Playing Detective

 Several weeks ago, Crockett went off his feed.  While he does regularly not clean up all his hay, leaving some spread across the stall, it's not like him to leave most of his grain.  Especially for feeding after feeding after feeding.

A little worried that something might be wrong with the oldest occupant of my barn, I put on my Sherlock cap and started investigaing what might be the cause.  His vitals were all normal.  His expression good.  His manure looked normal both in appearance (texture, color, density) and in quantity after a night in his stall. (Outdoors, who could tell his manure in the pasture from his pastures mates'?)  He was moving around fine, and out in the pasture he was behaving as he normally does.

So let's consider the feed itself. Since it was the exact same grain that the Poetess and Jedi also get, and they were sucking down theirs like kids eating sugar coated cereal, I figured it wasn't an off-bag of grain.  

Likewise the hay was the same cutting and texture that Crockett had been eating all winter, plus it was the same bale that Poetess was also being fed at the time.  Still, I examined the left behind hay in his stall for signs of mold or bad plants.  Nope, not that.  And looking at how much hay was left where in his stall, the largest pile was in the vicinity of his grain feeder.

Hmm.  What was it about that corner of his stall that he was perhaps objecting to spending time in and therefore not staying in it long enough to eat all his breakfast and dinner?

Well, a couple of days before this stall time hunger strike started, I had had DH install a second set of cross ties in the aisle of the barn.  One side of which hangs right next to the corner of Crockett's stall.  The corner that his feed goes in.  

And then the wind blew, gusting in through the front door of the barn.  And that new cross tie was picked up in the wind, then dropped, and the metal end (that fastens to the horse's halter when it's cross tied) banged against the wall of Crockett's stall.  And I remembered that I'd heard that sound frequently in the last few days as the weather had been pretty windy but mostly too warm to merit shutting that front door all the way.

Could it be. . . ?  Crockett is sort of nervous about certain things.  Like chickens moving around right outside the front door where he can see them from his stall.  Could the banging of the cross tie against his stall near where his hay and grain are served be the cause of his going off his feed?

Well, I had an easy way to test that theory.  I clipped the (banging) end of the cross tie to the ring on the wall where the upper end was attached.  Now it still moved a little in the wind, but did not bang.  If I needed to use it for holding a horse to be groomed, I could (almost) as easily reach up and unclip it as I could reach down to retrieve that same end were it hanging full length.

That night, Crockett ate all his grain.  He pulled, and left, the usual amount of hay across his stall.  But that particular corner was empty of hay (eaten) the next morning.  As normal.  

He also ate normally at breakfast.  And dinner.  And every feeding since I clipped up that cross tie instead of letting the end hang down along with wall.

Mystery solved.