Managing winter

This is my first winter with my own little barn and my own little horse to take care of (since I was a kid!).  So far, I think we have been doing just fine.  I was unsure how things would go when the snow, cold and ice hit us.

Trying to work a bit in the fluffy snow over the holidays

Tack room –  A+.  It is insulated and faces south/south-east, so it stays quite warm, especially on a sunny day.  Even when it was -25C (-13F) over the holidays, the temperature would range between 0C and -2C (32F and 28F).  My water hydrant is in the tack room, which was a smart move on the original owner’s part.  It has yet to freeze on me, but it does have a little heating coil wrapped around the exposed part, if I need it.

Fencing –   The bottom strand is buried in snow, so I’ll need to disable the connector to that strand.  Note to self for this weekend!  The north-west corner strands in my small paddock are sagging on me as well.  When we got our first big snowfall, I was able to knock the snow off and tighten up the strands, but it didn’t hold up.  I’m going to tromp out there this weekend and see what I can do. 

Spencer -  In mid December, as the weather was getting nastier, I wasn’t sure what to do with Spencer. He has a shelter, but wasn’t really using it.  He would stand in different places in his paddock, depending on which way the wind was blowing. It was getting tricky to put his hay out, because I would put it where he was standing in the morning, but the weather would change by the afternoon, so he wasn’t eating much because he didn’t want to stand in the wind (wimp!). 

Spoiled!!

Of course I felt guilty about this so I figured out another solution (spoiled horse alert!!) – I was able to open the back door of the barn and tie his stall door open so that he has good shelter for the cold, windy days. With this new arrangement, I wasn’t going to blanket him, since he had grown a really nice winter coat.  My friend that was taking care of him over Christmas felt bad because it was -234234234C and blanketed him anyway.  After wearing a blanket for a week or so, his fluffy coat was all squished down.  I pretty much had to keep the blanket on after that.

Manure Pile – The previous owners left a decent sized manure pile behind. I had intended to have someone come in with a tractor to remove it, but my budget last year didn’t allow it.  I didn’t plan on keeping Spencer in his stall much, if at all over the winter so it didn’t really cross my mind.  Of course, now that Monsieur Spencer has his own private horse hotel, complete with housekeeping staff, I’m adding the manure pile every day!  During the holidays, the snow was blowing and drifting a lot, so every couple of days the manure pile would get drifted over and covered with snow. It was tricky to push a wheelbarrow out far enough, so the manure pile is a little closer to the barn than I would like.  I can’t do much about it now, so I’ll just manage it until the spring.  Spencer also likes to paw at it (bored?) so it is a bit messier than I would like as well.

One thing I would like to change in the barn is the location of the light switches.  The switches are in the tack room, but getting there involves opening a gate in the pasture, which is hard in the dark and cold. My tack room outside door has also frozen shut several times so far this year, so getting in that way isn’t the best.  I go in via the main sliding doors and it would be nice to have light switches there as well.  I’m hoping to have an electrician out this summer to see if we can get that fixed.

All in all, we are faring quite well this winter. I sometimes daydream about taking him to a boarding stable for the winter so we could ride, but it is also nice to have time off to relax and try to stay warm!  The days are already getting a bit brighter by the time I get home from work, so by late Feb/early March we should be able to get started on some work!

I do find myself occasionally longing for the long, hot days of summer and a sleek horse!