Welcome to the first entry in what I hope will be a new weekly series, Horse Talk With Kit, where I share bits of my life here on the farm that inspire my writings as well as more general horse care information. My goal is to be more transparent (and dare I say it more “human”) with you, as well as share what brings me joy every week. Thanks for being here.
During our dry fall last year, I noticed a frog in the horse trough. After making sure it had a way to get out, I pretty much let it be. After all, it was probably happily keeping its skin moist and taking care of some insects, and I much prefer to let nature take its place. So I was surprised, but not really, when a few weeks later I realized there were tiny tadpoles in the trough.
I admit, I worried far more about those tadpoles than most people would. We’ve had an unseasonably for us cold winter, and there were a couple of weeks where it remained below freezing for several days at a time. I don’t have a heater in my trough, but rather chop ice as it forms (plus I learned a neat trick that if you chop only small portion of the trough, the ice on the rest insulates the water), and I worried the little tadpoles would freeze to death. I’m not really that well versed on tadpole care, and figured my 100 gallon horse trough was smaller than your average pond. (Then again we’ve had tadpoles in puddles before.)
However, the tadpoles made it through and thrived.
Then, last Friday, our county experienced multiple tornado warnings, including an EF-3 tornado that did considerable damage about ten miles from us. While our property was spared, we did lose power for almost two days. Living in the country our well is powered by electricity. No power means no water. And while we had enough water for ourselves and the cats, and have a stockpile of water for livestock and things like flushing toilets and doing dishes, I knew if the power stayed out longer than a couple of days, the horses would need to have their troughs refilled. And, I had concerns that the trough where the tadpoles were (which is the horses’ favorite trough) would run dry.
Again, I probably worried more than the average person about the tadpoles.
But luckily our power came back on and the trough didn’t run dry and so the tadpoles are still thriving. I’ll keep you posted as to their development and hopefully will be able to share that they emerged as healthy, happy frogs sometime soon.
