odds, ends, and lots of poo.

We ended up ordering Gene's oats from the Natural Food Co-op and picked them up today.  It will be a lot more expensive than horse feed, but I like the fact that, if I wanted, I could scoop some out, boil them up, and eat them without reservation.  There's nothing funky going on in there.

We also learned today that this holds exactly 1.75 lbs of whole oats when filled to the brim, much to our delight.  This is exactly how much we want to feed Gene at each feeding, and we took the bag containing that much into Dover to compare with their scoops.  We had to guess since I wasn't about to spill oats all over the store, so it was only when we got home that we realized how perfect it was.  Yay!  There goes my good luck for the next month.

We spent several hours at the barn today, scooping poo out of Peanut's acre field.  It was covered - every three feet or so there was another pile.  After three hours and 5 full wheelbarrow loads, we were not even half done and threw in the poopy towel.  At least there are some clean areas now.  It also took about 4 flakes per horse to distract them enough to keep them from getting whack, whack, whacked with the rakes in the heads.  Nosy ponies.  Hopefully the other horse's owner, who was very unhappy with the state of the field, will notice and be happy.  I couldn't expect him to help since he just had a knee replacement, and it didn't seem that it was going to get done for us, so we just rolled up our sleeves and de-pooed by ourselves.

Peanut should be out of there soon.  The grass in the 6 acre field is in bad shape, so he'll be able to move there until the first hard frost knocks out the grass in the hilly, 15 acre field.  He'll hopefully stay there until the sugary grass comes back next spring.  First the mares need to move out of the 6 acre as they have evacuated their field until their second run-in is finished.  There is a brand spanking new 2nd run-in in the 15 acre, which is great since King Palomino, aka Peanut, likes to hog an entire run-in and make the other horses stand outside.