Today was my first experiment with beet pulp, which is derived from sugar beets that are used for table sugar. April, the woman who started Calvin, had given him beet pulp and I want to continue on with this but I had never fed it before. There are a number of benefits to feeding beet pulp: first, it contains a highly digestible fiber called pectin. This has been found to aid in intestinal health. Also, beet pulp is low in starch and sugar content, so they won't cause as much excess energy but it's a very high quality nutritional feed. Finally, beet pulp is used to fatten up skinny horses, hence why I decided to stick with it for Calvin!
Now Beet Pulp comes in shredded or pelleted form, I chose pelleted because you get more for your space/weight than with shredded. I put about an inch high in this bucket and let it soak overnight. Well, it exploded and ended up filling basically the entire bucket! I figured, there's no way Calvin will eat all this in just the time I tack up, brush, and untack. He can barely finish half a bucket of his regular hay in that time. See, I can't feed him extra when he's with the other mares because they'll push him out of the way and eat his food as they are more dominant. So all extra feeding I do has to be separated from them. What I didn't expect, however, was that he would literally devour this feed. People online talked about how horses often do not like the plain taste...well this guy has no problem as you can see:
His nose hardly moved from this position the entire time. Our green bucket is in commemoration of St. Patrick's Day.
Notice how his eyes are rolled back and dazed? He is in horsey-heaven
Full body shot! The ground isn't even and the angle is kind of weird, promise he's better proportioned. Anyway, I'm glad he enjoys this feed so much because he could use the weight; he's still growing! Also, you can also catch a glimpse of his freeze mark on his neck, it's more visible now that his summer coat is starting to come in.
Here's a shot of Heidi, she's learning how to be a barn dog. It's also her birthday today and she turned 3. She celebrated by following me on a trail ride which wore her out, but this picture was taken before the ride.
I then took Calvin on a ride in the arena. We practiced our turns as well as more trotting. He's very good at listening to his cues to move forward, but he's not great at following the rail, he'll often turn randomly which causes me to have to pull on a rein to tell him to turn which he equates as stopping. He's slowly getting the hang of things. I took a video of rope desensitization, the first time I'd tried this from his back:
Here he is drinking from a bucket in the arena, it's good for him to learn to drink from different locations so that he won't go thirsty if we travel or in case of emergency.
After the arena ride, we went on a trail ride. First by ourselves, then we met up with his mare friend (the one from the trail pictures below) and followed her. This made the trail much less scary ;) Overall, a great day!
Poison oak! Luckily it's safe for horses to touch, as long as Calvin doesn't throw me into them.
As you've likely noticed, I've posted very frequently this week. It was my spring break, so I had more time for this blog and the horse. In the upcoming weeks, the posts will probably be less frequent, but I'll still try to post as often as I can.
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