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Del Camino
Equestrian Enterprises, Inc.
3822 East Sahuaro Drive,
Phoenix,
Arizona,
85028-3442
United States of America
Tel: 480-242-9490
Fax: 602-953-9347
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Day Sheet
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Del Camino Equestrian Enterprises
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Balanced Seat
InstructionSM Safety First
HorsemanshipSM
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September 2007 Helpful Hint with Links
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Each quarter we offer
a horsemanship hint, often related to current affairs on people’s
minds. Our hints don’t tell you how
to treat thrush, or how to teach your horse to do a flying lead change. You should have a regular veterinarian
and trainer for those kinds of topics.
If you don’t, there are books and webzines galore to choose
from. We try with our horsemanship
hints to cover topics that are seldom addressed elsewhere.
September is a busy
month for families: the beginning of the school year, starting new
after-school activities, finishing summer “honey do” projects around the
house, barn or yard. While many good
horsekeepers take “Spring Cleaning” seriously, getting ready for winter
when it is 98 degrees in the shade is hard to get excited about. But desert-dwelling Arizonans need to do
so just like our friends in the high country who look forward to snow, and
now more than ever.
Why?
Whether you keep one horse at home, or run a big stable full of
client horses, you would have to be pretty dumb not to realize that
horsekeeping costs are skyrocketing compared to normal national and
regional inflation. For example,
Paradise Valley/North Phoenix property taxes increased 20.1% over 2006 in
2007 (before adding the four increases approved in the September 11th
election). Any boarder who doesn’t
think their barn manager is going to have to pass that along in a board
rate increase is hopelessly naïve.
Any trainer who doesn’t realize that passing along board, hay,
supplement, insurance, shavings, showing and advertising rate increases is
going to squeeze more and more of his middle class clientele out of the
market is living in a fool’s paradise.
That means the same number of trainers and boarding stables are competing
for fewer customers. How to cope? One of the many ways, whether you house
horses for business or pleasure, is to OFFER BETTER SERVICE MORE
ECONOMICALLY THAN EVER BEFORE. To
learn new techniques, get better organized, and explore options you didn’t
“have time for” in the past will benefit you with improved efficiency and
cost savings that are within your control, or improved conditions that save
time and vet bills. Horsekeeping is
as labor-intensive today as it was in 1899, and Congress just passed a new
federal minimum wage. Even wealthy
horse owners who easily afford indulging their hobby at an extravagant
rate, carp when prices go up, don’t you?
Well, you CAN do something about it besides complain. We certainly did, which is why we are not
“horse poor”! Also, because there will be a better flow to the change of
seasons and routine, with less stress, your horses will benefit, and you
can’t put a price on that.
1. Day
Sheets – if they will be worn at night as
temperatures dip below 60 degrees, are all of yours clean and in good repair?
2. Lights to retard the growth of winter coats must provide a full 16 hours of
simulated daylight, with brightness sufficient to read a book in any corner
of the stall. Normally a 75 to 100
watt bulb is enough, but remember not to use a bulb with wattage higher
than the fixture recommends (some clamp lights cannot take a bulb over 60
watts). Also, double check all
components, cords, and connectors.
Anything worn must be thrown away, not patched with electrical tape,
duct tape, or other handyman friend. Secure lights and cords well, and use
only outdoor-rated, grounded extension cords to reach outlets.
3. Use grounded (three-prong) timers rated for outdoor use. Yes,
they are at least double the cost, but worth the peace of mind. Also, electricity rates continue to
climb, due to demand outpacing the construction of green energy
plants. APS
implemented a 20% rate increase a few months ago. SRP just
announced another 4.5% increase. So
don’t run those lights more than necessary.
More than 16 hours of light will not have the desired effect. The horses grow and shed their winter and
summer coats based on the number of hours of daylight, not on
temperatures. Running the lights all
day, or worse, all night, doesn’t help a bit. So the timers need to have at least two
on/off settings. We had great
success with starting at an AM time that simulates summer sunrise around 5:00 AM, until nine or ten o’clock, then back
on around 4:30
PM until summer sunset, around 9:00 PM. This made the barn bright
and cheerful from morning hay feeding right through evening lessons and
blanketing, and was not expensive.
The new energy efficient bulbs work very well, too. We sadly could not use them for all our
stalls because the old 1960’s wiring in the barn where we rented had such
bad surges and spikes that it blew light bulbs in less than two weeks. It was partly miracle, partly strict
safety standards and vigilance that we never had an electrical fire. Our test of the energy-saver long-life
bulbs in a couple of stalls was positive, but they were even more sensitive
to the fluctuating power. At six times the price per bulb, they were too
expensive since we provided all our own light bulbs.
4. Do the last stall washing of
the summer season before the end of October. If you have dirt stall floors, take
advantage of the remaining warm days to dry these surfaces in a few hours
while the horses are turned out or working.
It used to drive us crazy that our farm manager always wanted to
pressure wash all the stalls in the dead of winter, when the floors took
two and even three weeks to dry. Plus that was when the ranch was fully
occupied so there were no unoccupied stalls to move the horses to, and the
noise, fumes, and wet aisles were so disruptive to the busiest training and
lesson season. We used a good old-fashioned brush with warm water and
Oxi-Clean on the easy exteriors and rails, and a steam cleaner on the
crusted parts on doors, near feeders, waterers, and rub spots. It sanitized better, made practically no
noise, and used little water causing practically no wet spots. Also, it
didn’t blast fixtures or stink up the barn with engine fumes. We could do one stall at a time without
disrupting the normal routine.
5. Plan to order winter hay. If you have been buying a one month
supply at a time, or normally buy retail by the bale from a local feed
store due to limited storage space, or for just a few horses, this is the
year to think bigger and longer term.
Hay prices have been climbing steadily, and will continue to do so
as more farmers grow corn for the Ethanol craze and local hay growers pay
more for even the government subsidized farm diesel gasoline. Last year hay stocks fell to their lowest since 1950 due to cattlemen feeding more hay than usual in place of failed
pastures (drought) and higher priced grain (Ethanol). While there will be a
record corn crop this year, hay production is down 30%. When grain and soybean prices rise, so do
hay prices. Demand exceeded supply
this last winter, thanks to the Colorado blizzard
forcing more hay to be fed to cattle throughout the Plains and Midwest, on top of the other
market pressures already mentioned. Locally, Arizonans may be surprised to
learn that Dairy, the number one market
for alfalfa and harvested forages, continues to expand across the
southwestern states. Almost 30 percent of the milk produced in the nation
comes from southwest dairies. The fastest growing western dairy states are New Mexico, Idaho, Arizona, and California. Nationwide average wholesale for all kinds of hay was $109 a ton, a
record in 2006. USDA estimates the nationwide average could be around $105
a ton, or higher, this year. That doesn’t include shipping, which is
climbing due to fuel prices as well. While alfalfa remains plentiful in the
Southwest, Bermuda and timothy are often scarce.
Hence, their much higher prices.
Average horse 1,000 pounds = 20 pounds hay per day = 600 pounds per
month x 5 months November through March = 3000 pounds, 1.5 tons. Allow a
little extra for waste from spillage.
To average the costs better, and guarantee a supply of acceptable
hay, a bigger buy may be necessary.
You can store good, sweet smelling, properly dried hay for several
months if it is protected from the elements, off the ground, but gets good
air circulation. Then there is also
stuff your horses won’t eat, and overly moist hay that molds. The bad hay costs the same, so learn to
inspect it properly on delivery, and reject a bad load before it is
unloaded. A bad load that you don’t
notice is bad until you’ve had it for a week may not be returnable, but
ends up costing a great deal more, because so much of it goes uneaten or
must be thrown away. Then when you run short earlier than expected, you
have to buy whatever you can get at a then higher price. Think of January and February, the height
of Arizona’s show season. That is not
the time you want to be at the mercy of the local hay market. Instead, that is the time you want peace
of mind that the best hay you could get is forking into your show horses’
hay ricks, and there is plenty of the same good hay to take with you to the
show. If you really cannot expand
your hay barn or create an auxiliary one, ask your hay grower if he can
store it for you and deliver later, if you pre-purchase it. Beware hay scams, now cropping up
online. Also, stick to reputable,
established hay vendors. Avoid
maverick truckers and flea market sales.
These fly-by-nights are not going to be there to give you consistent
service, but hurt our entire community with illegal sales to avoid paying
taxes and overhead that all our local growers, truckers, and retail feed
stores pay to support community services, roads, etc. Here’s a link to an article in the Gallup, New Mexico Independent from 2003
that shows just what kind of under-the-radar dealings “crop” up when prices
climb: http://www.gallupindependent.com/2003/08-09-03hayride.html. We need our local retail feed stores to
be profitable, so they are here year after year to stock all the supplies
we need, and special order items for us, and give knowledgeable, friendly
customer service. If you wouldn’t buy a watch from the trunk of someone’s
car, don’t buy your hay that way either.
Alfalfa is readily available
from local growers, but Bermuda and Timothy is often scarce. If you buy hay from a wet climate, be
aware it may have been sprayed during the baling process with mold
inhibitors, especially if the moisture content at cutting is 18% or
higher. Many Arizonans are not
familiar with this process, which is quite common in, for example, the Pacific Northwest. Propionic and acetic acid exist naturally in the cecum
and colon of horses, and are potent mold inhibitors which are commonly
combined. Studies have shown stored hay does not heat and mold as much by
using these chemicals, if applied evenly. Studies also show that horses
prefer untreated hay when given the choice between treated and untreated.
However, if given only treated hay their daily consumption did not
decrease.
Other mold inhibitors are apparently routinely applied to
hay in a similar manner as the propionic or acetic acid products. While
these are commonly used in hay fed to cattle, no specific research is
available that compares acceptability, daily consumption and weight gain
when fed to horses instead of untreated hay. Anecdotal reports suggest that
horses readily consume hay treated with these products and they have not
been found harmful. However, if your
horse won’t eat it, you might as well send it back for a refund.
6. Light
the hay barn and barn aisle. Ensure there will be
good lighting in the hay barn as well as the barn aisle in the winter. To check for mold in the hay, you need to
both smell for the mustiness, and look for black and gray spots. To check for blister beetles in alfalfa,
you need to be able to see them.
Poor lighting will make that difficult.
7. If the hay barn has been unsecured, now may be the time to add a lockable gate. If even one client helps
himself to one extra flake per day, instead of asking you to feed his horse
more, that’s 30 flakes you are going to be short unexpectedly at the end of
the month before your next shipment arrives. Normally the barn manager doesn’t
begrudge the feed, it’s the unexpected shortage that amounts to a real
logistics problem if not controlled.
Instead of rules or arguments, simply controlling access to the hay
is the least stressful solution.
8. Also, consider adding hay cubes to your mix of feeds. If you
don’t already use hay cubes, get familiar with sources, prices, quality,
quantity to serve, storage, etc. and get your horses used to them gradually
before you need to rely on them as an important part of their diet. Talk to friends who have fed cubes for
years to get their insight. There
must be some reasons why they are happy with them.
9. Blankets should have been washed, repaired, and stored where mice and bugs
couldn’t nest in them. Double
check. Inventory the sizes against
your current needs. If horses have
come and gone since Spring, you may want to swap that 78” for an 82” or a
74” at the next association meeting.
Now is the time to get great bargains on close-outs of last year’s
inventory from retailers who are about to get their Fall shipments.
10. Water
heaters, water de-icers and insulated buckets.
Yes, even in Scottsdale we have freezing nights in January and February. While the morning sun melts the frozen
floats and push paddles in many outdoor stalls, those that get afternoon
sun have to wait. If you have senior
horses, remember they need liquid water when eating their morning hay, and
old teeth are sensitive to really cold water. If you work with youngsters, 5 and under,
remember that there is constant teething activity in their mouths. If the water is too cold to drink, or
worse yet, frozen in their bowls, you could have a youngster colic in short
order. Oh, and don’t forget the
horses that are neither young nor old need to drink most of their water
when eating their hay, especially those performance atheletes living in
show barn stalls. Hay cubes and
pellets really need water available, especially for fast eaters, to avoid
choke. Dusty hay is almost as bad for horses as moldy hay. Just as dusty
arenas and turnouts wreak havoc on their airways, dusty hay can cause
allergies, heaves (horse COPD) and you don’t need a medical degree to know
that is going to affect your horse’s performance not just that day, but for
weeks to come until the irritation heals.
We always had at least a few horses that preferred to “dunk” their
hay in their water before eating it.
Plenty of cool but not cold water helps keep down the dust and
indulges the “dunkers.”
Due to no electricity to our outdoor stalls at Sandspur, we had to haul
buckets of hot water to the pens twice a day to melt water in buckets so
horses could eat breakfast and have water overnight. Altogether that was more than a month of
hauling 10 gallons of hot water, weighing 50 pounds, twice a day. If we had not done so, the horses would
not have eaten properly, and would have been dehydrated. Dehydration is just as possible in winter as in summer. Horses become stressed when
they have food they want to eat, but can’t due to lack of water to help
slurry it down the hatch. Old horses
don’t cope with these conditions well at all. Make sure they have clean fresh water
that is not too cold to drink 24 hours a day. If that means being able to safely
install de-icers or use a hot-water-on-demand machine, September is the
time to plan the logistics, buy the equipment and parts, and test the
system. Doing so when you are
freezing cold and it is an emergency is not fun. If you can’t safely access electricity
(no cords can be where any horse can reach them, or where mice can gnaw
them) then at least hang 5 gallon buckets that have warm, but not hot water
in them just before you feed morning and evening hay, and top off the water
with warm water last thing at night.
You can get insulated buckets that take longer to freeze. The deeper
the water, the longer it takes to freeze.
You can insulate stock tanks by putting a smaller one inside a
larger one and filling the cavity with safe insulating material. Too labor
intensive for you? Then replace
paddle and float automatic waterers that have shallow bowls with float
waterers that have 3 to 4 gallon bowls.
Fill those with paddles by hand during your last check on the horses
on nights you expect a freeze. These
setups take much longer to freeze than ordinary automatic waterers. We really like the ones with removable
bowl/liners because they are even easier to clean than the shallow bowl
metal varieties. Of course, those
are expensive, but a capital improvement plan could replace a percentage of
your waterers annually over more than one year instead of all at once. The truly
deluxe “Horse Drinker” is great because there is no standing water to
freeze in the winter or grow mosquitos or algae in the summer, and no waste
and no mud puddles. It doesn’t require electricity, so it is great for
turnout paddocks, and is the right height for minis up to drafts.
11. Sweet PDZ, Stall Fresh, or baking soda for inside stalls. Winter often means less turn out time and
slower evaporation. That leads to
smelly barns if you don’t remove all the wet shavings every single day when
you muck out. Wet shavings are hard
on horses’ hooves and respiration. Urea breaks down the keratin of hooves,
and ammonia scalds airways. The
stink is trying to tell you something.
No animal wants to stand or lie down in its own waste. Don’t make your horses’ cope with
it. Mucking out is helped by a stall
sweetener that absorbs and neutralizes the caustic urea and ammonia using
zeolites which are cheap and effective. Zeolites are
naturally occurring minerals found in clay that have a very porous structure.
Zeolites are used in industry for many purposes including odor control,
toxin removal and as chemical sieves. The pores in the zeolite
particles bind with ammonia molecules, holding onto them until naturally
occurring bacteria break down and eliminate the ammonia. These products,
which look like finely ground kitty litter, can be purchased at feed
stores. We have used Sweet PDZ for many years. It comes in a
powder and granular size. Some feed stores carry an additional larger size
(usually half-inch pieces) called a “paddock product” which is most useful
for a horse’s outdoors areas. We
used it in outdoor pens on the “pee spots” and it worked far better than
shavings. Adding a stall freshener does not degrade the nitrogen quality of
compost that you make and sell.
12. Harrow and
slope turnouts and common traffic areas. Then add
sand or crushed rock or granite. You
must do this before rain creates mud, potholes, and mini-creeks. Once they are created, it is nearly
impossible to get rid of them during the winter, no matter how much fill
dirt you dump on them and tamp down. A turnout that is never harrowed or
sloped is hard as a rock in the summer and slippery and muddy in winter,
not to mention uneven. This is not
only extremely bad footing, but causes odors and dust for your neighbors,
harbors flies during warm weather, and environmentally unhealthy runoff
during rains. Be a good neighbor, as
well as taking good care of your horses’ legs, and put some of the time you
spend grooming your arena this Fall into grooming your turnout paddocks,
common lanes, and even the footing for the hot walker! Come December, you’ll be glad you
did. Some of the worst leg injuries
our horses sustained at a boarding facility over the years occurred in the
unkempt “turnouts,” despite wrapping their legs as a precaution. A sand footing and control of the runoff
would have also made them useable much sooner after a rain. It is pretty easy to do if you have a
drag, and can dig and line drainage trenches. Drainage can be made into
attractive landscaping elements, easily lined with desert landscaping rock
or river rocks. All we could do as tenants was remove rocks, trash, broken
sprinkler parts, and broken buckets left by other boarders. Right now we have a neighbor whose 60’ x
60’ corral has eight sun-drying manure piles that are 1.5 to 2.0 feet high
and about 3 feet in diameter. For
some reason, when the pile gets to a given size, their horse starts himself
a new one. (I sometimes wonder what
he is going to do when there is no room left to start a new one.) Though
our barn manager and boarders used multiple methods of fly control, the
neighbor’s flies kept repopulating our stable. But that isn’t the most unneighborly
aspect. Afterall, horsepeople understand,
and get along. But between that
corral and our place runs a dry creek that flooded so that it overflowed
and tore away its banks during the summer rains. No, the bigger environmental health
hazard was to the lovely homes in the development downstream – runoff from
those manure piles seeping into their yards where kids and pets
cavort. The families downstream are
not horsepeople. Those are neighbors
who just might complain. Sun-drying
manure is fine, but it needs to be collected and hauled away, or spread
thinly and harrowed properly into a pasture, or, best of all,
composted. Horseowners with grass
pastures (you are so fortunate, and the envy of most Phoenicians) need to
practice good harrowing, drainage, and pasture rotation. Every manure pile needs to be enclosed in
a container like a dumpster or a proper composting bin, or a cement floor
and wall with containment lip to prevent runoff. Manure piles should not be located closer
than 150 feet from natural dry creeks or runoff zones that empty into the
creeks. It is only a matter of time before such common sense guidelines
become law in every county, as federal water quality standards now
require. Stables, dairies, poultry
farms, etc. will all be forced to comply, if they don’t begin doing so
voluntarily. If you aren’t
composting yet, you are paying to remove manure that could bring $25 to $40
per cubic yard, depending on quality.
This is a revenue source that could help offset rising operating
costs.
13. Body clipping this fall? Make sure clippers are serviced, safety checked, and lubricated, and all the blades are sharpened. Dull or dirty
blades pinch and leave stripes and uneven spots, that look bad even from a
distance and take quite some time to grow out, no matter how expert the
person doing the clipping. They can
double the time it takes to clip a horse, by causing you to have to go over
the same section multiple times.
Frayed cords and loose connections are dangerous. Dirty blades can
spread skin conditions. If you are
going to take (or mail) ten or more blades to a sharpening service, and
have one or more clippers serviced, you aren’t going to stand there all day
and wait. So get this equipment
organized, inventoried, and shipped out and back before you need it a few
weeks before the first show of the season. If you have non-standard
clippers made by a less popular company, that need repair, not just tune-up
and greasing, add at least an extra ten days “insurance” for turnaround by
the repair shop. They may not stock
a needed part, and have to order it from the factory. To keep bridle paths and muzzles neat
while all the heavy duty equipment is being serviced, we keep an
inexpensive ladies’ battery powered shaver.
It won’t create a bridle path where none existed, but it does a good
job on even the coarsest muzzle spikes, and is so soft and quiet, horses
that hate having their ears done will relax and put their heads down to
have the edges touched up. It
replaced four “quiet horse trimmers” that cost more and didn’t do the job!
14. Donation
box: As you
go through the fly masks, fly sheets, fly boots, lead ropes, bell boots,
splint boots, standing wraps, pillow wraps, fans, fly traps that are about
to be put away until next summer, pause to sort them. Some will make it through an entire
summer next year. Some only have a
few months’ left. Not quite worn
enough to throw away, not broken, but will have to be replaced
mid-season. Wash and dry the horse
clothing, brush the dust, cobwebs or bird poop off the fans and fly traps,
just like the ones that are A+ keepers.
But put the B+ ones in separate boxes. These you are going to donate to a local
horse rescue, horse adoption, horse retirement, or non-profit therapeutic
horsemanship barn. In fact, just
like when you do your Spring Cleaning, you are going to look around for
ANYTHING useable that is really just taking up space in your tack trunks,
tack room, feed room, medicine chest, trailer, or office, and add it to a
donation box. A just rescued horse
will not care that the fly mask is faded, or one of the two ears is missing
while his injured eye is healing. A
horse rescuer doesn’t care that the pillow wraps and standing wraps have
stains that didn’t come out in the wash.
A fan that squeaks can cool the feed room at the hippotherapy center
where volunteers are making lunch, if it is too noisy to use anymore in a
horse’s stall. That stall mat that
has a corner torn off may not be up to your national show barn standards
and stick out like a sore thumb amid beautiful wood paneled stalls, but
will be perfect for the horse adoption center’s shoeing station that
presently has nothing. Those show
clothes the kids outgrew two years ago will thrill a participant in the
Equine Special Olympics. Label the
box with big letters with the name of the facility you have chosen, and the
pickup or delivery date. For a few days, let clients add items of their
own, or even a check to an envelope taped inside the flap. Don’t be surprised if in the end you have
two or three boxes! We did this one
year and had four boxes full in two days, including a brand new jar of
horse cookies, perfectly good polo wraps (just not the new favorite color
of their donor) perfectly good schooling pads (again, just no longer
stylish), two checks for $5.00, a $10 bill, and one check for $250.00! We did not ask a single client to put
anything in the box. It just sat in
the client tack room visible, labeled, but out of the way. A small note on the tack room white board
said WE were donating stuff we didn’t need that was clean and in good
condition, and anyone could add to the box who wanted to, before we sent it
on its way. Like any sign, probably 70% of the clients didn’t even notice
it. But of the 30% who did, no one
felt compelled (and that’s important, because giving is a very personal
choice), but several chose to participate.
We hope at least one of these fourteen checkoffs
to prepare for Fall/Winter is a help to you. We welcome your feedback, positive and
negative. If you want to try the donation
box, but do not know which worthy local horse organization to aid, we have
“vetted” many. Upon email request, we can offer some suggestions, depending
on what you collect. Feedback
Del Camino offers consulting services. Inquire
© Copyright Del Camino Equestrian Enterprises,
Inc., 2007 All rights reserved. Safety First Horsemanship, Balanced
Seat Instruction, Discovery Class, and Equicise Class are service marks of
Del Camino Equestrian Enterprises, Inc.
Contact us for quotation or reproduction
permissions. Non-profit 501c
organizations may reproduce articles with full attribution and website
link. Please email us to let us
know. Commercial reproduction
prohibited.
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Related Links for Recommended Vendors. Please tell them you followed the link
from Del Camino:
Estrella
Horse Blanket Sales, Cleaning and Repair
Greenway
Saddlery
The Tack
Room
The
Internet Hay Exchange
Matrix
of Mnemosyne Directory of Arizona Hay Growers
The Hay Barn
Bales Hay,
Buckeye
Premium
Hay Company, Eloy
Accomazzo Hay
Company, Tolleson
Western Performance Hay,
Lake Havasu
Bar Bar A
Horse Drinker
O2Compost
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