4,777 answers about horses & farm animals
Horses and farm animals run on routine — feeding schedules, hoof and health care, safe fencing and calm handling, in all weather. This page gathers the horse and farm animal library of KinsLe Answers in one place, organized by topic from daily care to travel and senior animals. Every answer is original, written by KinsLe, and tied to a real KinsLe feature.
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615 answers in Home & Lifestyle — page 21 of 26
A chunnel — a tunnel of welded mesh — lets hens patrol ground they cannot be trusted on loose, while the mesh keeps them off the crops and predators off them. Build it in joined sections of mesh you can peg down, lift and re-route, with a door at each end controlling where the flock enters and leaves. Run the tunnels…
Rotational grazing with electric tape works because the tape is flexible: you set out paddocks sized to your grass, then move the fence, not fixed lines. Start with a map that keeps every paddock within reach of water, with a lane if the trough cannot move, and run tape at heights matched to the animals inside —…
A horse's birthday or gotcha day works best when it is built from things he already loves: an unhurried grooming session, his favorite hack or hand-walk, and a treat that will not cost him a gut ache. Keep extras modest — carrot or apple pieces, or a small mash of his usual feed — and skip rich, sugary novelties that…
A handling pen one person can run is built around the fact that sheep follow sheep, so the layout does the pushing: a small forcing pen gathers the flock, and a funnel feeds them into a narrow, solid-sided race where each sheep simply follows the one ahead. Put the sorting gate at the end of the race, where you can…
A turnout pen that survives a wet winter is won or lost on drainage, and the surface is only the top layer of the fix. Pick the highest ground you have, strip the topsoil, and lay a membrane under a base of stone, so water falls through instead of pooling; finish with sand for a firm, free-draining top or bark for a…
Hens usually ignore a new dust bath for one of two reasons: it sits where they feel exposed, or the fill is wrong. Put the bath where the flock already scratches — a sunny spot near cover hens can dash to — inside a shallow frame of boards or a cut-down barrel they can step into easily. Fill it with loose, dry…
A workable chicken tractor is a bottomless, lightweight pen with a covered roosting end, sized so one person can shift it alone: build the frame from light timber or conduit, skin it in welded mesh rather than chicken wire, and fit wheels at one end with handles at the other. Plan on roughly ten square feet per hen…
An automatic door earns its keep only when your routine assumes it can fail, so build the routine around two checks rather than trust. At dusk, a lamp inside the coop pulls stragglers in before the door drops; once it closes, do a headcount through the pop door before you walk away. At dawn, confirm the door actually…
Barbed wire was made for cattle, and horses are the opposite kind of patient: thin-skinned, quick to panic, and liable to run into a fence they can barely see. When a horse does hit it, the barbs tear rather than cut, and a leg caught between strands is worked deeper with every struggle, which is why wire wounds are…
Roosting hens fill the coop with damp air all night from breath and droppings, and that air rises, so vents high in the coop let it escape, carrying moisture and ammonia away above the birds' heads. Openings at roost height would do the opposite, blowing cold air across the hens as a draught while damp air stays…
The real decision is the milking: a cow in milk must be milked twice a day, every day, and she gives milk only after calving, so you are signing up for breeding, a calf to rear, and a dry spell each year. At her peak she gives more milk than a family can drink, so plan the surplus, whether a calf sharing it, cheese…
A horse living out needs shelter from wind and rain in winter and from sun and flies in summer, and a thick hedge or belt of trees does much of that work before any building goes up. What matters most is a dry place to stand and lie down: horses rest properly only when they can get their legs and belly out of the wet,…
A smallholder's year turns on four peaks of work: spring brings births, fencing repairs and ground work before turnout; summer is dominated by haymaking, fly control and keeping water topped up in heat; autumn is preparation, ditches cleared, housing repaired, winter feed ordered in; and winter becomes a daily round…
The board that runs a family yard is a big whiteboard or set of laminated sheets in the feed room, with one row per horse covering feed, rugs and which field, and a daily grid of jobs with tick boxes beside them. The detail that makes it work is an initials column: every job is signed by whoever did it, so nothing is…
Start with the three that matter most: ragwort, a slow liver poison that stays toxic dried in hay; yew, which can kill with a single mouthful of clippings; and sycamore seeds and seedlings, linked to a serious muscle disease. Then clear heavy acorn falls, bracken, foxglove, hemlock and laurel, and never let garden…
An alpaca paddock stays pleasant from the house when you plan it from your window rather than from the gate: straight, tidy fencing, the shelter placed like a garden building, and the herd's communal dung pile sited out of your main sightline. Alpacas help you here, because they use one or two latrine spots instead of…
A yard used before dawn needs light in three layers: bright fixed light over the areas where you work, softer light where you handle horses, and a head torch for everything in between. Floodlights on a timer over the feed room door, stable fronts and muck heap mean the yard is lit before you step out, and lamps at…
A run-in shelter is a three-sided field shelter with one side left completely open, so your horses can wander in and out on their own whenever rain, wind or biting flies drive them inside. Allow ten feet by twelve for one horse, and add ten feet of width for each extra horse sharing it, because a long open front lets…
A hardware cloth skirt is an apron of strong galvanised wire mesh fitted around the base of a chicken coop or run to stop predators digging their way in. Instead of burying mesh straight down, you lay it outward along the ground from the coop wall, typically a foot or more wide, pinned or lightly buried, so a fox,…
Good retirement planning for a pet pig starts with the honest adult numbers: even a so-called miniature pig usually finishes well over a hundred pounds, lives comfortably into its teens, and needs ground to root in, a wallow in summer, and housing its full-grown body actually fits. A slaughter-free plan written early…
A Welsh Pony suits an active outdoor home with modest grazing and a job to do, because the breed combines native hardiness with sparkle, intelligence and a strong opinion about everything. Welsh Ponies live out happily with a field shelter through most weather, grow thick coats, and are easy keepers, so like other…
A Thoroughbred suits a home that offers more protection and more forage than most breeds ask for: a proper stall or substantial shelter for cold, wet weather, rugs when the temperature drops, and pasture plus hay generous enough to hold condition on a naturally lean frame. Thoroughbreds are thinner-skinned and…
A Tennessee Walking Horse suits a calm, spacious home with long daily turnout, because this is a breed built to travel smoothly for hours and to take life at an easy, ground-covering walk. Walkers are known for an exceptionally gentle, willing temperament, so they settle into herd turnout and family yards with little…
A Shetland Pony suits a small, secure, deliberately lean home: a modest paddock or dry lot, a little shelter, and fencing built for an escape artist barely a metre tall. Shetlands are among the hardiest equines alive, growing double coats that laugh at weather, and they need far less grass than kind owners…
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