Rockin' Horse Farm

10/17/2026

Come join us at Winding River for a fun Chili cook-off fundraiser for the farm! Stick around to visit and enjoy s'mores around the bonfire.

🔥

10/12/2026

Happy Birthday to our favorite Energiser Bunny/volunteer Liz!
Liz has been a devoted volunteer for many years and always gives her all. She is our organizer and decorator for the holidays. She helps maintain the trails and does lots of hard physical labor as well as your basic everyday chores as needed. We just don't know what we do without her! We all hope that you have a beautiful birthday and a fantastic year of celebrating you! 💕🧁🌺🐴

10/11/2026

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The Three F's of Equine Welfare - Friends, Forage & Freedom

Courtesy of Mad Barn

10/10/2026

The research is a little slow. We could have told you this 20 years ago! 🐴🐴🐴

Horse-Based Activities May Help Autistic Youth With Behavioral and Emotional Challenges.

10/09/2026

A little decoration goes a long way! 🌺

10/06/2026

Look at our beautiful new stall signs. A friend of our volunteer, Denise, made them for us. We love them!!!!

10/06/2026

Wishing our dear friend Cricket a spectacular 31st birthday! Cricket says her advice for getting old with grace is to keep exercising, eat well, and be sure to boss your friends around. 🥳🐴💕🌺

10/01/2026

🐴❤️🐴❤️🐴❤️
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/19RAbiF743/

For years, people have made decisions about when horses should wear blankets. But one group of Norwegian researchers wondered something surprisingly simple: what if we actually gave the horses a way to tell us what they wanted?

So they trained 23 horses to use a board with three different symbols. One meant “put my blanket on,” another meant “take it off,” and a third meant “leave things as they are.” Using reward-based training and small pieces of carrot for just 10–15 minutes a day, every horse eventually learned what the symbols meant. On average, they reached the free-choice stage around the 11th day, and all 23 successfully learned the task within 14 days.

Then came the fascinating part. The researchers tested the horses under different weather conditions. When conditions were cold, wet and windy, the horses were much more likely to choose the symbol asking for a blanket. When the weather was pleasant, they generally preferred to remain without one. Their choices were clearly related to the weather rather than being random.

A later study using the same communication method found similar patterns. Horses showed a stronger preference for blankets at very low temperatures and during moderate temperatures combined with rain or strong wind, while very few wanted a blanket when temperatures rose above about 10°C.

The researchers weren’t proving that horses could speak human language. They were demonstrating something much more interesting: with the right training, horses could learn a simple system that allowed them to communicate a preference about their own comfort.

For the first time, instead of humans simply deciding for them, the horses were given a way to answer.

And they had an answer. 🐴

09/22/2026

An early evening rain shower to cool things down just a little bit.