*rolls eyes* bloomin pony

[Southwestwhippet]

Just a random post really...

Pony has been out 24/7 for the last month on about three quarters of an acre of ungrazed land (i.e. it hasn't had livestock on it for over a year). Basically he gets a balancer every day and I've been giving him a bit of haylage every now and then just to make sure he is getting a belly-full to keep the weight on. But as he hasn't really needed any extra haylage, just me being soft, I've been buying, for convience, the bagged stuff from my local feed mills. £7 a bag!!!!!! but not a problem considering he wasn't having much.

But since the snow, obviously he needs lots of forrage now because the grass is covered and the expensive stuff is rather beyond my budget in these quantities. So DP and I headed off into the wilds of the Quantocks on Thursday to get him some hay from a local farmer. Good quality hay I may add but £3 p/bale as opposed to the £7 p/bag haylage.

This morning I put out pony's hay and he stood next to it for about 2 minutes looking really put out before snorting loudly then walking pointedly about 6' away and digging a hole in the snow to resentfully eat the frozen grass. Clearly he now feels he is far too good to eat hay and must only be fed top of the range expensive haylage.

I'm presuming hunger will drive him to get over his tantrum but TBH I was a bit surprised by his reaction because it really is nice quality hay. I didn't have hafflingers down as fussy breeds either.

Pointless post really, anyone else's pony/horse being a drama queen about the snow?

Lol, my old pony refused to eat haylage. He was supposed to be on it as he had COPD but I would find it buried under his bed every morning. In the end I gave up wasting my money and went back to soaking hay.

I am getting a bit worried though as we haven't many bales left and our usual supplier lives in a very outlying area so I'm not sure if she'll be able to deliver if this weather carries on.

I know what you mean about hay. We don't have a trailer or a 4x4 so we can only buy what we can fit into the back of the car. Plus it makes a vile mess (hence another plus for the ludicrously expensive bagged haylage ). We're going to need to venture out again in the next couple of days to stock up and I'm not looking forward to it.

[wonders if can bring on labour early as a way to avoid going out to buy hay?]

You need some old single duvet covers. If I have to put a bale of hay in the car it goes inside the duvet cover first and the car stays clean!
Even that's not really an option at the moment. There is a farm down the road from me where I buy my eggs and the odd bale of emergency hay but it means getting down and then back up a very steep, ungritted hill.
Our field owner has a farm a few miles away. If it comes to it I suppose we will have to beg him to bring some over on his tractor, but to be honest, another livery has got some from him and it is rubbish, full of dust. I'd have to be seriously desperate to feed them that.