Summer Favorites

I don't have a lot of favorites for Summer. Mainly because I hadn't been buying much and have pretty much reviewed all of the items that I would consider favorites already. Recently I've picked up a few more things so I should have a better fall favorites.

Oh, and lesson recap to follow. It was AMAZING but I wanted to get this post out since I've been siting on it for a little while.

Horze Slow Hay Feeder Net

When I was moving to my previous barn the BM sent an email to everyone moving in that she would only do hay nets if they were like this one because then, tough to tell from the picture, but you can just dump the hay in the top and don't have to take it down first. They're also nice and big and are slow feeders, however, they cost $99.

I headed over to my favorite website, Horze (no they don't pay me), and found this one for $23.

Yep, looks the same to me too

I wasn't sure how the quality would compare but having now had one for a full year and being able to see the Freedom Feeder hay nets at the barn I can say that they are very comparable. The biggest difference is that the top of the Horze one is nylon strapping and the top of the Freedom Feeder is the same nylon rope. Katai did chew a hole in one side of mine after about 9-10 months but I just turned it around so that the hole was against the wall of her stall and we were back in business! I'm not sure that it would have lasted another 9-10 months since it was wearing but still, 1 year out of a hay net is pretty damn good and seems to be similar to the name brand one. I did buy a new one to move to the new barn since the other was on it's last legs but I'm hoping to get at least a year out of this new one as well however, at $23 it's certainly less painful to replace them than to replace the name brand one.


SoloComb

I have no issue with pulling manes and spent a lot of time making it pleasant for Katai so that she wouldn't be bad about it. I would pull a little at a time while she was eating her grain or hay and make sure that, within my power, she didn't object to it. However, I started to realize that I was needing to pull about half or more of her hair to actually get it thin enough and that I'm just not ok with. It's too much time and way too much hair pulling for either of us to deal with it.

Instead, thanks to a conversation with L who's from Sweden originally, I discovered the concept of braiding on both sides of the neck.

Not sure that mine will ever look this good but
I am going to spend some time practicing this winter 

That meant that I didn't need to thin but just to trim so I got a Solocomb to test out using it to backcomb and trim instead of pulling to make her mane look pulled and natural and get a nice short length. I've gotten pretty good at it so I think it looks pretty natural now. I just start similarly to how I would if I were going to pull only instead of pulling the hair out I back comb it and trim. By doing that all down her mane it has a nice natural look. 

Not a great example of how her mane looks since it actually looks a bit chopped off here
but there's a good shot of the hay net in the background