When something isn’t right with a horse, you start thinking about the possibilities that might be causing the problem. You run through the list of what you’ve experienced before and eliminate them one at a time. And so it was like this with one of the boarders horses this past week.

First thing I thought about is the fact that I ran out of Prascend. It was ordered, it just wasn’t delivered in time. I ordered it with 10 days left on the old box and it took 2 weeks from the distributor. The vet said he’d be fine, but he stopped eating.

Now this is a horse who is not a good eater to begin with. He’s 27 and needs everything I can get into him. When you add something different to his grain you have to do it so gradually, it makes you crazy. If he stops, you have to go back, remove it and try again.

He would eat half of what I usually give him, so I cut it back. He still would only eat half of the new amount. I smelled the grain, it was okay. Checked his bucket and there was noting odd in it. Gave it to another horse and he ate it no problem. Removed all the additives, like his Cosequin, Hoof Pellets, Moorman’s Minerals, Flax Seed, Finish Ultimate, and Beet Pulp, still wouldn’t eat the Sweet Feed.

I feed him separate of his buddy, because he’s a slow methodical eater. I know they are all getting their teeth done in the next couple of weeks, so I watched him chewing and he’s not dropping anything.

Then I had an “A Ha!” moment. As I turned him out with the other horse I noticed that he would go to the other horses bucket and see if he had left anything, then he tried picking up what was on the ground. Not that any of them leave their food. So the light bulb went off that said “he’s hungry!” just not eating his food. I went back and took what was left in his bucket and put it in the other horses bucket and, you guessed it, he wanted to eat it. Of course that didn’t happen because his buddy is more aggressive.

So back to his bucket I went. Is it the location of the bucket? Did something frighten him there? It is the same bucket he’s been eating out of forever. What is the problem?

Next feeding I brought down his bucket from his stall with his breakfast in it.

No problem, cleaned it down to the last little oat. It was the bucket, for whatever reason. It looked fine, smelled fine, but I scrubbed it anyway.

So life is back to normal again. It was just that simple, but the last thing I would have imagined. If the bucket was dirty, caked, or had an odor I could understand it, but it was fine. Must have had a strange smell in it that I couldn’t detect.

They make me crazy, but they give me stuff to think about and write about. Go figure.