D&L have doctor appointments in the big town about 50 miles away, which means their dogs and horses are at the mercy of my pitiful ministrations…
Feeding the horses always includes going around cleaning up horse apples, and this time of year you also need to remember to break and skim off ice. D&L have a special tool for that…
…which was a gift from me, sometime in 2015. I bought a heavy-duty shitfork for one particular job of moving a multi-ton manure pile in 2014, had no further use for it and intended to sell it to D&L. But then I cracked the handle and ended up giving it to them after a field expedient repair that apparently worked really really well…
They think the same thing of the fork that I did, which is that it’s too heavy for regular shit shoveling: The lighter plastic ones may not last forever but they’re easier to use. I bought it because I had a huge pile of composted manure to move, and since I gave it to D&L they’ve relegated it to skimming ice off watering troughs. It works really well for that and though it doesn’t put my handle repair to any strong test, the repair has at least lasted a really long time. 🙂
L. Neil Smith repaired a starship mast that way in Henry Martyn (I think; it might’ve been Bretta Martyn). I’ve done it myself, and it’s usually pretty effective.
Whipped rope with some epoxy slather on is a good repair.
Looks like the one we had in the barn I used displaced a woodchuck once. Worked good as with the heft you could toss it like a spear pretty good.
This left me wondering how horses drank in the wintertime before they trained humans to serve their needs.
having raised horses for some 35 years 25 of those in the great white north of B.C. i can tell you that with a natural water source one front hoof smacked down on ice makes a hole just the right size for a nose to fit in. if the ice is to thick to break they eat snow but that is not at all the best way to get moisture.