 September 2006 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The official newsletter of Horses for Clean Water, http://www.horsesforcleanwater.com
Newsflash!New Tip Sheet now available for purchase! We have finally finished the tip sheet titled Natural Solutions for Fertilizers, Weed Control and Pest Control. It is available for purchase right away for just $4.97! Visit the Materials For Sale section of the web site and order yours today. The Acrobat PDF will be delivered to your e-mail inbox usually within 24 hours of purchase; please allow up to a week just in case we are unable to send it when your order is placed or if there are technical difficulties. Also, the 2004 back issues of The Green Horse are now available to buy as Adobe Acrobat PDFs for just $3.97 each. Help HCW programs by purchasing these information-packed newsletters! Just go to The Green Horse page and use the easy Add to Cart buttons and our payment system through PayPal. We will e-mail you the PDF within a day or so of your purchase! You will no longer find the online versions of these newsletters.
Message from Alayne: It’s Not Your Hobby Either!I love it when I can connect with you and it seems that last month’s message did just that. Last month I talked about how I felt when people referred to horses as “my hobby.” Apparently many of you share similar feelings on this as I received many wonderful comments from you. I’d like to share some of those this month. A close horse friend wrote me, “I just read your most recent article. How timely! Just yesterday someone said that I had a good life because I had a job, a baby and a hobby. It took me a moment to realize that it was riding that was being referred to as a hobby. (Yes, the comment came from a non-horse person, but it was my therapist of all people! He should really know better.) Occasionally I crochet. Now I do consider that a hobby. But all the money, learning, physicality, mental turmoil and pleasure with having a horse, well that’s just part of my life path. It’s clearly something I’m meant to do.” Another reader and co-committee member wrote, “In the 6 years we have been involved in horses, I have found there is a definite distinction between horse and non-horse people. Many times I feel like I am speaking another language when I talk about horses to non-horse people. I find it very frustrating because I love horses and want to share that part of my life with my friends and family. So for me, while having horses is a definite commitment, it is really best described as being a passion. The passion to be there twice a day, to spend the considerable amounts of money, to provide the best equine professionals, and to love them even when they do something you would rather they hadn’t.” Another reader e-mailed saying, “I share your frustration with my horse passion being referred to as a “hobby.” There undoubtedly are some horse people that just dabble in it—but I think most of us have it in our blood. Horses ARE us. You can take away the horse, but you can’t take away the passion. Even when I took a break from horse ownership in order to start my own family, I still had the same passion for horses, and no one would have called horses even a hobby for me then because there was little tangible evidence of horses in my life. Yet they were more than a hobby for me even when they were physically absent from my life. Horses were my “thing” even though I didn’t own or ride them.”
She went on to say, “How can this be explained to a non-horse person? There’s elements that can be explained but there’s elements that must be experienced. How does one explain art? How does one explain the spiritual side of horses? The Tao of them? How does one explain dancing (with horses or people)? Books can be read, but still you have to do it. How about wisdom? Spiritual things are spiritually discerned. Horse sense and the relationships that we have with horses are discerned entirely differently than things that can be discerned with the five senses.” Even horse-owning professionals in the industry wrote me: “You’re right, hobby doesn’t really capture the responsibility and commitment that having horses requires. It’s certainly more than a hobby. I thought of avocation but it’s defined as a hobby as well. Way of life fits and perhaps a second career for some. Another reason hobby doesn’t fit is because the horse is a living being that many of us form a relationship with.” In Minnesota, one reader passed my message along to others who work with horse and livestock owners requesting that others read my message “to try and understand a land owner’s psyche in terms of working with them and encouraging them to make changes to their land management practices.”
As far away as Virginia, a conservation district manager wrote to say, “My horses and horse farm aren’t a ‘hobby’ either.” Colleague, horse owner and farm planner at the Snohomish Conservation, Alan Shank, summed it up aptly: “I would never call my dog a hobby; he’s part of the family. Same goes for the horse. This gives me something to think about.” I am pleased we all had something to think about—and I appreciate you giving me opportunity to ponder on things as well. The Green Horse is about YOU in so many aspects: in this issue we feature several articles submitted by readers. Let us know when you find something that works for you—or doesn’t work. Or when you have a horse moment you’d like share. E-mail me. I’m all ears! Alayne Geotextile Fabric: Another Ally in the Fight Against Mudby April LaLande and Jessica Paige Ah, the endless days of summer...if only they were truly endless. It’s hard to think about things like mud when we’re surrounded by dust and dry grass, but now is actually a great time to take steps that will keep your horse place mud-free this winter. By now you probably know that having a winter paddock—also called a sacrifice area—is key if you want to have healthy pastures next spring. If this is news to you, be sure to purchase the “Creating the Sacrifice Area” Tip Sheet. And hopefully you also know that footing materials can help you keep that winter paddock from turning to mud. But what you may not realize is that you can dramatically increase the effectiveness of your footing and prolong its useful life with geotextile fabric (often referred to as landscaping fabric). By first putting down geotextile fabric and then placing your footing material on top, it creates a layer between soil and gravel (or other footing materials) to provide a barrier that keeps them separate and prevents them from mixing. This separation helps the gravel maintain its position, improves drainage and increases the load bearing capacity of the site. The drainage in your paddock is improved because soil is not able to fill the spaces in the gravel layer. The fabric is permeable and still allows water to pass through it, so it does not restrict the movement of water.
One of our readers, Kent Wiles from Clatskanie, OR recently installed geotextile fabric in his paddock areas and was kind enough to share his experience with us. “My roll of fabric was so heavy,” Kent notes, “that it took myself and another strong individual (my Dad) to simply move it around. As leverage, we used 4" x 8' wood rails or poles that you can purchase at most feed stores to move it around. The poles are simply inserted into the tubular ends of the roll to lift it about. Sharp scissors cut across the fabric in a sliding motion quite easily and I would recommend they be used as opposed to a box cutter for the control and accuracy they give.” Kent adds, “I also have some experience with the Typar brand of landscape fabric. It is a spun-bonded fabric that appears to be more cloth like. I’ve used it under a sand and hog fuel footing with good success in my horse corrals and have not had a mud problem in our rainy climate. Although, I will probably not choose hog fuel again for a variety of reasons.” Kent used different kinds of stakes to hold the fabric down. “The stakes shown here are U-shaped six-inch pins or staples that were purchased in affordable packages at Home Depot in their gardening section. They were designed and are sold for use with landscape fabric installations.” More information on this type of geotextile fabric can be found by visiting the Ohio State University Fact Sheet Using Geotextile Fabric in Livestock Operations. Keep your eye on the HCW website for our new Geotextile Fabric Tip Sheet which is coming soon! Your purchase helps us to continue this newsletter and supports Horses For Clean Water programs. Our thanks to Kent Wiles from Clatskanie, OR for his excellent photos and comments! If you would like to share one of your projects with us, just send us e-mail.
September is traditionally the time for shopping for our winter supply of hay. Be sure to look for green, leafy, fresh-smelling hay without mold, weeds, foreign objects, dust or discoloration. Most recent nutritional recommendations are that a horse should receive 2% of its body weight in hay (or forage) per day. For the “average” 1000 lb. horse receiving moderate exercise that will be about 20 pounds of hay per day, or approximately 600 lbs. of hay per month. Since hay is usually sold in bulk by the ton (2,000 lbs), one ton of hay will last about 3 1/3 months per average-sized horse. So, do the math to determine how many tons of hay you’ll need this winter. This month in TGH we feature an article submitted to us by reader Gale Nelson of Sequim, WA who shares her experiences with buying hay in hopes that it will save others from having the same issues. What’s in YOUR Hay?by Gale Nelson
As I swept the mats before feeding my horses, my mare Honey stood nearby with her head outstretched, mouth open, moving her tongue left and right. This behavior is not uncommon for her at feeding time, but was more vigorous than usual, so I stopped sweeping to watch more carefully. When I stepped closer, I caught a whiff of a sour smell coming from her mouth. That was unusual, so I lifted her lips to examine her mouth and was surprised to see that her gums were red, swollen and receding from her teeth. I took hold of her tongue to check further and saw two nasty looking lesions along the base of her tongue on one side. Each sore was about the size of a quarter. One had a hole in the center and had jagged edges; it looked as if it had “exploded.” I checked my other horses and discovered they also had red, swollen gums, but no obvious sores in their mouths. They appeared fine in all other respects, but I was mildly alarmed and returned to the house to call the vet.
Erik Splawn, DVM, arrived a few hours later and took a quick look at all three horses’ mouths. Noting Honey’s was in the worst shape, he began a more thorough exam of her. Her vital signs were all normal, so he gave her a sedative, pulled his headlamp on, put a speculum on her to keep her mouth open, and propped her head up on a stand. As he examined her mouth, he described what he was seeing and doing. The two lesions had a track connecting them and he said it looked like something that might be made by a traveling seed head. If that were the case, the debris might still be in the wounds, so he cut them all open, but found nothing. He thoroughly flushed the wounds and her entire mouth with saline and betadyne, and then moved on to examine the other horses more thoroughly. They had no sores other than swollen gums and didn’t require doctoring. He prescribed 14 days of antibiotics and a few days of bute for Honey, and suggested that I rinse the horses’ mouths and gently brush their gums with a soft-bristle toothbrush every day for a week. As he was cleaning up, Dr. Splawn said he thought the swelling and sores were “mechanical injuries” caused by something my horses had been chewing on. My sacrifice area is pretty barren of debris and only one horse chews on the wood feeding troughs I’ve built (and he actually had the least swelling of all the horses). So we figured the culprit must be the hay I’d been feeding. I live on the Olympic peninsula in Washington State and usually feed a local grass or hay from Eastern Washington. I told Dr. Splawn that about eight weeks earlier I had bought a ton of “timothy-grass mix” from a local distributor of Eastern Washington hay. Just two days earlier my horses had finished eating the last of it—except for a couple of large dusty flakes I’d set aside to give to a neighbor’s cows. Little warning bells began ringing in my head as I remembered tossing out bits of debris in some of the bales, including small pieces of wood stakes and sticks. But at the time, nothing I found concerned me too much. Due to the cold winter weather—it was January—I had been wearing gloves when feeding, and it would be several days before I realized they had prevented me from feeling a more serious hazard in the hay than the dirt clods and small chunks of wood I had been seeing. As I described the hay to Dr. Splawn, and told him where I’d bought it, he recalled a similar case earlier in the fall. He said he thought the owners had purchased an Eastern Washington “timothy-mix grass” from the same distributor. Those horses had the same symptoms as mine and he had also treated them with a 14-day course of antibiotics and bute. Their mouths were greatly improved after two weeks, but they began showing the same symptoms shortly after finishing the medication. It was at that point that he and the owners suspected the hay, and the owners returned the hay to the distributor and bought something else. The horses were then given another course of antibiotics and fully recovered in a couple of weeks. Until that time I had always been fairly naïve about various types and qualities of hay, though I could usually see or smell mold. I asked Dr. Splawn if he would take a look at the hay I had set aside for the cows. He immediately found several seed heads that were abrasive and recommended that I send a sample to the lab for testing. Taking a look at the local hay I had, he found nothing suspicious or abrasive in those bales. But before sending samples of the timothy mix to the lab, I wanted to eliminate the possibility that the local hay might also have abrasive debris in it, so the next day I visited with two neighbors who buy and feed the same stuff. They hadn’t noticed any problems in their feed or with their horse’s mouths, but just to be on the safe side, we examined a few horses’ mouths and confirmed that they had no swelling, sores or sour breath. The next morning I met with Clallam County noxious weed coordinator Cathy Lucero, to see if she could identify something that might cause the injuries found in my horses’ mouths in the bags of dusty hay that I brought her. We spread a small pile of it on the floor of the county courthouse. and as we looked through it we were joined by Agriculture and Natural Resources Agent, Curtis Beus. We pulled out several questionable seed heads and Cathy tentatively identified one as Setaria lutescens (yellow bristle grass), or something in the Setaria genus (the foxtail family). She loves her work and is very good at what she does, and she even put one seed head in her mouth to see how it felt. At first she said, “Seems fine,” but a few moments after removing it she said, “Hmm, no, now my mouth feels kind of prickly!” We packed a sample and addressed it to Dr. Patricia A. Talcott, Veterinary Toxicologist at the University of Idaho. Then we agreed that we all felt as if we’d been handling fiberglass and washed our hands, rinsed our faces, and Cathy rinsed out her mouth (which didn’t immediately relieve the prickly sensation).
This is a photo of a handful of hay from the bag that we shipped off to Dr. Talcott. In the report I got back from the Analytical Sciences Lab at the University of Idaho, Dr. Richard Old identified the major components in the sample as Echinochloa sp. (barn-yard grass), Setaria lutescens (yellow foxtail), Setaria viridis (green foxtail) and Amaranthus retroflexus (redroot pigweed). Minor components included Phleum sp. (timothy) and Medicago sp. (alfalfa).The last two components, found in short supply in the sample I sent, are the only things of any value to horses. I have friends in Eastern Washington who claim that horses eat foxtail without complications, and I have read that on the Internet. While that may be true, my vet and the lab experts said foxtail can and does cause mechanical injury to the equine mouth. Although foxtail has not been known to cause internal injuries, horses have died from injuries to their mouths sustained from eating foxtail. It was intriguing that the sample also contained barn-yard grass because it’s not commonly found in Eastern Washington. Additionally redroot pigweed, another component found in the sample, is toxic to cows when it is eaten green, though is not harmful to horses.
Contrast the previous photo with this one, showing straight timothy grass. Most horse owners are probably more aware of what good hay looks and feels like than I was prior to this incident. But it’s also likely that many owners are as naïve to the possible risks of feeding junk hay as I was. Had I not worn gloves while feeding, I probably would have felt the abrasiveness of this stuff and questioned the distributor right away. But then again, maybe I wouldn’t have! This summer I found what appeared to be another type of foxtail, Horedeum murinum (wild barley) in some local hay I bought. I found many dried seed heads in the feed troughs after one feeding, so despite a cursory visual exam and feel of the hay, I had obviously missed them when tossing it out. While my horses had never left anything in their trough in January, they scrupulously avoided these seed heads, perhaps because they had access to fresh grass and so were a bit pickier than they had been last winter. In any case, my horses never stopped eating or drinking back then, and might have healed without intervention, but I am glad that I had the vet out to treat them. I learned a good lesson from this experience and hope by sharing it, others will be alert to possible dangers in the hay they buy and feed. Reprinted by permission from the Washington State Department of Health’s August 24, 2006 West Nile Virus Newsletter Acrobat PDF. WNV found in Yakima horse, first WA case in 2006
Washington State Department of Agriculture, New Release, August 18, 2006OLYMPIA—West Nile virus (WNV) has been confirmed in an eight-year-old quarter horse in Yakima, the state Department of Agriculture announced today. The horse started showing signs of central nervous system problems on Aug. 11. The positive test result was reported late Thursday by the Washington Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory in Pullman. The mare, which had not been vaccinated for WNV, had not left the Terrace Heights premises during the current mosquito season. “This is the first confirmed case this year of a horse contracting West Nile virus in Washington,” said Dr. Leonard Eldridge, state veterinarian. “The best way to protect a horse from West Nile infection is vaccination,” Eldridge said. The vaccine requires two doses three to six weeks apart, with immunity achieved five weeks after the second vaccine. An annual booster shot should be considered prior to the start of the mosquito season. Read the complete Washington State Department of Agriculture news release. Web Resources:Washington State Department of Health Educational EventsMeet HCW Staff at these upcoming events this fall. Visit the Educational Events page for more detailed class descriptions.
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If you have any questions or would like to submit an article for publication in The Green Horse, please e-mail info@horsesforcleanwater.com. |
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