ok i'll play, here's the details of our current regimen, which is subject to minor and major changes at any time!
MORNING: me alone!!
get on coat and hat and gloves, it is still dark and while not as cold as most of you, for us the 30s and low 40s is still pretty cold! gloves are half for cold and half to keep the hay from sticking in my hands, seems like i always find the stickers! walk from the house on the front of 5 acres to the hay barn about halfway back... with 8 dogs under my feet. feed the dogs, load the golf cart trailer with 4 flakes of bermuda and pretty much a whole bale of rye mix... separating out the big horses' hay on the left and the minis on the right. sit in the golf cart and wait for it to warm up, turn on the lights, then drive over to the "stud" pens... which right now have extra animals in them since we gave them their girls when the temp dropped below 100 (which was REALLY late this year :new_shocked: ) and constantly watching to make sure i don't run over any dogs... who SHOULD be eating but are following me! - off the golf cart, walk through the gate and into the stud pen (the folks before us had a garden separately fenced, we don't garden so we have modified it to contain three smaller separate pens inside the other fence as insurance against escapees... modified half a dozen times or more since we moved there 5 years ago but i think we are done now, there are three separated pens, no common fences to them, so the studs can't fight, and the northernmost one has multi-railed panels to keep babies in and we use it for the foaling pen - no one can get in or out of it, and pregnant mamas don't tempt the studs anyway) - feed rye mix to Dillon and Betty Lou...Wiley...Bella Noche and Eve... return to golf cart and repeat with bermuda. climb back on the golf cart and drive about 20 feet to the new pen we put up for Trooper (a little distance between him and the other boys is necessary because he is so much bigger than they are...) all the while telling the squeaking donkeys that i am coming!! feed rye mix to Trooper, Jasmine and Impatiens... repeat with bermuda. climb back on the golf cart and drive about 50 yards (ok i am guessing, i am SO BAD at distance!) further toward the back of the property, the big horses are in the arena (the back acre of the property), drive along the fence stopping 3-4 times to throw their 9 flakes so they are spread out, yes climbing on and off the golf cart each time... Paint Mare and her filly Luna always get the first flake, Thorn and Destiny and Skeye the second, Katie and Annie the third, and Ruby the fourth, then they will move on down the line as they feel like it, switching partners and flakes until all the food is gone... towards the end of the fence the "big" mini pen is on the right, or in front of the arena... so they are mad i am feeding the big horses and not them. pawing and banging on the feeders, even chewing them... ok you have to understand the mini pen, it is actually 5 pens together, there are two smaller separate ones on the east end, then three big long ones with connecting gates... that made it easier to put up the shades and gives me the option to divide them if/when we need to... and there are barrel feeders attached to the fence at intervals all the way around the outside, if i am counting right 17 in all... plus one in each of the small pens on the east side. so i feed Austin who is in the southern small pen on the east side, then drive west putting hay in feeders, Lily and Foxy claim the first ones, usually Holly third then the donkeys who are Betty Jean, Taffy Jo, Susie Q, Becky Lynn, Peggy Sue and Mary Ellen... then go around the west end and a quick detour to feed the last big horse, the new one "CC" (for now, if we keep her i WILL change her name...) and then swing back by the north side of the mini pens and fill those feeders, yes climbing on and off the golf cart half a dozen times... then to Maggie's pen on the north side of the east end, remove my right glove, climb through the fence, catch her with 1/3 of a cookie, pet her and walk 3 cirles around her pen, stop and pick up her left front foot, 1/3 more cookie, then stand at her shoulder and scratch her withers, then move back to the front of her and pet her face again then the last 1/3 of the cookie... then let her go and climb back through the fence, put my glove back on and put her hay in the feeder. then drive back to the hay barn, grab the plastic trash can i keep there for scraps, use the (clean) poop rake i keep there to rake the scraps out of the trailer and ptu them in the can, clean up any off the floor and put in the can, turn off the golf cart lights and go inside to shower and get ready for work. and believe it or not i can do all this in 30 minutes! but if it has been cold enough you can add an extra 10 minutes to break the ice off of 10 water buckets/troughs.
EVENINGS: if the girls are home, they do it. when they are at visitation, i have to do it myself.
to the hay barn, load 10 large buckets and 7 small empty buckets into the empty golf cart trailer. drive 20 feet to the west to the pellet dispenser and the big garbage can we drop the pellets into... with coffee can scoop appropriate pellets into appropriate buckets... i am thankful to God that they make plastic buckets in so many different colors
: and scoop out Bella's mare/foal food from the chest freezer where we store the bags of "special food"... drive back east to the water faucet across from the stud pen gate, wet all pellets. all the while telling the squeaking donkeys that i am coming!! get the small purple and light blue buckets on my left arm and the small red one in my hand, and Bella's can of special food... through the gate and into the stud pen, divide the red bucket between Dillon and Betty Lou, give the blue one to Wiley and the purple one and the can to Bella and Eve. (oh yeah, first Bella and Eve have to be put back in their pen because we let them out so Eve can stretch her legs while someone is nearby to supervise). put empty buckets back in trailer and take the small yellow bucket to divide between Trooper, Jasmine and Impatiens. back to the golf cart, drive back to the chest freezer and add the senior to Paint Mare, Thorn and Ruby's buckets, and add the sweet feed and m/f to Luna's bucket (i don't put it in until after the pellets soak up the water because they don't like it when the small stuff gets what we call "sloggy", a term my oldest coined when she was small and her cereal sat too long in the milk LOL), and fill the small can with m/f again for the pg donks... back on the golf cart, drive over to the big horse pens which are west of the mini pen. climb through the fence (i hate to open gates if i don't have to) and get everyone into their own pens (stalls?) and shut all the pen gates... feed the 5 on the north side, small dark blue bucket to Skeye, large purple to Thorn, large light blue to Destiny, large flag bucket to Luna, large Tax bucket to CC, then drive to the south side and feed those 4, large dark blue bucket to Paint Mare, large pink bucket to Ruby, large camoflage bucket to Katie, large home depot bucket to Annie... empty buckets back to the golf cart, then take the small black bucket for Austin and the large red one for the mares who need a little extra, go feed Austin, climb through the fence and feed Foxy and Lily and shut the gate, hopefully by the time the 5 "young'uns" are in the middle, usually not though and you have to coax the stragglers through the other gate while keeping the two pg donks from coming through... shut that gate, donkeys whining and complaining the whole time, get the large white and orange buckets and feed the young'uns, which are Holly, Susie Q, Becky Lynn, Peggy Sue and Mary Ellen, then feed the pg donks Betty Jean and Taffy Jo, and get the can of m/f and divide between the pg donks. then drive to Maggie's pen, climb through the fence, catch her with 1/3 of a cookie, pet her and walk 3 cirles around her pen, stop and pick up her left front foot, 1/3 more cookie, then stand at her shoulder and scratch her withers, then move back to the front of her and pet her face again then the last 1/3 of the cookie... then let her go and climb back through the fence, dump her green bucket and back in the golf cart to take the empty buckets and cans and put them away. oh yeah and at some point run back to Wiley with the daily wormer he is on right now because invariably i forget to take it with his feed bucket!!! amazingly enough i can also do this in about 30 minutes, or less if Randy is home to help shoo everybody where they belong and shut gates and help dump buckets once they are wet and the pellet dust is not a threat to his horrible allergies. of course i prefer it when the girls are home, then the only part of the evening feeding i HAVE to do is the Maggie part (this stems from a reading by Bonnie, we are trying to work through Maggie's SEVERE trust issues). although i usually do try to go out and at least visit everybody, everybody gets a scratch and kiss at least!! after all that's what i need after a day at the office!!
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probably sounds complicated but hey it works really well for us, and we are used to it. the hard part is when there is change, then i have to THINK about what i am doing... like soon when Taffy Jo needs the foaling pen and Bella and Eve will go back to the main pen.
the funniest part is i think it took me longer to tell how we do this than it does to actually do it :new_shocked:
: My dogs have gotten to where the will chase the horses and donkeys a little "just for fun". 
It's only when I go out to feed that they feel the need to get some exercise. I can't stand it and I have found that all the yelling in the world will NOT stop them, doesn't even slow them down and could possibly make them run even faster...lol My donkeys have just recently started to pin their ears back and face the dogs instead of run. :aktion033: I'm proud of them for it. I always think, "if the dogs got kicked one good time, they would stop this nonsense". Ugh! [/SIZE]
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