Stalls are fully equipped with buckets, feed manger, salt blocks and so forth. You'll need your own halter, lead rope and grooming / horse washing supplies; and maybe a couple of topical medicines, like MTG and a wound cream. Also saddle cleaning supplies and any supplements you might want to feed. Although, the horses stay very healthy and well filled out with our hay, pastures, and twice daily feedings of salvado mixed with a little grano. We're only giving supplements to one of our horses, my performance champion mare who is recovering from a slight bout of laminitis, when she was pregnant with our Niña Chocolatina.
Be sure to bring a saddle! I'm sure you remember what Mexican saddles are like....
Fly spray is expensive down here and we brought down a few gallons of concentrate 5 years ago, but we haven't used it. There's a pretty constant breeze and between that, plus our manure management, there just aren't that many flies. We put fly masks on our horses during rainy season if the flies are really bad.
Don't worry about wormers, we have a schedule set up and we worm all the horses at the same time, to make sure there is no contamination in the pastures. Wormers are included in your board. We bring them down from the States.
BTW - the feed store on Zaragoza in Chapala has some basic tack and horse supplies, in addition to feed. We haven't had to go into Guad for horse supplies for years...
Each RDP boarder has a clearly defined place in the tack room to keep their stuff. I would ask that you not overflow your things on to our saddle racks, shelves, or hooks. The only exception is putting your helmet on the shelves at the back of the room - people have been doing that for a while and I'm ok with that, just be aware that we sometimes loan a helmet off those shelves to someone for a ride, and I won't know which is yours, or which is an old one that we had sitting around.
If you need more space for your tack, there are several options:
- Buy a saddle rack, storage container or shelves for yourself, and put them in front of your space in the tack room.You can extend straight out from your space, into the middle of the tack room if necessary.
- If you want more hooks, tell us how many you want and where you want them; we'll put in hooks for you at a cost of 50 pesos each (hook, screw, anchor and labor)
- The two corner locations have a little more space than the ones in the middle. If you want to trade your space for one of the corners, reach out to either me or Frank and ask for a swap.
Equine lawn mowers in the riding arena
We hate to waste the good green grass in the arena, so we sometimes turn horses out in there to eat it.
If there are horses in the arena when you want to use it, please just ask Jave or Rickie to move them out of it. If you don't see Jave around the stables and you need him for this, or any help with your horse, call him on his cell (331) 843-1145
If it's a weekday afternoon (Saturday after 2 pm, or Sunday after 11 am), Jave and Rickie aren't working then. Come down to our house, ring the door bell and we'll come move the horses out of the arena.
Better for one of us (Jave, Rickie, Frank or me) to do this as we know which pastures are currently in use, and who gets along with each other in pasture.
