Awareness of the outside world. Replaced ancient mattress with 3″ dense foam. Comfy for sleep. The weird part is that it doesn’t bounce when you sit down on it and it doesn’t wiggle when you roll over. You get used to things that you don’t even realize.
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Solution 11% All Grain Feed
Tucker Milling
Previously, I talked about changes to horse feed. [Feeds and Breeds]
Another part of the change is the prevalence of pellets. Everything is pellets these days. Related to ease of manufacture? Better storage? For Warmbloods? For the other reasons and Warmbloods don’t care? No idea.
Anyway.
We decided to go old school. We found an in-state mill that makes a grain-based feed. It still has some pelletized bits but overall looks and smells the horse feed use to look & smell.
Rodney gets grain. He is doing well on it. Gradually putting on weight without having the calories bubble out his ears. He still gets pellets, so we still add water to his meals. Minions need to remember that grain does not absorb the way pellets do. One needs to drastically reduce the amount of water. Otherwise sir gets soup. Sir does not like soup.
Milton does NOT get grain. He had an immediate reaction. It was like being inside a laundry detergent commercial. The ears were earier. The kicks were kickier. Fortunately, he had an equally immediate reaction to being take off. Much calmer, almost hungover. ‘Wow, that was some trip.’
Two horses. Same breed. Wildly different responses.
SMH.
Onwards!
Katherine
Virtual Brush Box 
Humans and alcohol, same thing.
Joan
What she said. A friend said she’d be bouncing off the wall at the amount of caffeine I used to consume without any jitters.