought in the southeast that was the subject of the video - is past. I think there are at least two much more newsworthy issues that the media SHOULD be talking about instead of last year's drought. What bothers me is that the low prices horses are going for at auction is being blamed on drought. I don't think that's it. I think the biggest problem that's causing horses to go so cheaply at auction is the fact that meat buyers aren't keeping the price floor at a minimum since the slaughterhouses closed. It's an ugly situation, but hopefully it will turn around and things will be better because of it...eventually. If we wring our hands over last year's drought, then we aren't making it clear to people that there are simply too many unwanted horses. We need to educate people to breed fewer horses, and to breed smarter, and to take care of the horses on this planet already. And we CAN become aware of why corn prices are so high - because of government-subsidized ethanol production...an alternate fuel that consumes more energy than it produces. And those artificially-high corn prices are driving up the price of soybeans since more farmers are growing corn and there's less soybeans. That's seriously affecting the food-supply for much of the world. And, it's taking land out of hay production. I have long-term concerns about hay-supplies, and the cost of hay. These other issues are present and loom ahead of us, and could potentially get bigger and bigger. I just wish the media and the doomsayers would address these current and future issues, not dwell on last year's weather news. Karen Thomas, NC
Re: [IceHorses] Drought Affecting Horse Industry - my rant
--- Karen Thomas [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: What bothers me is that the low prices horses are going for at auction is being blamed on drought. I don't think that's it. I think the biggest problem that's causing horses to go so cheaply at auction is the fact that meat buyers aren't keeping the price floor at a minimum since the slaughterhouses closed. I think it's the high price of EVERYTHING that's making people give up their horses. My second job is no longer for luxuries, it's for bills and fuel. Bruce and I are contemplating buying Scooters to go back and forth to work. At $2500 apiece and 96mpg, I think they will pay for themselves with in a year! Susan in NV read my blog to see why I ride my horse in pink: http://desertduty.blogspot.com/
Re: [IceHorses] Drought Affecting Horse Industry - my rant
2008/5/21 susan cooper [EMAIL PROTECTED]: It's a fact out here! I paid $130/ton 2 years ago, last year I paid $180/ton, and this year I will be LUCKY to get away with $250/ton. Plus delivery. Yikes! But you probably expect high feed prices anyway because of where you live right? I'm in the middle of a farming community here and I'm a bit nervous because we haven't had a decent rain since the snow left but then I'm always nervous until we've had a good rain. So far the pastures are hanging in there, but we have extra hay left over from the winter that we're still feeding. I can't imagine having to pay $250 a ton to be able to feed my horses year round. That would get pricey. Wanda
Re: [IceHorses] Drought Affecting Horse Industry - my rant
--- Wanda Lauscher [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Yikes! But you probably expect high feed prices anyway because of where you live right? No, I would expect to pay less. We are in alfalfa country. Every farmer/rancher grows alfalfa here. It is a heat loving weed that requires very little water. Perfect for our area of the desert. But there is so much demand for it elsewhere, even at the source (here) it is expensive and in short supply! Susan in NV read my blog to see why I ride my horse in pink: http://desertduty.blogspot.com/
Re: [IceHorses] Drought Affecting Horse Industry - my rant
i felt sorry for poor karen and her pitiful grass pasture. Then she told me she keeps it that way deliberately and its a lot of work haha. Things are so different place to place, its sometimes hard to understand where people are coming from, hay prices, all that. I felt like karen was from outer space trying to tell me how she has to keep grass down. thats amazing. and ok heres the deal. we have to be careful of this deal... when we say things, we forget it is for OUR area of the country and people who dont realize might try and make it work in THEIR areas. people, i think it was on the gaited list... they made me so upset, just post after post saying its ok not to rotate wormers. I was appalled, horrified at their ignorance, these were experienced horse people, how can they be so stupid??!?!? because they dont live in the subtropics like i do. Here, worms are a formidable foe not to be reckoned with. horses and humans here die of worms fairly regularly. recently on the gaited list there was a thread about using maggot therapy to cleanse a wound. and a friend of mine has a horse right now in the U of FL vet hospital because some weird fly laid an egg in its foot in a little cut right above the coronet band and now its touch and go with a baseball sized hole that seems to be eating its way to china. I dont know the correct spelling but it is pronounced :habloneedma ??? something you would see in a horror movie! Another thing affected by gov budget cuts are like for us the dog fly spray program which means whereas we once had some relief we have none so our animals are covered in biting flies as soon as it gets cool enough for the mosquitos and yellow flies to ease off... anyway. i ramble. janice -- even good horses have bad days sometimes.
Re: [IceHorses] Drought Affecting Horse Industry - my rant
On 5/22/08, susan cooper [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- Wanda Lauscher [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Yikes! But you probably expect high feed prices anyway because of where you live right? No, I would expect to pay less. We are in alfalfa country. Every farmer/rancher grows alfalfa here. It is a heat loving weed that requires very little water. Perfect for our area of the desert. we have perennial peanut. you braggart. Janice -- even good horses have bad days sometimes.
Re: [IceHorses] Drought Affecting Horse Industry - my rant
my friend sylvia has a scooter, street safe type. She says if she leaves her little dirt road and gets onto the paved country road she is terrified of all the cars whizzing by. Janice -- even good horses have bad days sometimes.
Re: [IceHorses] Drought Affecting Horse Industry - my rant
--- Janice McDonald [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: my friend sylvia has a scooter, street safe type. She says if she leaves her little dirt road and gets onto the paved country road she is terrified of all the cars whizzing by. yea, but as I told my hubby - I'm worth more dead than alive! But we do have a bike lane, and the scooter we are looking at will do 60mph. Susan in NV read my blog to see why I ride my horse in pink: http://desertduty.blogspot.com/
Re: [IceHorses] Drought Affecting Horse Industry - my rant
susan cooper [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I think it's the high price of EVERYTHING that's making people give up their horses. My second job is no longer for luxuries, it's for bills and fuel. I think you are right Susan. It's not just gas and weather conditions that have people scrambling and selling their horses.I notice my grocery bills creeping up too, even though I ALWAYS shop the loss leaders and try to plan our meals so that I don't impulse buy.And fertilizer is doubled from last year as well according to my hay guy.It's everything:inflation, loss of wages or jobs, the rising cost of crude oil, etc. etc. Our state has one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation and my husband was jobless for 6 months last year. He has two journeyman's cards with over 20 years of experience in his trade (tool and die and pattern making) and he now works (happily) at our local hardware store. The saving grace is his job is 5 miles from home, they schedule him around MY crazy schedule and he likes it. I can relate fully to what you are saying and I think it's very true. Bruce and I are contemplating buying Scooters to go back and forth to work. At $2500 apiece and 96mpg, I think they will pay for themselves with in a year! That's so funny -- I mentioned the SAME thing to Tim the other day, but we decided being in Michigan, they might be a *little* cold part of the year. : ) -- Renee M. Susan in NV read my blog to see why I ride my horse in pink: http://desertduty.blogspot.com/ IceHorses Community for Photos and Videos: http://kickapps.com/icehorses The greatest enemy of the truth very often is not the lie- deliberate, contrived and dishonest -- but the myth -- persistent, persuasive and unrealistic. All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer [] Lee Ziegler http://leeziegler.com [] Liz Graves http://lizgraves.com [] Lee's Book Easy Gaited Horses http://tinyurl.com/7vyjo [] IceHorses Map http://www.frappr.com/IceHorses Yahoo! Groups Links
Re: [IceHorses] Drought Affecting Horse Industry - my rant
2008/5/22 [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Our state has one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation and my husband was jobless for 6 months last year. He has two journeyman's cards with over 20 years of experience in his trade (tool and die and pattern making) and he now works (happily) at our local hardware store. The saving grace is his job is 5 miles from home, they schedule him around MY crazy schedule and he likes it. I can relate fully to what you are saying and I think it's very true. Two tickets!!!??? Get him up here, employers are crying for help and are paying top dollar. The trades up here are going crazy. You're an x-ray tech? Man...you'd be in high demand too. My friends daughter just started as a brand new tech last year and I think she started at $25 an hour... (Renee...there's 80 acres next door with your name on it :) Wanda -- Thoughts become things...
Re: [IceHorses] Drought Affecting Horse Industry - my rant
I get a pretty annoyed with these reports about the drought. We were in a horrible drought LAST year, but we're ready to cut our hay any time now...and it looks like we're all set to have the highest yield in at least five years, maybe ever. Heck, I'm more worried right now about getting this year's hay put up before it gets rained on! We called the farmer that we've always gotten most of our hay from last night, and so far, he's set for a good year - as always with farming, that could still change, but that's nothing new. Farming is always a day-by-day operation and that's nothing new. Yet, on that drought map on that video, it showed us in the red area, the hardest hit. It's been many years since our run-over pond has been full to its dam, but it is this year. It takes a lot of rain to do that. I suspect there's some mismatched figures at play here. Charlotte once again rates as the top city in the USA for relocating to. Yuck. That means the demand for water to be pulled out of the local resevoirs is the highest ever - not to mention the traffic messes, increased polution in our area, etc. So, yes, there are drinking water shortages - for the builders who can't get building permits to continue building their McMansions surrounding Charlotte. And, the McMansion-ites can't run their lawn sprinklers daily as they'd like, poor dears, how WILL they cope... Some of the problems is from lower than desired resevoir levels, but some of it is because there isn't enough infrastructure in place to move the drinking water around - so my property taxes go up and up and up and up. I wonder if that's the data used to determine part of the red areas...because we've had more rain this spring than in the last several springs. As far as hay prices, as long as I've had horses, we've had periodic scares about hay shortages - I even remember hearing about them when I was a kid and my dad had cows. I suspect we'll never again see $3 per bale hay as the normal price again here. The price of diesel fuel isn't helping, but one of my biggest beefs is that the government is subsidizing the production of ethanol - and that inflated (and government-subsidized) corn price has taken land from soybean and hay production and put it into corn, and much of that corn has been taken away from food production. It makes NO sense at all to produce an alternate fuel that consumes more energy during production than it produces, especially when much of the world is experiencing food shortages. That's just nuts, and it's a real problem...but it's not drought-related. As far as the number of horses going to auction, there have always been a lot of them. I don't have any numbers, but I don't think the drought is the only reason, probably not the biggest reason, and certainly not the reason for the low prices. In the past, there were meat buyers at the auctions, willing to pay on-the-hoof prices for horses that didn't sell. That kept the minimum prices about $400-800 or so. Since there are no slaughterhouses running in the USA, I think that explains why unwanted horses are selling so cheaply, or not selling at all. This is a horrible, horrible short-term condition, but HOPEFULLY, word will get around so that everyone breeding just any old grade horse to any other neighborhood horse will be given cause to reconsider. In the past, with a convenient way to dispose of unwanted horses, we could conveniently ignore the horses that went for meat. It's time now to address the REAL problem - too many horses being bred. Let's not blame that on drought. But drought? I think the media needs to find a new subject to whine about, and not conveniently lump a host of issues on a single act of God. Last year, there was a real drought, and maybe a few areas of the country will experience drought this year. I think most of the problems we are seeing this year are human-made problems and it would be nice if we all woke up and saw the difference. There are plenty of other worries I can find to wring my hands over, but drought isn't one of them this year. That's least year's news, and I'm thankful for all the good rain we're getting...even the 1 we got in a very scary thunderstorm last night. Karen Thomas, NC
Re: [IceHorses] Drought Affecting Horse Industry - my rant
On Wed, May 21, 2008 at 6:49 AM, Karen Thomas [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I get a pretty annoyed with these reports about the drought. Actually, Karen, I think the report that was shown in that post was from last year - I know I saw it last summer. We are definitely on the mend in the drought situation but our ground water levels are still not where they should be. Hopefully we'll continue to get these nice rains. I think droughts are going to be a more common occurance for us and our water demands are going to continue to rise. The folks in CO and other areas out west are accustomed to this as a continuing problem and I know Water Rights are a big area of law out there. There are some things we are just not going to be able to take for granted any more but we'll adjust just like our ancestors have and there will always be the sky is falling people out there. -- Laree in NC Doppa Mura Simon, Sadie and Sam (the S gang) Yet when all the books have been read and reread, it boils down to the horse, his human companion, and what goes on between them. - William Farley I ride ponies because heart is not measured in hands. - Steve Edwards
Re: [IceHorses] Drought Affecting Horse Industry - my rant
Actually, Karen, I think the report that was shown in that post was from last year - I know I saw it last summer. We are definitely on the mend in the drought situation but our ground water levels are still not where they should be. Yes, but the ground water levels in the southeast are increasing, as are the reservoir levels. And, ground water levels don't have so much to do (at least not immediately) with the price of hay since very little of the hay grown in the southeast is irrigated, and that was the point of this video. Hay grown in the southeast is largely watered by rain. There are MANY other factors much more immediately affecting hay pricing, prices of horses at auction, etc. - things that we CAN talk about, and even take action on. It's much more productive to me to inform people that the closing of meat plants now means no guaranteed minimum on that horse or foal that they could previously and conveniently dump at auction, while totally denying to themselves that horse would be slaughtered. And we can actually educate ourselves on the REAL costs involved in the government subsidized production of ethanol. Most people would rather wring their hands helplessly over some vague drought than deal with unpleasant realities like these though. There are some things we are just not going to be able to take for granted any more but we'll adjust just like our ancestors have and there will always be the sky is falling people out there. That's just it, the sky is falling folks make conditions worse by their dire, and often unfounded, speculations. In our area, and probably across the country, e-mails are flying this year predicting more hay shortages, increased hay prices, etc. and that's just not founded in fact - not yet anyway. A lot of these e-mails seem to originate from people with no long-standing backgrounds in farming, not people like me who realize rainy years and drought years have ALWAYS cycled. If buyers believe that, and horde hay, guess what? It increases demand, and that reduces supply artificially. Do you think hay farmers will voluntarily lower hay prices if they can get more? I don't think so, and I don't blame them. Karen Thomas, NC
Re: [IceHorses] Drought Affecting Horse Industry - my rant
--- Karen Thomas [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: e-mails are flying this year predicting more hay shortages, increased hay prices, etc. and that's just not founded in fact It's a fact out here! I paid $130/ton 2 years ago, last year I paid $180/ton, and this year I will be LUCKY to get away with $250/ton. Plus delivery. So I'm glad drought and high hay prices don't affect you, but they affect us out here. That also means grass hay will be even higher and more expensive since it takes more water for grass and gets fewer yields. So my horses will get alfalfa only again this year. AND, ranchers who lease the BLM in the free range areas ARE IN FACT finding released, domesticated horses running with their cattle. They are skinny and sometimes just the carcases are found. So they ARE being released. So what do the ranchers do - NOTHING, so you won't see any printed word about it, but it is still true and still a fact. Susan in NV read my blog to see why I ride my horse in pink: http://desertduty.blogspot.com/
Re: [IceHorses] Drought Affecting Horse Industry - my rant
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080513/lf_nm/usa_horses_dc
