Dressing your horses each morning

There is still a lot that must be done on a rainy day on a farm. The horses still go outside -- especially when it is a warm, rainy day like today. Some of the horses have rainsheets that they wear on cooler, rainy days.

Actually, for all the moms out there getting our horses out of the barn in the morning is a little bit like getting your kids out the door in the morning. The biggest difference is that the horses eat the same thing for breakfast every day, they eat what you give them and they never complain. However, based on the weather, we have to decide if they need:

fly spray, fly masks, fly sheets, rain sheets, sunscreen, blankets and twice a year their types of shoes even change for the ice and snow!

We work hard to keep the bug population low on our farm. I hate bugs. I was really pleased when Matt was here the other night and commented on how few bugs we have! But even still, when the weather gets warm, there are flies (in the picture above, Hercules is probably trying to shoo a fly). And they love the horses -- especially their eyes (which is really gross). The fly masks keep the flies out of the eyes of the horses. However, horses can get them off and every year we lose a few in the pasture (kind of like how dryers eat socks -- sorry for all the mom analogies this morning). There is also fly spray that you can apply to the coat of horses -- it is time consuming but it keeps the flies down. And, some horses (like the new guy we are trying out -- Sam) hate bugs so much that you can even use a fly sheet.

One of the things that will be really helpful about having four girls on the all-access summer lease program around this summer will be having their help getting the horses prepared to go back out to the pasture in the morning.

In applying the fly spray, you put it on a soft glove and rub it on against the direction of the coat so that it 'sticks' and gets down to the skin. It is also good for the horses to be handled like that. We are proud of how good all our horses are -- but a big part of that is we handle and work each of them every day. If they aren't used to kids and adults handling them then they will react unpredictably when someone tries to do something unfamiliar with them.

Vixen and Patty both have a lot of white around their noses -- so they have to be sunscreened! Their skin can burn just like humans. We haven't had to worry with all the cloudy, rainy weather about sunscreen on Patty yet which is good because Dr. Dowd (the vet) has told us to use our discretion -- we don't want to interfere with Patty's nursing by getting sunscreen smeared on her nose that then goes on to Vixen's bag and makes the milk taste bad and the bag smell unfamiliar. However, Patty loves running around outside, so we are definitely going to have to figure out the sunscreen situation for her soon!