Sunday, April 11, 2010, 16:59
Apple Juice Appetizer
Here is another sign of spring. My old Morgan-Arab cross horse Kajun is getting finicky about eating.
When there is just a hint of grass in the spring, Kajun gets to the point where he does not want to eat hay. He would be perfectly happy to be allowed to roam around and eat all of the grass he can find, except I can't do that because the grass will make him sick. Or rather, it will put him at risk for founder, which is a fever in the feet, otherwise known by the technical term laminitis, and the subsequent damage that results from the fever. It has to do with too many sugars and too much protein in the fresh, green, spring grass. The resulting laminitis, if it is severe enough, makes the hoof wall separate and makes the horse very lame and painful in the feet.
The hay that we have left is nice hay. It is clean. It is bright. It is free of mold. The only problem, as far as Kajun is concerned, is that it is grass and timothy and not alfalfa. If I had even the most stemy alfalfa with stems so tough he could barely chew them with what is left of his ancient and worn-down teeth, he would still eat it. But the good hay that's not tough and not alfalfa? Well, that's beneath his dignity, it seems.
Which brings me to the apple juice. I have been trying to think of something I can put on his hay that will make him more inclined to eat it. I had a jar of applesauce on the shelf that I took down to the barn the other day to put on Kajun's hay. He ended up licking off the applesauce but not really eating much of the hay.
Then I wondered how it would work to pour apple juice over his hay to make it smell REALLY GOOD. So, I bought a couple of gallons of apple juice at the grocery store.
Unfortunately, the apple juice does not make Kajun's hay smell good enough that he wants to eat it. He still just licks at the hay.
By way of an experiment, I wondered what Isabelle would think of hay sprinkled with apple juice.
Saturday evening, after Kajun had flipped over his two flakes of hay, licked at them and then walked away in disgust, I picked up one of the flakes and took it over to Isabelle's pasture.
She came trotting up to me, sniffing and wondering where that wonderful smell was coming from. When she realized it was the hay I had just tossed on the ground, she put her nose down, took a long sniff, and then started eating the hay as if it were the best thing she'd seen since she had finished her grain a few minutes ago.
As Randy and I stood there and watched for a few minutes, Isabelle continued to eat the delectably apple-scented hay.
Kajun, on the other hand, went back over to his hay, sniffed it, flipped it over and walked away in disgust again.
The problem with very old horses is that they often start to drop weight and then it is difficult to get weight back on them again. And at this point, Kajun does not have any excess weight to spare. I am certain if I wanted to feed him a 50 pound bag of senior horse feed every day, he would eat it. But the horse feed would not be very good for his digestion if fed alone. He needs to have the roughage that is found in hay.
And it's no good just saying, "well, if I leave it there and don't give him any more if it, he will eat eventually."
Tried that. Doesn't work.
So now I'm back where I started again.
All I can say is -- when I am so old that my teeth are worn down and I don't feel like eating that there will be someone to put apple juice on MY hay. . .
LeAnn R. Ralph
Monday, April 05, 2010, 04:52
Reel Mower
We were almost to the check-out of the farm supply store Saturday evening when I saw it.
"Psst! Randy! Look!" I said.
"Hey," my husband replied. "It's a reel mower."
I set down the handles I was carrying for the wheelbarrow we were going to purchase and stepped closer to look at the reel mower.
Two wheels. A rotary reel. Height adjuster levers by the wheels. A handle. And that was it. And all for the same cost as the last gasoline mower I bought three years ago. Which worked for two years and quit. Randy spent all last summer trying to get the "new" gas mower to run and never succeeded.
I can't begin to say how frustrating that is to have a relatively new mower that absolutely, positively refuses to start. Not that I was too keen on it anyway. Whose brilliant idea was that not to put a throttle on a mower?
"We wouldn't have any of the problems of gas mower with this," my husband said.
"Nope," I said. "No gasoline to buy. No pull cord. No spark plugs. No noise."
"Should we? This would be a really green thing to do," Randy said.
At the farm supply store, when you buy something "big" that's not stored on the shelves, you take one of the tags, and after you have paid for your purchase, you drive around back to pick it up.
"Look," I said. "This is the last tag."
"It is," Randy said. "And look. There's another one."
There was, indeed, another reel mower farther down the line. That one had a smaller cutting width. And shorter handles. It did not look as sturdy as the first one. But the second reel mower also had only one tag left in the little tag holder.
"I like the one we looked at first better," I said.
"Me, too," Randy said.
My husband took the last tag, and off we went to the checkout.
I think it's interesting that this early in the season, when the grass has barely started to turn green, never mind started to grow, that there was only one tag left for each of the two reel mowers that the store had in stock.
I can hardly believe it. We have bought a reel mower! I think it will do well on the straight-away, but I suppose corners and trimming are going to be a challenge.
The main thing, though, is that the reel mower does not use any gasoline. And it will be quiet. No roaring sound of a gasoline engine. No fumes from the gasoline engine. And relatively few moving parts. Not to mention that you don't have to worry about sticks and stones being thrown out at you as you mow. Or about getting too close to something you didn't want to cut off -- and then cutting it off.
The next thing will be to find someone to repair the old gasoline mower. It's 25 years old. The gas line needs to be replaced. And it needs a new pull cord. Other than that, it works all right. So that one could be used for trimming, if necessary.
I find it incredible. The new mower quit working after two years. The 25 year-old war horse is still going. Or it was. Until the pull cord broke last fall. But with the amount of lawn we have to mow, if the bulk of it can be done with the reel mower and only a little trimming with the old mower -- well, that's something.
Now I can hardly wait for the grass to grow tall enough so we can see how the reel mower works. I have an idea that it will work out fine. Randy put the reel mower together Sunday (some assembly required, you know), and there was just enough grass over the drainfield that we could give it a whirl -- so to speak. . .
LeAnn R. Ralph