Review - The Stable Box

OK, I have to admit that this box made me feel like a little girl at Christmas all over again.  The sheer excitement of not knowing what is actually coming in the box but knowing it's horsey products already makes you love it!

So for those who have no idea what I'm talking about,  The Stable Box is a subscription box sent out monthly with at least 6 horse related products and also the latest Horse & Rider magazine.  This is a monthly subscription which can be cancelled at anytime.  It's generally £39.99 a month but you can prepay 3 or 6 months and get a little bit of a saving.

So on opening my box this month I found the theme is 'Summer Ready' which is perfect knowing Silk is due a good tidy up so there had to be something in the box to help me with that!

In the box there's 8 items altogether including the Horse & Rider Magazine, so already I can see I have my moneys worth!  The great thing about the box is I find I get to try things I wouldn't necessarily pick up at a tack shop, usually I have Evie with me when I go to get whatever I need for Silk,  so I just go to the same old stuff I know and love with little time to browse at anything.

So after pulling out my magazine,  the first item I came across was a Vanquish Unicorn Groomer!  I've spotted these around but I quite honestly wasn't sure about getting one as they seem a bit pricey and I had my trusty shedding blade.  These retail at £20 but when I read the instructions carefully I looked forward to trying it as it was also a sweat scraper and I don't know about you but I find my sweat scrapper the most annoying piece of grooming equipment in my box,  it seems to just hook onto things you want and is super annoying!  I also rarely use it so I pull it out the box then have to go hunting for it when I do actually need it.  So I will happily pull my original sweat scraper and shedding blade out my box and replace it with this funky green small two in one.

Next I pulled out a Lincoln rubber sponge curry comb, these are super handy at this time of year when bathing and trying to get rid of all that loose coat at the same time.  Just a quick flick of the wrist and you have the action of one or another.  This one retails at £2.50.

NAF OFF Citronella wrist band which retails at £4.99 was next out of the box.  I've had one of these before when they first came out but I can't remember if it worked so I will give it ago when out hacking this weekend.  It's meant to be lovely and warm so the flies will be out in full force!

I couldn't for the life of me work out what the next item was for,  it was a Lincoln Cactus cloth.  This retails at £5.50 and I have to say I would likely have just looked past this at a shop but I think if it does what it says on the packet this will be a super item to have in my grooming box this summer!  Stating it's flexible natural fibre is tough yet softer than a brush and effective on both stable or grass stains plus stubborn sweat marks.  Looking forward to giving this a try on miss sensitive.

A well needed product was next,  the Lincoln Citronella spray with Aloe Vera.  With well known fly repelling properties also with added Aloe Vera to help condition and soothe the skin you just can't go wrong with this product.   There was also a HY fly fringe which is another super way to help stop the pesky flies irrigating our poor horses,  these seem to have gone out of fashion since the full mask took over but I find the full masks just get dumped in the field somewhere so I am looking forward to seeing if this is less annoying to Silk but will help still stop the flies irritating her so much over the summer months.  The citronella spray retails at £8.50 and the fly fringe at £5.95

Last in the box was Show Proof Glossifier with citronella and coconut.  Again yet another product with summer totally in mind.  The glossifier is to add a finishing sheen to your horse's coat,  with a quiet misting spray that has coconut oil in to condition and citronella to repel the flies!  This retails at £14.99,  which I honestly wouldn't pay just looking at this on the shelf so it will be interesting to see the results and see if it turns out to be one I pick up in the future!

A massive RRP price altogether of £66.63 for only £39.99 with the added excitement and surprise I really feel you can't go wrong with this subscription box.  Yes I do think there will be times you get stuff you already have or will be no use to you but it's not the end of the world and you can always pop them on Ebay 😁.

To order your own The Stable Box go to thestablebox.com/

Review - Honeychop Natural Choice Alfalfa

I jumped at the chance to try out a bag of Honeychop to review. I was dying to try out the Alfalfa version they have, having tried 'Lite & Healthy' with success but finding I couldn't get her to eat any straw based feed alone before exercise I needed to try something else. I had recently made the change in her feed to Alfalfa without any molasses and I was having success most days in getting her to eat this however there was some days where she would just pick the nuts out of her feed and leave the rest. I really needed to find a feed she would happily eat a full scoop of, I was finding it super annoying with not only money lost when she didn't like something but also finding it so frustrating as the lack of grass in the field meant she was dropping weight as it was and really needed to be eating her full feed.

Silk checking out her new feed

Honeychop Natural Choice Alfalfa, free from molasses, is a non-heating low sugar, slow release fibre feed blend with alfalfa, timothy grass and oat straw. Coated with linseed and rapeseed oil Natural Choice Alfalfa is perfect for fuelling work and promoting condition which is just what I need for Silky stuff. Then came an extra bonus that not only will she eat a full scoop of it, she will also eat it alone!!! (😅) 

So my mind is now at ease when she has her scoop before exercise to help prevent ulcers but then she will also happily eat another scoop with her full feed & supplements after work.

The only negative thing I have found for Honeychop for myself, not in the feed itself but my feed store supplier doesn't let them know when it's not in stock so I'd ordered a bag ready for running out, went to collect it and it hadn't come in. So I had to go back to my molasses free alfalfa temporarily until they got stock back in, this sent me straight back into seeing half buckets of feed eaten and had me worried to the point that I ended up buying her some small bales of haylege to get the fibre into her. So now I order well in advance to prevent this happening.

Overall - I absolutely LOVE this feed. Hands down it's then best I've found since having Silk and trust me - we've been through an awful lot of different feeds to find the right one for this picky, sensitive and hard to keep girl 🤣 - just as well I love her!

Find out more about Honeychop HERE

Review - Horseware Horse Pal Sensor

The lovely people over at Horseware sent me their new Horse Pal Sensor to try out.  I had been looking at a similar item so I was over the moon to try this!  Coming packed in a lovely little box but with very little instructions I spent a few minutes watching a video and I was ready to go and attach it to Silks rug.

The sensor syncs with the app when near the sensor,  sometimes it was hard to connect up at my yard but I did always managed to get the results transferred.  You can connect other people to the sensor so if your horse is on full livery they can sync up and you can read the results from home.

So the concept is to make you more aware of just how warm/cold your horse is under their rugs,  monitoring temperature and humidity.  Let's face it, so many of us horse owners over rug however myself I thought I was a bit tight with rugs but this little sensor proved me wrong!  After about a week of using the app I eventually managed to get within the right temperatures for Silk to be classed as comfortable.  I had been following the apps guide which advised rug weights as per the weather and it was only when I went lower than this that I found the right weight for her.

But seriously who would have known to put a Thoroughbred in an 100g rug at minus 2.5degrees!   I'd only been putting her 100g liner under her 100g rug which to me is just a medium weight and that's what was suggested.   Just comes to show that each horse is different!

A screenshot of the readings from the app

The sensor I believe is still not available from the shops but will be around £60 which I think is an affordable amount for such a great item.  I only found one major negative for the sensor and that is that mine is currently in a waterlogged field somewhere,  the fasten to the rug just isn't strong enough.  I used the advised way to fasten it to the rug which was through the rugs lining with the ring clip but Silk managed to loose it twice!  Luckily the first time was in her stable so I managed to find it again but the second time being in the field it's long gone.  :(

Horseware Website

Review - SKUP Feed Scoop

So I was sent a SKUP feed scoop to review,  I must admit I wasn't that excited as there's lots more exciting things to review but this feed scoop has surprised me massively!  You're probably wondering how, since it's just a simple day to day item but let me assume you even the simplest of things can be exciting!

The SKUP feed scoop

If you don't read my blog in general you might not know that most of my days at the yard I have a little person attached to me,  Evelyn is my 6 month old daughter and I get my jobs done with her on my back in a carrier.  So when it comes to making feeds I have the be super quick leaning over to scoop the feed out the bins since this pushes her forward too.  The main feed I find most difficult to scoop up is Silk's chaff,  I'm guessing this is because chaff in general is very light so it doesn't have the movement from the weight mixes or nuts have.  

Evelyn & I about to make Silk's feeds up

Evelyn couldn't take her eyes off the lovely bright orange scoop,  which also come in red, bright green & teal.  To test the new scoop out properly I compared it with my normal basic round scoop and used it to make Silk's evening feed,  with the normal scoop it takes me a bit of effort to get the scoop full.  I needed to give it a real deep dig into the chaff, shake it a bit to get some chaff in and then I found that I push the scoop to the side of the bin to get the chaff into the scoop properly.  Having the weight of Evelyn on my back I noticed how long I bend over to scoop the feed up and although I just get on with this everyday, a simple task I guess isn't always 'simple' when there's a little person hanging over your shoulder! 

Normal round scoop on the left and the SKUP scoop on the right

For Silk's morning feed I tested out the SKUP,  using the teeth at the front it easily pulls the chaff where you need it and with one swift action I scooped up a full scoop of chaff.  I was quite simply amazed by how easy it made it with the added bonus of not being bent over anywhere near as long as I had with the normal round scoop.  

I then used the super handy measurements on the side to add the water needed to make up Silk's Speedi Beet,  which was great because I managed to make it exactly how I prefer to feed it (sloppy but not too sloppy) unlike when I guess the water amount pouring it into the bucket as I quite often find I make it too watery or I have to add more water later on which I then have to wait another ten minutes for it to soak just to ensure every bit is soaked correctly.  

I highly recommend the SKUP to every horse owner it's much more than a 'simple' feed scoop.  It's super light, hard wearing and with an added bonus of coming in some lovely bright colours.   You can buy a SKUP from various retailers like Parralex 

Review - The Carrot Ball

What can I say?  Silk defiantly approves!

As soon as I saw this item due to come on the market I was interested, Silk doesn't like many treats but she does like carrots (once I taught her she could eat them by painstakingly cutting them into tiny pieces and putting them in her feed at first) so I figured this would defiantly keep her entertained.  I sorted her stable excitedly hanging her carrot ball up and popped some carrots in, I put it on a rope as she already has a ball toy for the floor, so I figured I'd keep this different (and clean).

On the first day, she didn't seem that interested but she did try and take a couple of nibbles as she investigated it.  I realised that she was being her usual silly self as the other mares where being brought in going back and forth to the door.  But the next morning she'd certainly had a good go at getting the carrots out of the ball.

After that, it's been the first thing she goes to as she enters her stable.   She sometimes manages to pull the whole carrot out, sometimes there are bits of carrot still in the ball but she plays with it for ages trying to get her tasty treats.  I'm going to try some parsnips to see if she will like those too.

I give this carrot ball an extra plus because as a hanging toy it's the only one I've actually left up!  I can't count how many times with other hanging toys/treat holders I've pulled them down within the first day or two because I keep whacking my head on it when mucking out.  Well, worry not (even when Evie is on my back in her carrier I don't worry about hitting it as it's nice and soft.  Not that I advise you use it as a toy for yourself to headbutt but it's definitely a bonus!

The Carrot Ball can be bought from https://www.itshorsome.com/carrot-ball for £24.99.

Review - Equi-N-ice Ice Socks

I was very excited when I found this product, since Silk had a tendon injury before I got her I'm constantly using my Ice Vibe boots on her or cold hosing to keep her legs cool and try prevent any re-injuring happening.  However when booted for hacks or jumping I find her legs are always warm, even though she has excellent breathable boots.  I read that these socks could be cut to size and used under air flow enabled tendon boots when rode to enable evaporative cooling so I had to give them a try.

The ice sock packaging advised that they would provide 1-2 hours of cooling,  they can be used over awkward areas such as knees and hocks also.  The stretchy fabric stretches over the hoof and then you just pull the ice sock into place and the added bonus being that you don't need a fridge or freezer!   The socks can be reused, being re-charged on the leg by lightly spraying the area with the coolant spray or once they're washed and dried they are popped back into their packet, dampened with the spray and resealed for 30 seconds and they're all good to go again!

Now to me this all sounded a little to good to be true, especially having used Ice Vibe boots for a few month and even in the winter I struggle to keep the ice wraps cold so they don't generally get used after exercise which is when I feel they're needed more but instead we have to painstakingly stand in the freezing cold at the hose pipe cold hosing.

So my first attempt to use the Ice socks I chopped one of them in half and popped them up over Silks hooves on to her leg.  I then popped her air flow tendon boots on and set off for a short hack.

When I got back from my hack, I'd been around 20 minutes and I'd had a few minutes trot -  Silk also added a few minutes jogging in.   The first thing I did was take off her boots and felt her legs.  They were boiling! So I popped some more spray on the socks down her tendon and carried on untacking.  Her legs had another 30 minutes with the socks on and there was no improvement with the heat in her legs so I pulled them off and took Silk to the hose to cold hose her legs instead.  I didn't want to jump to conclusions that they don't work at all because I haven't put boots on her for so long and pretty sure they're always boiling which is why I stopped putting boots on her.  

The next day when she came in I was worried that she would end up with really a really hot tendon overnight again since it's now getting warmer so I pulled out the other sock and popped it on her leg.  I put the full length sock on hoping there would be more obvious results with it covering more of an area but after 45 minutes I still didn't feel much improvement.

Trying the ice socks another way

I felt I had to be missing something so I messaged Equi-N-Ice on Facebook to ask if I was doing anything wrong.  Turns out although I wasn't doing anything wrong I was feeling for the wrong thing!?  Having always used Ice boots/wraps or cool gel these type of products push the cold into the leg,  where as the ice socks are designed to draw the heat out of the leg.  Which is pretty great and must be much better for the leg/tendon in general. 

So with my new knowledge I popped the ice socks on Silk after I rode, pulling them off before leaving 45 minutes later.  The next morning Silk's legs were cold to the touch, it was a really warm morning which generally would mean her legs would be quite warm.  I felt like doing a little dance around her stable.  Since this day I have always put her socks on after riding when her legs are warm, leaving them on as long as I can (usually up to an hour) and I've found the morning after her legs have been lovely and cool.  I have also tested that it is not just a fluke that her legs are cool, not putting her socks on when I've not rode but her legs have been warm from a day in the sunny field,  which resulted in warm legs the next day. 

So once I got to know the information behind the product properly I found it an excellent product, my only negative is that the socks are so annoying to put on (I'm going to invest in some of their bandages) and one tore after catching on a little bit of chipped flare on her hoof.  They always look dirty as they're white in colour and due to being pulled over the hoof,  damp with the solution on they naturally pick up every little piece of dirt possible.  I also found that the socks were a little too baggy on Silks stick thin Thoroughbred legs so they would slip down the leg very easy  (again though the bandage version will help this and it didn't happen when under the boot being ridden).  I also find that being under her black tendon boots there a little bit messy looking - so would be great if they came in a darker colour. 

I highly recommend this product to anyone wanting to give their horse's that little extra care, especially those that compete fast pace or jump a lot or like me are dealing with a horse with a previous injury.  The bandage version I believe would be an excellent post cross country treatment.  

You can browse all of Equi-N-Ice's products on their website HERE

Review - Haygrazer Bag

I've been dying to get my hands on one of these bags for ages.  I was over the moon when Haygrazer kindly sent me one to review for you lovely lot!

This was sent to me with perfect timing,  I was really struggling to find a happy medium with Silk's hay!  She's so picky and I had been giving her extra so that she always had some left,  but then there was an awful lot going to waste as she wouldn't touch anything that had been left the next day.  I was also finding when I had put a massive pile in for her the mice were always going into the bottom and I was scare when I was removing what was left each day that I was going to end up stabbing one with the pitch fork.

So I then started to give her less,  but working out the right amount is just impossible.  I hated when I came up to find I'd not quite given her enough to last her and there's nothing left.  Never knowing exactly how long she'd been without either.

Her big unruly pile of hay, probably with added mice underneath it!

When I received my Haygrazer bag which are designed with many uses in mind with one being to slow down the eating I couldn't wait to get it into Silk's stable and see if it could help with my dilemma!

When it came I found it very different from any other hay feeder I've had before,  I'm not a fan of haynets so I'll only use one if I have to but the Haygrazer having larger holes and being able to be hung a little lower than a net so it should cause any strains that are known to be caused from haynets.  The material seemed hard wearing and although it's not something I needed to try myself I could see why it would be a great option for those soaking hay, not only due to the mesh bottom which allows the water and dust to fall through but also due to not getting soaked in the process of carrying it or hanging it.

When filling the bag I first thought it seemed a lot bigger than expected but I found I over filled it rather easily and was unable to get the lid fastened so had to empty some out.  I feel that I wouldn't be able to just give her one bag for her time in if she didn't have her hay pile.  But I also wouldn't just leave her with one haynet if I used haynets,  I however didn't have a haynet to compare the size of each.

Much neater

So I set Silk's stable up with a smaller pile of hay and then the haygrazer bag,  I used some twine to hook on the clips, although I was unsure about using clips as I've heard so many horror stories of horses getting caught on them so ended up taking them off and just using the twine to the d-ring the clips had been on with a quick release knot.  I couldn't wait to see what she would make of it!

Her first sniff

She investigated the bag pretty quickly and had a nibble out of it,  which resulted in an expected spook when it first moved.  She then went straight back to it and carried on eating from it which I didn't expect as I though she would eat the easier pile off the floor first. 

Later in the week I decided to see if she would eat from it when it would be a little harder,  so I hung it away from the wall and I actually found she still ate from this first.  It didn't seem to faze her at all when it would swing around after she'd managed to take a bite.  Even with the movement I don't feel it really slowed her down at all but it certainly made it more interesting for her to eat.

I used the bag for over a month,  I've found it hard wearing, although I found tying it up a pain.  The strap is great for carrying it but it's not ideal for hanging it,  nor are the clips.  I think for myself personally to use in a stable with the horse I wouldn't buy this product but I defiantly think the Haygrazer bag is a great idea for show days, travelling to the show it will keep the trailer more tidy and pulling out for the horse to outside of the trailer will keep you tidier than if it was a haynet.

Check out the Haygrazer website to see their bags HERE