I am FINALLY almost all ready to move the horses to the new barn. I am planning on taking them on Sunday. I can't wait to have both horses at the same barn haha! It has been such a pain trying to find time to visit 2 different barns. I went to the new barn today to drop off some of my stuff. I also went and picked up some hay and straw so that i will have it there already when I bring the boys. I didn't get a whole lot because 1.) I am not sure how much I am going to use just yet, 2.) I can only fit so much in the back of my Yukon, and 3.) I am stacking them in front of my stalls at the moment so I can't fit all that many bales there. When I first went to look at the barn, Donna told me that the other self care boarder just picks up 1 or 2 bales at a time and I was thinking that that is such a pain in the ass and there is no way I'm doing that. But when I went to the hay place that she recommended I can see why it works for her to do that. Basically they have 3 barns and there are a bunch of different kinds of hay and straw and whatnot. Each stack is labeled with what it is and the price and you just take what you need. It's self serve and basically on the honor system although they have security cameras throughout. When you've gotten what you want you just fill out a slip with your name and then you write down what you got, how many bales, and the price. Then you just clip it to your money and stick it in the slot where it goes in this big metal pipe that they have labeled as "the bank". It's pretty convenient because it's only about 5 minutes away from the barn so it's quick to just run down there and grab what I need. I got 5 bales of straw, 2 bales of timothy, and 2 nice big dense bales of some really nice looking mixed grass hay. The grass hay was the most expensive but the bales are really super dense and it's lovely 2nd cutting good quality stuff. The prices are a little higher than I was expecting but then again I really wasn't exactly sure what to expect. The straw there is $3.50/bale and to me the bales look kinda small but we'll see how they shake out. I am hoping that 1 bale will be enough to fill up each stall. The timothy was $4.50/bale and the nice grass mix was $5.75/bale. I'll see how this works out and if I need to try something different they have lots of options. They have an orchard/meadow grass mix and a couple of different alfalfa mixes. Donna said that in the future we could possibly all chip in and get a delivery but for now I guess it works just as well to go up the road to Carmar. I am thinking that maybe next time I will hook up my trailer and load that up and maybe get twice as many bales as I got today. I can just leave some of them in the trailer and stack the rest in front of the stalls. That will at least save me a trip.

I am going to try to make it to the feed store tomorrow to pick up grain. They are both getting Nutrena Triumph right now which is a 10/10 sweet feed. I am going to start adding a ration balancer to try and eventually reduce the amount of grain they need. Kristen's horse Tony was always kinda ribby when he was at Kate's but she had him on a balancer here for a couple months and now he is FAT and he's been cut back to 4qts a dayof the regular grain (and this is a huge horse, at least 17.1). I want to cut back Freddy's grain especially because he's showing a lot of the classic ulcer symptoms. I always sort of suspected that he might have ulcers but he's definitely looking/acting worse these days so I am taking action. Amanda had started giving him Alfalfa but he turns into a monster on that so we've stopped that. He's been getting some aloe vera juice in his grain every day and then I've also just started hiving him Calcium Bentonite Clay. I did a lot of reading up on alternative ulcer treatments and that is one that I heard a lot so I decided to try it. Basically it comes in a powder form and you mix it with water to make it sort of like the consistency of mustard. I give it to him in a syringe and it's supposed to coat the ulcers and allow them to heal. Plus the aloe is supposed to be soothing. I first gave it to him on Monday. When I got to the barn that day he had already been fed but he'd left some of his grain and didn't seem interested in eating. Today I went out around the same time and his bucket was completely clean and he was looking for more. I think that's a good sign so I'm going to continue with this for a month or so and see how he looks. I really don't want to spend $1000 on gastrogard or ulcergard so I hope this works. Plus I definitely think it will help for him to get less grain and more hay. The horses don't get a ton of hay at Amanda's so I am looking forward to having control over exactly what my horses get fed.