Tack & Farm
Our Tack & Farm section features an Apparel section to find both practical and fashionable riding attire. If you ride English & Western or Race, many sources are available in the Tack section.
Building a barn? Need an architect for your equine dream home? Find one in Barns & Stalls.
Have a hungry horse? Of course you do! Find a place to buy your feed and tuck your horse in at night in the Bedding & Feed section. Looking for a place to keep your horse? You can find it in the Horse Boarding section. Keep your horse happy and beautiful with resources in our Grooming section.
Traveling? Find a Shipping company or Horse Sitting service if your horse is staying home!
Running and maintaining a farm or stable is a continuous effort, and to help find products or tools you need, please see our Equipment, Fencing and Management Tools sections.
Seeking Services? Find financial and tax expertise in our Accounting section. Companies who will help protect your investment are found in the Insurance section. For those who want legal advice about purchasing, liability, and other issues, please look at the Equine Law section to find an expert. Build and promote your business with teams from Marketing / Videography / Web Design.
Do we need to add more? Please use the useful feedback link and let us know!
Amanda Grev, Craig Sheaffer, and Krishona Martinson
The authors are a graduate research assistant, agronomy professor, and extension equine specialist, respectively, at the University of Minnesota.
With one of the greatest expenditures of horse ownership being feed costs, horse owners often look for ways to reduce these costs. Pastures can provide a lower cost source of forage for horses compared to hay or other purchased feeds, and has the capability to meet or exceed the dietary requirements for many categories of horses. Therefore, maximizing pasture productivity can be a valuable tool for reducing feed costs.
In the Upper Midwest, cool-season perennial grasses are the foundation of productive horse pastures. However, there may be opportunities to utilize alternative forages such as annual cool-season grasses to extend the grazing season earlier in the spring or later in the fall. In addition to extending the grazing season, annuals can be used to provide forage in emergency grazing situations when perennial forages are lost following winterkill, floods, or drought.
Some folks might think that Alan Bell picked the wrong profession. Instead of making custom cowboy boots, which Bell has done for 40-plus years out of a one-time barbershop in Abilene, Texas, he could’ve been a stand-up comedian or a TV talk-show host. Imagine Johnny Carson (if you remember Johnny Carson) with a deep Texas drawl.
Here’s Bell:
On his hometown of Blackwell, Texas – “It’s so small that the city limits sign is on one board.”
On the pair of boots he’s wearing – “I’m wearin’ an ol’ worn-out pair of boots that I should’ve thrown in the trash. I need boots worse than any customer that I know.”
On his shop – “It looks like we’re a family of vagabonds.”
by Juliet M. Getty, Ph.D.
Forage is the foundation of every equine’s diet and needs to flow steadily through the digestive tract. Gaps without forage can lead to ulcers, colic, behavioral issues, stall vices, gorging, choke, cribbing, and even laminitis. Truly, the only way to avoid these problems is to allow your horse steady access to forage, free-choice, all day and all night.
Responding to this inherent need is the slow-feeder industry. The purpose of this article is to provide a clear understanding of slow-feeders and how they can be used safely and effectively. There are many styles and types from which to choose. . The best approach is to contact several manufacturers to see which product best meets your horses’ needs.
The purpose of a slow-feeding system is to simulate grazing. Horses in a natural setting eat small amounts of forage as they wander in search of the next tasty morsel. They eat virtually all day and night, taking time to socialize and rest every so often for a few minutes at a time. When they know that they always have access to forage, they become calm and relaxed, rest more often, and walk away from their hay, knowing that it will still be there when they return. In other words, they “self-regulate” and eat only what they need to maintain a healthy body condition.
by Gene Fowler
Texas saddlemaker and leather artist Don Gonzales is living proof of the benefits of a family that encourages creative expression and exploration. “I grew up in the Aransas Pass and Refugio area,” he says, “down along the coast, and we had a very creative household. My mom is a nurse who creates artwork out of gourds, and my dad, who passed away in 2013, was always tinkering….like me, I guess,” he adds with a laugh.
Young Don drew things, recreating the comic books he compulsively read like most kids. And that hand-eye skill, over time, became innate. It proves invaluable today in the hand-tooling he embeds on saddles, belts, book covers, and rope bags and cans. The instructional videos he creates for his 25,000+ YouTube subscribers reveal a man who teaches with contagious enthusiasm.
Read more: Don Gonzales: Texas Saddlemaker, Leathercraft Teacher
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