A Battle of Light and Dark... And Horses
/By Michael Hipp
Ah, winter.
Have you ever been trying to hang your horse’s evening hay and have them step on your foot? Yeah, Whiskey’s done that to me. More than once. And he’s not in a hurry to get off it, either, especially when that means backing away from his hay bag. I still have a purple big toenail from the last time. I’m sure ya’ll can relate, to that and many other things – kicking over the water bucket on the way out of the stall, running into the door, not seeing the dog just outside the stall door and tipping over him. You know what I’m talking about. The worst thing is not having your horse look at you with a worried look thinking you are a complete idiot (Whiskey does that to me daily). No, it’s your neighbor seeing you stagger out of the barn, holding your foot and cursing the day God made horses. Yeah, that doesn’t help us promote the good things about horse ownership…or help you convince your neighbor, who already looks at you odd for owning a horse, that you are completely sane.
All these things do have a common denominator. They all begin when it starts to get dark earlier and earlier until, like my schedule, it is dark in the morning when you feed and water and it’s dark when you get home to feed and water again. Winter in the Pacific Northwest is a constant battle with two things— rain and darkness. I’m convinced that the author who first penned the words “It was a dark and stormy night” was writing from my barn.
Whenever I write an article or conduct a workshop most of the time is spent talking about mud, manure, and pasture issues. Those are great topics, don’t get me wrong, but there is one that doesn’t get a lot of discussion, and it is one that, especially this time of year, is extremely vital—lighting. Specifically, personal lighting.
Timely Tips
You can use your barn’s roof runoff to water your livestock or landscaping. Please call us to help you design a solution.
Covering your manure bin with a roof, in addition to tarps, is a great way to keep rain from soaking the manure and causing leakage.
Planting or keeping native plants on the banks of your stream helps prevent soil erosion and can soak up runoff from pastures.
Personal lighting provides us more than just light to do our chores by. As horse owners we all know that if anything is going to go really wrong, it’s going to go wrong in the dark days of winter! Having personal lighting, then, is an essential. It can help reveal things that you never could have noticed without it, such as the broken gutter or downspout that is allowing the roof runoff to flood a paddock rather than go into the underground outlet you designed it to go to. It can show you the broken wall on the manure bin and the associated stream of manure “tea” heading to that “seasonal” stream that flows into the river. It can uncover unexpected soil erosion in the pasture behind the barn, created by the surprisingly heavy snow runoff that is now sending soil downhill into the creek. So, there are many advantages to personal lighting, only one being to help us do chores.
There are many options on the market right now for personal lighting. Some folks carry a flashlight, some carry a camping lamp, some have something they clip onto their shirt or onto their baseball cap, and some, like myself, use a headlamp. Whichever style of personal lighting you choose I would like to offer some tips on selecting the best options and also some tips on using them in the best way.
First, when choosing personal lighting:
Go with LEDs. Most of the items on the market now are LEDs, but there are still a few with either halogen or regular bulbs. Regular bulbs will draw down power faster than LEDs, which is very important to battery life. Halogens draw down power even faster, and they burn really hot, which is not something you want in a barn with dry hay around.
Get rechargeable batteries. If you get a battery operated light then go with rechargeable batteries to power it. You will save money in the long run, and also save throwing away toxic materials that are in regular style batteries.
Skip the batteries altogether. A lot of personal lighting products come with a rechargeable battery that you can plug into the wall when not in use. Some even have a cord that plugs right into your computer. If you get one of those you can buy cord that also plugs into your cell phone, which can be handy should your battery start to lose charge and you have to get back to the house in the dark – just plug it into your phone and be safe!
Get lights with multiple colors. Some come with regular white lighting and some add red, green, or both. White lighting is what you will use the most but some folks, like myself, like to use red lighting late at night because red light does not take away a horse’s night vision. Green lights are handy in that they can enhance our night vision, but be very careful because they will quickly take away your horse’s night vision. This has to do with the dichromatic/trichromatic differences between human and horse vision. The best use I have found for green lights is helping me follow a blood trail. Shining a green light on fresh blood at night makes it very visible. If your horse gets injured on a moonless night and you can’t find him, use the green light to follow the blood.
If you get a headlamp, get one that has a base that will rotate downward. The headlamp I use has three adjustments, from straight ahead, 45 degrees down, and 90 degrees down. This comes in really handy to help prevent you shining a bright light right into your horse’s eyes when you are looking at him.
Now that you’ve chosen your lighting, here are a few tips on using it:
Keep extra personal lighting in the barn. It comes in very handy when you have friends over to help with chores, or who just want to see that new horse, or if you need help finding the new horse in the pasture in the dark.
If you don’t have electricity to your barn, keep spare batteries in your barn in an accessible place. If your light begins to dim you will have backup batteries ready.
Some horses are scared of personal lighting, especially headlamps. It just seems odd to them, and whatever looks odd they will flee from out of a sense of protection (they are prey animals, after all). So, before you begin using a headlamp or anything new, I suggest taking them into an arena or somewhere you can work with them before hand and get them comfortable with it first. Trust me, walking into their stall with a super bright headlamp on and saying “Hi!” is never a winning strategy!
Technology has come a long way with lighting, especially in the last 10 years. Take advantage of it and find yourself the tools you need to battle the darkness. The winner will not only be you, but your horse as well.
This project has been funded wholly or in part by the United States Environmental Protection Agency under assistance agreements PC-01J18101 to the WA State Dept. of Ecology and PC-01J18001 to the WA State Dept. of Health. The contents of this document do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the Environmental Protection Agency, nor does mention of trade names or commercial products constitute endorsement or recommendation for use.
