Crack in the night - Mystery solved

[Jessey]

I've been camping out with the neds, Saturday night just after dusk I heard a crack, dashed out of the tent to find everyone where they should be and no one charging about, I figured it must have been a tree branch breaking. Then I got called out on Search and Rescue and didn't get back till long after dawn. When I arrived back everyone was where they were meant to be, so I put my head down for a couple of hours.

When I got up I find Dan in the front paddock with me, I poked him out onto the track and got on with what I needed to do. An hour later he's back in the paddock so off I go looking for the problem, only to find someone had removed the entire bottom strand from the back half acre paddock! Thanks Jessica!

I use polytwine because it normally breaks without causing issue, but for some reason this time its left a fairly nasty injury on the front of her hock, hopefully it will just need some TLC and not a vet though. She was in the large paddock area down the bottom when it happened, probably just kicking at flies

My big concern is Dan, I had the paddocks sprayed on Tuesday (14 day exclusion) and have been on lami watch with him for a couple of weeks (because he's fat as a house and his feet are showing lots of event lines) and he could have been out on the long rich grass all night They're already on wetted hay, and virtually no grass on the track, but Dan is very determined and the only one who will trim under the electric fence so he does get a little, other than increasing his exercise I don't know what else I can do, given their main forage is wet hay in a net I'm not sure muzzling is really fair.

 

[Skib]

Anything is fair. Maisie, being a Connie, was permanently on starvation rations.
We once drove to watch feral horses in the American West. The ground they were on was pretty much desert to English eyes. And may be because the grazing was so thin, they were not together in a herd but spread out, eating singly. Far apart and only 4 of them to be seen from the car track. Very scraggy horses but quite fit enough to reproduce. That is hard to replicate in rural England.
In the USA they keep horses on sand enclosures. And the RSs I have been to turned the horses out in a manege, to get the benefit of free movement but without the calorie intake. Now if you could hobble your horse on one of your forest tracks and put you tent up there? But I dare say regulations dont allow that.

 

[Jessey]

Anything is fair. Maisie, being a Connie, was permanently on starvation rations.
We once drove to watch feral horses in the American West. The ground they were on was pretty much desert to English eyes. And may be because the grazing was so thin, they were not together in a herd but spread out, eating singly. Far apart and only 4 of them to be seen from the car track. Very scraggy horses but quite fit enough to reproduce. That is hard to replicate in rural England.
In the USA they keep horses on sand enclosures. And the RSs I have been to turned the horses out in a manege, to get the benefit of free movement but without the calorie intake. Now if you could hobble your horse on one of your forest tracks and put you tent up there? But I dare say regulations dont allow that.

Yes I've spent several months out in the Pryor Mustang range, I know exactly what you mean. I saw many herds as I rode through the range, it tended to be the batchalors that were on their own. The reason I use a track system is to replicate this in some vague way (Jamie Jackson came up with it based on feral herd behaviour), they (Jess and Dan) are not on the grass most of the year, only in the deepest of winter once it is 'dead'. All of my track is sand (in the picture you can see just how little grass there is). Jess hobbles, but our forest tracks have more grass than my track at home so that wouldn't be of any benefit.

 

[chunky monkey]

I hope jess is okay. Hopefully only superfical wounds.

Your crack sounds like she might have snapped some wooden posts in the process.

 

[Skib]

O wow. I now understand. How did you manage to spend time there? Our pics are on paper (pre digital) andI would need a ladder out frm the cellar to get them down and post one.
We had lunch with uni friends yesterday and it is really lucky to live to be over 80, but also sad that one's travellng days are over. I just bought (from Belgium!) a biography of Jack Thorpe who collected (and composed) the corney cow boy songs we would play in the car as we drove through the USA.
I wish I had read it earlier as it is full of info on cattle herding. There is a pic of him on his old age favourite Lark. "A Texan steel dust". Is that a USA term for a grey?
I need to stop NR now and go for a walk.

 

[Huggy]

Hope its superficial, and that you can figure out a solution.

 

[Jessey]

I hope jess is okay. Hopefully only superfical wounds.

Your crack sounds like she might have snapped some wooden posts in the process.

Hopefully, one's a bit deep/burnt/knarly and right over the joint but looks clean, there's a smaller puncture further down that was quite hot/swollen so that's the one I'm watching for infection.
No wooden posts snapped oddly, one of the ring insulators was bent right over and a plastic post was 20' from where it started but the wire was broken in 2 places on opposite sides of the paddock, I'm guessing she stretched it a lot before the whole lot let loose.

O wow. I now understand. How did you manage to spend time there? Our pics are on paper (pre digital) andI would need a ladder out frm the cellar to get them down and post one.
We had lunch with uni friends yesterday and it is really lucky to live to be over 80, but also sad that one's travellng days are over. I just bought (from Belgium!) a biography of Jack Thorpe who collected (and composed) the corney cow boy songs we would play in the car as we drove through the USA.
I wish I had read it earlier as it is full of info on cattle herding. There is a pic of him on his old age favourite Lark. "A Texan steel dust". Is that a USA term for a grey?
I need to stop NR now and go for a walk.

I started going to montana/wyoming when I was 17, stayed at a bare bones ranch which bordered onto the Pryor Range so got to ride up there a lot. I used to go out a couple of times a year. All of my pictures are on paper from back then, I have some great pics of the mustangs somehwere, we had some cute young batchalors tag onto us one day, they followed us for half a day or more.

 

[Jessey]

This morning when I arrived Jess and Dan were up the back, when she saw me Jess leapt off the little bank, cantered the slalom through the trees and trotted the long straight down to me (very enthusiastic, but more importantly very sound ). I was just putting her fly spray on and noticed mud up to her fetlocks, mind starts whirring what's she been up to Wandered up the back, and a huge branch of the crack willow has come down! it wasn't like that the day of the crack, so it must have broken then but more slowly came down, good really as its sat on the roof of my shed! Jess is very happy because willow is one of her favorite snacks