Turnout is back! The horses went out yesterday and today. As I type this, it is raining, and it's supposed to continue through tomorrow, so tomorrow is iffy. Oh well.
Lisa fenced off the fields to reduce them by half, so all the horses have access to the front half to let the grass keep growing unmunched upon in the back half. The fields are really in desperate need of fertilizing and reseeding; there's not much good grass. There's a decent amount of fields for turnout, but they're all taken because each horse goes out alone. When we first moved to the barn, Bestie went out with a couple mares (who have since left) and Dude went out with another gelding, Cullen. Cullen tended to bite on Dude in the winter when he wasn't distracted by grass, so they ended up getting separated.
I think Dude likes have a buddy to go out with; even now, he tends to stay along the fenceline if one of his "friends" is in the next field. When we first got him, he was out in a field with four other geldings and did fine. He paired up with Damian, an older guy, and they would stand at the fenceline and check out the mares in the next field.
Bestie doesn't seem to care if she's with anyone or not. She was kind of bossy with her pasture mates before, especially when it was time to come in; they would all jockey for position at the gate.
Today I grazed Dude and Bestie for about ten minutes each because they both seemed frantic to get out of their stalls, even though they had their two hour shifts outside earlier in the day. The amount of time will gradually increase over the next 1-2 weeks to prevent the chance of laminitis from overconsumption of the rich spring grass. Only the horses that have been hand grazed regularly over the last month are getting two hours.
Soon they'll get up to 4 1/2 to 5 hours outside and resettle into the routine. Life gets a lot easier when turnout starts up again.
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