Alaskan's Journal

Alaskan

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Plus it probably ate a lot more than an "average" horse without the thoroughbred blood
Thus the "hard keeper"

I had no idea what I had bought... I was raised with a quarter horse... and as an adult with my own children had 2 easy keepers.... horse number 3 did me in.
 

Alaskan

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So... Friday photos... drizzling day.

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Mini Horses

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How far do you live from all that water? I'm looking at that strip going out into it and thinking that might be a fishable area part of the year.....if you even want to fish. 😂 If you eat it, could get a freezer full. 👍
 

Alaskan

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How far do you live from all that water? I'm looking at that strip going out into it and thinking that might be a fishable area part of the year.....if you even want to fish. 😂 If you eat it, could get a freezer full. 👍
We eat lots of fish... mostly salmon.

And yes, there are some fishing spots on that spit of land that juts out into the bay. That strip of land is called "the Spit". We are a creative bunch. :lol:

We can see that water from my house, but we are at almost 1,300 feet elevation.

Only a 15 minute drive....
 

Bruce

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I had no idea what I had bought
When we bought this place there was a couple renting the lower part of the barn for 2 horses and a pony. The pony was a real drama queen. One of the horses was a thoroughbred she had bought from someone who said they couldn't get weight on him. She showed me a picture, nearly a bag of bones. They apparently didn't know thoroughbreds burn massive calories just breathing. She fed him properly and he was beautiful. Also BIG! I don't know his stats but he was tall.
 

Alaskan

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They apparently didn't know thoroughbreds burn massive calories just breathing
Yep.

He needed lots of food, and good food too! :ep

Also, he had skin like tissue paper. :rolleyes: he was always getting cut on something, or rub spots... or whatever.

Both of my other horses I had to super limit grass intake. And, on low quality hay they were fat.
 

Ridgetop

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We used to buy top quality alfalfa for our dairy goats. We would buy a field, usually 2nd cut since the dairies had all contracted for the first cutting. It was super high protein leafy green alfalfa and we were on milk test. That excellent alfalfa gave us high yields, our dairy herd kidded multiples, and were show ready in condition.

Since it was what we had we fed it to our horses too. Our horses lost weight and got very thin. We kept feeding them more and more hay to help them gain weight. I wormed them. I added bran to their diet. I had their teeth floated. They were super frisky and healthy, but very thin.

Then I during a lesson on protein feeding levels and rates of gain in meat animals for my 4-H project kids I realized that the high level of protein was probably causing the horses to lose weight! The high protein quality of the alfalfa was suitable for lactating animals but not for our trail horses. We started buying lower quality hay for the horses and they gained their weight back. LOL :oops:
 
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