Triple Threat

In my quest to keep the girls svelte but not mistreating them through starvation (lack of grass growth) and/or upsetting their delicate digestive systems by them not having enough grazing to keep everything ticking over healthily.
I resigned myself to the fact they would have to get hay ... but on my terms. No way did I want them to have 24/7 access to a round bale of hay allowing them to become stagnant and fat in the process. Been there - done that & Kika would have bust the t-shirt could she wear one she got so ginormous!

"Why i never!" - indignant Kika

Enter my strange request to the yard owner for a hay feeder without hay & for a hay bale to be deposited where we keep the hay for winter turnout (aka 5 strands of wire away from Kika - 2 strands electrified & 3 strands on the other side to try stop her scurrying under the other two). In this i lucked out as the girls got their summer turnout field bordering their winter turnout patch. Happy days & fingers crossed the (a) the haynets don't break, (b) they don't tip the whole metal thing over & (c) the horses don't hang themselves.
I'm not sure how (b) & (c) could happen, I know i can't picture it but if I've learnt anything from my love of horses over the years is that they can get themselves in the strangest situations wihout even trying.

Trying a slightly different set up to yesterday today, 
three has to be better than 2 right?! ;-)

Which brings me to (d) i hope Miss Kika does not try to climb into the bloody metal frame!!! I have no idea why she would but she is an odd creature & has been known to try to climb things by putting her front feet into them and standing up tall looking around at everything from a different vantage point. I have personally ally caught her proudly standing with her front feet in an old stone feeding trough at our old yard in Ireland & have often caught her dunking her front feet into her outdoor water trough since moving to Lux. Not the automatic wall dispensers as someone thought I meant when I told them the story the other day. Knock-on-wood i haven't yet heard of her trying to get a paw in them - thankfully as they're a good 1m+ off the ground! O.o

In fact her first summer on turnout here the owners stopped me one day to say the other horses were refusing to drink the water from the trough because she had made it so muddy. I'm not entirely sure what they expected me to do about it. I mean she's a horse...there's not much I -the puny human- can do to stop her dipping her toes in the water to cool down. The saying "you can bring a horse to water - but you can't make them drink" isn't a one way street - there isn't much you can 'make' a horse do when it is living on 24/7 turnout unless I was to camp by the field and not sleep so that I could correct her/stop her anytime she tried to dip a toe...

#teamwork to counterbalance
the swing

Needless to say I haven't ever tried to stop her, she is apparently still at it as other livery owners stopped me one day last week as i was bringing the girls back to the field. They asked me how was the seahorse...to which I went sorry? They said they'd passed the field some day and Kika had her front feet in the trough - she does make me giggle. Needless to say I have never had a problem getting her into water ;-)
Our favourite thing to do when hacking in the woods is splashing through puddles. Luckily we both like to splash so we both get a kick out of it...Nancy on the other hand - not even a little bit. A stream/river/the sea is ok for Nancy she doesn't love them but she won't make a fuss about going in but don't make her walk through a puddle!
She tried to decapitate me  with tree branches last Tuesday in her bid to avoid a puddle. Had I not had been holding Kika on a lead at the time N would have gone through that puddle as decapitating me is NOT an option. However that will have to be a lessen for another day...