Farm Life In Winter = Chores, Chores, Chores

It is a snowy cold season out here at the farm. I have never disliked snow until I bought farm animals!! There is so much more work in the winter and so much less fun activities to do with the animals. It hard to ride in the snow, and if there is a frigid wind blowing forget it.

I spend hours each week shuffling hay around...from the barn to the feeders.....from one feeder to another.....from the ground where the horses throw it back into the feeder.....it never ends! The small bales are about 80 pounds. First you have to climb up the hay stacks and throw the bales down from the top....then you have to pick it up by the strings and carry it out into the yard....travel down an icy, slippery embankment with the strings digging into your palms....shuffle it onto your knee as you try to open the gate to the field....and then try to make it through a mass 0f 8 animals (6 of which a big horses) each trying to eat the bale as you carry it out to the feeder.....throw it in the feeder.....climb into the feeder so that you can get the strings oof of it....which is a whole other problem, because they are so tighly wound they can be very difficult to get off sometimes......climb back out of the feeder and do it all again.......11-15 more times.

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Speaking of hay, we also have to put 2 big round bales out in the feeders on the weekends. Each round bale weighs about 1500 pounds. I have to try to roll it out of the barn and down an embankment so that the tractor can lift it up and take it out to the feeders. Not too bad.....except when there has been so much snow that I have to spend half and hour diggins out the door to get the hay out and another half an hour digging out the gate to the horse field so that tractor will be able to get in. The tractor is not able to plow in front of the barn door because it cannot get up the embankment. And I cannot plow infront of the horse gate well because it cannot get close enough and just ends up pushing the snow against the gate. Then there are the times....like yesterday....when the tractor breaks down (which happens frequently because it is old) and we cannot use it so we have to call a neigbour or try to push these big 1500 pound bales out to the fields ourselves...(almost impossible). Sometimes the tractor works to take the hay out but breaks down in the field and then we have to try to keep the horses away from it so they don't run into it and get hurt.

The water is a whole other story. The hoses freeze so every other day I have to get the hoses from the basement....drive them to the farm....unwind them....fill the buckets.....stretch the hoses out to drain.....wind them back up.....tie them with baler twine....and take them home again....once home I have to unwind them again...drain them again and wrap the dang hose up...again. Not much work? Hmmm....well it is the MOST ANNOYING thing ever, winding and unwinding these dang hoses every other day....your hands get wet...the hoses are cold so they are stiff....the water the runs out of them makes icy patches.....and it is just a big chunk of my time that I could be using to do the many other chores I have to do. Oh and thats if the water pipe has not frozen...which it does a lot....in which case it has to be thawed with a hair dryer. Sometimes the actual pump out in the pump house freezes....and that requires a professional plumber and a whole lot of stress.

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And no the horses cannot just eat snow for their water. They could phsically do it, but it does not provide enough liquid and they have to use precious body heat in order to melt the snow. In winter dehydration is a huge problem and even bigger is that dehydration can lead to colic....a life threatening and sometimes fatal problem where horses cannot move anything through their intestines and their intentines eventually die and thus so does the horse. Water is the single most important aspect of the horse being able to move food though their system, it lubricates the organs and flushes all the toxins and food out.

Once per week I have to add new straw to the horse and llama shelters because the horses poop in their bedding and make a nasty mess. The llamas do not (Thank goodness) but they get a little more bedding on the cold days. This is not too bad, but the twine is impossible to get off sometimes and often when I am trying to spread out the straw a few of the horses come over and get in the way because they think I might be spreading out more hay.

Then there is the feeding of two certian horses and two certian llamas. The night before I feed I have to soak beetpulp pellets in hot water so that they become soft and palatable. Then I have to make sure I remember to bring it to the farm ! I make a mix of different grains and a concoction of supplements and mix it all together. Take it out to the barn yard and one at a time bring each animal out and feed it, so the other animals cannot fight over and steal the food. This is not too bad, just one more chore that needs to be taken care of out at the farm.

I know that this post sounds like I am complaining. But I am not, truly. I do it because I love my animals so much and want them to have to best care that I can provide. Which means lots of water and hay on these cold winter days. I decided to write about it because I heard some friends complaining about the snow and winter and realized that not too may people realize how much work is involved in maintaining a herd of horses and llamas throughout this cold season.

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But I have no regrets. Its true I do not enjoy winter as much as I used to and a big part of that would be that I have to spend so mcuh time outside in the snow. And yes I HATE winding and unwinding the hoses day after day and I wish there was a heated hose I could use (there are heated hoses and coils but becasue I have to run my hose through the snow these are not appropriate). But it is simply part of owning horses and I have a lot of fun with my horses. It is more fun in the summer and fall because among the chores we can do a lot of riding, but each season has its own set of chores that has to be done. Winter is just hard because its cold, wet and windy and there is more that has to be done. ie hay coupled with less that we can do ie. riding. The thing that I really focus on during those cold, windy and wet days when my boots are soggy and my fingers are ice is that winter leads into spring....and spring means little hooves racing around the fields and the foaling season begins :)