It is that time of year again...ALGAE time.The sun, black water tubs, and heat all combine to make my water trough the perfect home for algae. Now I want to make it clear up front that my water trough doesn't look anything like these pictures. My trough could look like this though but the DOR scrubs it at least once a week, twice if the weather is real warm. She also flushes it out between scrubbings.
The DOR teases us that we are trying to grow our own feed because we leave chunks of grass, Freedom drops mush in the tub, and we sometimes put sticks in our trough. We are just making sure she has plenty to do.
I wait until she has tipped the tub over and has her head in the tub scrubbing at the gooey algae, then I come over and goose her in the rear. It makes her jump up, drop the brush, and spray herself. I laugh my spotted butt off while I am scooting away, because she is aiming the hose at me. I think she is getting smarter about it though because yesterday when I tried sneaking up on her she stood up before I could goose her. Not only that but she had her hands covered in slime, she grabbed my nose and gave me a smooch...leaving green goobery stuff all over my nose. I had to wipe the slime off on Salty's rear, now he has algae on his butt.
My friend Harley loved to eat algae when he was here. I don't know why he did that. He would stick his head in the water and scrape the sides of the tub with his teeth. The DOR says that algae can help boost the immune system and helps with ulcers. Maybe Harley knew what he was doing after all, he was a smart guy. I may have try some the next time the DOR is cleaning the tub because I am not sticking my head into the water to scrape it off the sides. Of course the DOR could just hand feed it to me.
The DOR is adding apple cider vinegar to our tubs. It helps cut down on algae build up and ingesting it helps discourage flying pests from bothering us.
Enjoy your day and don't forget to hug your DOR
11 comments:
We don't have an algae problem here yet but soon I'll be scrubbing tubs as you are now. I did learn about using goldfish from Julia of Our Simple Life blog but I've decided not to do that here because of our brutal winters. We don't have outdoor water tubs during the winter. Just heated buckets.
Thanks for sharing this information. I love the way you remind us of the best care to keep our horses healthy.
like Mountain Woman, I'm wondering if snails and/or some sort of algae-eating fish would help. marge
You have so much fun don't you? So do I when I read your posts. They're very entertaining.
We've got goldfish in our new barn. But there's still algae. But no mosquitos.
^I prefer drinking directly from the hose. I love chewing on the end of the hose during my baths, but my alpha mare won't let me get a real good bite in.^ -->Canyon
You make cleaning algae sound like fun.If you put gold fish in your water tubs wouldn't you some times drink them? If I increse my intake of apple cider vinger will it keep the flying things away from me?
~~Hugs and Smooches~~
Ps I love the tigar I have a big white one.
I wish I had a DOR to hug.
Algae seems like a menace, glad your DOR takes good care of it
We used to put goldfish in our water troughs. It didn't seem to help much with algae. We always have a lot of algae, due to our weather here. I'll have to try the apple cider vinegar though. Thanks for the tip!
I'll have to try the vinegar also. We scrub ours with bleach, but the water heats up so fast, we'll have algae in as little as a day. Ah, summer in Texas!
I add apple cider vinegar to our troughs. Don't know if it really helps, but it is good for their digestion! Just google "apple cider vinegar for horses".
We have this problem in our pond every summer. I'm constantly pulling it out. We use some sort of salt mixture from the pond store. I know you don't want chemicals in the tubs, but they might have answers. Like pondmarket.com.
I just cleaned our tanks two days ago, and discovered a "friend" when I tipped one over to move it to another pasture... I'm always careful, you never know what could be hiding under things out here on the Kansas plains!!
Thanks for the apple cider vinegar tip, I will research that more and give it a try! :)
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