What will stop horses from eating my barn’
Horse Journal Contributing Editor Lee Foley Responds:
We suggest starting with the simplest solution, which is dish soap. don’t laugh, but We’ve found that Original Dawn is the best choice, followed by Original Palmolive. You can mix a heavy solution and spray it on or just wipe it right from the bottle onto the areas they’re going after.
If that fails, we reach for RapLast (www.jmsaddler.com, 800-627-2807). This is also great for horses who are starting to tear at their leg wraps and/or blankets. The company now has Quit Chew, too, but we have not yet tried this product.
Many horses also respond to the supplement by Farnam called Quitt.
(www.farnamhorse.com, 800-234-2269). It can take up to 30 days to work, but it’s well worth a try, especially if you don’t want to be bothered with painting stuff all the time or worry about stains.
Depending upon the cause of the wood chewing and the horse? weight, there are other things to try, including toys, increased turnout/exercise, more hay and/or use a hay net that has tiny holes in it so that the horse has to work harder to get the hay out, like Freedom Feeder (www.freedomfeeder.com, 909-260-7555) or NibbleNet (www.thinaircanvas.com, 772-463-8493).
A rescue-farm owner reacts to the book review.
Your review of The Forgotten Horses (December 2010) could not have come at a better time for me. I live by myself and run a small horse rescue. No donations or help, just some physical labor from my son-in-law. I used to rescue horses from auctions or people would make referrals, and I’d get the horses back to being healthy and sometimes trained and give them away to approved homes. But I only did one or two at a time.
Then when the horse market changed, it became too hard to find good homes, so now I just have several retired horses who live out their lives here. Two are retired show horses (cast off because they were no longer competitive), two are mustangs and one is a 20-year-old I bought at an auction. (The ?killer? had just paid $35 for him, but I gave the guy $200 right there in order to save the horse.) I have a lame retired broodmare and a retired stallion (now gelded) with health issues. I also have a special-needs mini and a starved horse I’m carefully feeding.
Today was very cold, windy and snowy. Most of the horses are outside with shelters, and I take hay and water to them. Despite my best efforts, one of the hoses had frozen, and it seemed I was constantly taking my gloves off to open gates, fix halters, put extra salt on the feed and so on. My fingers were frozen when I was done. While I was doing this, I wondered if anyone actually cared what I did. It takes all my time and all my money (plus some!).
When I returned to the house, I read your review and was reminded of why I do what I do. Many of the comments really hit home. The horse that said, ?I want to trust? ? that describes my old mustang. Now He’s like a puppy dog and just as happy as can be (well, you can’t catch him without a struggle, but he does love his ears rubbed if you don’t have a halter). When I first got him, he was so scared.
And the comment about the horse rubbing his head on his friend?s face, oh my gosh, I have a couple of horses just like that.
I probably could find homes for at least some of these horses, but this book reminded me that this is their home. They are happy here, and it doesn’t matter if any other person appreciates what I do.
Thank you for reminding me of that and for reminding me to be extremely thankful that I can do what I do, rather than complain about my fingers freezing.
Pat Robinson
Moonshadow Horse Rescue
Elk Creek, MO
