Tag Archives: Skode’s Horse Treats

A Newsy Monday! Clean those Udder/Sheaths and another Spring Homemade Cookie Deal!

Have you ever cleaned the udder of your mare? Sometimes it is easy and some times it isn’t…

UDDER (and sheath) CLEANING

So during Spring, I always do the same things… I clean out my truck and trailer, I de-mold all of my tack, I clean out the feed/tack room and I clean the udders of my mares.

I just hate it when my mares’ beautiful Spring tails are ruined by them trying to ‘rub’ all the muddy/dried yik from between her udders by using a fenceboard or a tree.

(For those of you without mares, you may not know that the main cause of tail rubbing (if there are no parasites internally) is the ‘itchy spot’ that they cannot reach – the udder. Or, if you have a gelding tail rubber – especially an older guy – the culprit could be his itchy sheath.)

This is not my hand or my mare but I couldn't hold the camera while I was doing this so I borrowed a pic from the Internet.

THE UDDER CAPER

I swear, successful udder cleaning depends upon a few things. Good equipment and good mares. If she’s had a baby, it is easier. If she hasn’t, you may get a raised rear ‘warning’ leg.

I have one of each. I have Momma Tess who looooves to have her udders cleaned. She makes that special lip-curled yummy face when I scratch the itch. However, Gwen would just as soon rub her tail to a stump than let me ‘downunder’. So, I have to be very careful. I have to ask politely and go very slowly.

WHAT TO USE

So, previous to today, I used warm water, mild soap and a soft cloth. This was fine; or so I thought…

But this year, I had some Udder/Sheath cleaner, so I decided to try it. Now, I know what you are thinking. Why not use something you already have around the house. Why buy a specialty item? Yup. That’s what I thought, too.

I brought out my bucket of warm water, my soft cloth and my udder cleaner. (It is made by Equi-Spa who also makes THE BALM that I love!) Anyway, I was all prepared to not notice any difference between homemade cleaners and this Equi-Spa Sheath and Udder Cleaner. I dunked my cloth in the warm water and squeezed out the excess (hate it when water runs down my arm) and squirted on the cleaner. The fragrance was clean and flowery.

Anyway, I started with Tess because she is easier. And, a strange thing happened. It glided! I don’t know how to otherwise describe it, but the cloth glided so smoothly against her udders that I thought I was using oil. And, the yuk broke up so quickly and smoothly that it made me realize my usual homemade formula wasn’t so good… I swear it made the whole area shiny and squeaky-clean in a matter of moments! (The bottle says to leave it on for 10-15 mins for hardened debris – but I think that is more for sheaths. Dunno. It came right off for me.)

And, the best part, I didn’t have to worry about rinsing the cleaner off. What I mean to say is that you need to rinse to get rid of the yuk up there, but you don’t have to make sure all the cleaner is gone. With soap, you do. I used to get her legs wet, my pants wet, my arms soaked as I rinsed the beejeezus out of that area to make sure her skin wouldn’t be irritated. But this stuff is E-A-S-Y.

This is my hand holding my Udder (and sheath) Cleaner.

GOOD TO LEAVE ON

OMG! The bottle says to “Reapply as needed to protect and moisturize the area”. Wow.

So, I’m sold.

I ASKED WHY IT WORKED SO WELL…

I emailed the company and asked what ingredients made this cleaner work so well. Here is the reply:

The Udder cleaner is based in vegetable glycerin and organic Aloe vera gel. The glycerin is slick, hydrophilic and helps soften and loosen smegma…easy rinse and pulls the dissolving “dirt and debris” with it. It also contains a small amount of witch hazel along with the Aloe is very very soothing and helps leave a healthy “environment” . Horses like it because it feels soothing and yes a bit cooling to them from the Aloe. The cool smell is Tea Tree…there is no camphor or menthol to make it feel “icy” to the horse. It is very clinical smelling. There is also other essential oils that are beneficial for discouraging yeast and bacteria growth but are in very small amounts as to not cause any irritation…in fact just the opposite. I also use it to detangle tails, (it dries fluffy) great for cleaning out dogs ears, and for applying over scratches to soften the scabs and accelerates the healing process.

IF YOU WANT SOME, TOO (no affiliation)

If you would like some Sheath and Udder Cleaner, here is the link. It is $15 and goes a long way.

Remember, if you order from her, she will give you a free sample of THE BALM just by asking for it. I love THE BALM. I just used it to heal Shiva (Hubby’s dog) after he was attacked by a coyote. He had staples and open wounds… the poor guy was a mess. I kept rubbing THE BALM on him and he didn’t lick it and all of his wounds are healing beautifully.

This image from the website has a differnt bottle than mine. It looks nice. Click here to go to the website.

THE ROLEX KENTUCKY THREE-DAY EVENT!

OK, I’m not sure how I feel about the dangerous aspects of Three-Day Evening, but I would like to attend this affair just for the grandeur of it all. I’m sure the horses are gorgeous as well as the grounds. It is April 28 – May 1 at the Kentucky Horse Park.

I bring up the Rolex event for two reasons:

1) I noticed that they are having a Military Appreciation Day on April 29th where active service people and veterans and their families, get in FREE. For me, since Hubby is ex-Navy, I always find these offerings to be outstanding gestures and honorable do-gooding. Serving our country can be a very brutal job, and I admire those who appreciate others who serve.

2) I also wanted to tell you that I heard that Omega Alpha will have a booth there. Go see them and tell them all your horse needs and see what they say… I can recommend ANTI-FLAM, BIOTIC 8, RESPI-FREE and SINEW-X. These are the products I’ve tried and found to be truly remarkable. Really remarkable!

I’m sure they will have a ‘show special’ although I don’t know what it is… those are always good!

This stuff if too scary for me to watch but the horses look amazing!

LAST BUT NOT LEAST! A HUMONGOUS COOKIE SALE! (no affiliation)

Ok, well, the cookies are not humongous but the sale is. I heard from Skode’s (the ones who made the terrific Salt Squares that I reviewed here) that they are having a ‘Welcome Spring’ sale.

I’m just going to cut and paste all the options so you can see if any of these float yer boat. My horses have taste-tested all of these cookies (blog about it linked here) and they went CRAZY. All flavors. They practically mugged me after I started passing around the samples… And, even though these cookies are ‘treats’, they are homemade like your Mom would make, they have organic ingredients and an equine nutritionist created the recipes with Skode.

HERE GOES WITH THE COOKIE EXTRAVAGANZA!

Celebrate Spring with a Fantastic Herb, Fruit and Flower Special at Skode’s! (LINK).

1) $2 off a pound of the gourmet Enchanted Flower Cookies.
I will do the same for the Apple Pie and Banana

2) Four pounds of Fruit and/or Flower Cookie Box and save FIFTY PERCENT ON Priority Mail SHIPPING: Choose between Banana, Apple and Enchanted Flower Cookie — our very popular low sugar/starch whole food cookies. Choose as many as few as you like. Simple email Skode after placing your order to let her know which cookie choices your horse would like. Your shipping refund will be applied to your credit card or paypal account within 24 hours.

3) Six Pounds of our Fruit and/or Flower Cookie Box — save 75 PERCENT ON Priority Mail SHIPPING: Choose between Banana, Apple and Enchanted Flower Cookie — our very popular low sugar/starch whole food cookies. Choose as many as few as you like. Choose between Banana, Apple and Enchanted Flower Cookie — our very popular low sugar/starch whole food cookies. Choose as many as few as you like. Simple email Skode after placing your order to let her know which cookie choices your horse would like. Your shipping refund will be applied to your credit card or paypal account within 24 hours.

4) The Ultimate Spring Box — FREE Priority Mail SHIPPING!!
* Three pounds of fresh baked cookie –choose between Banana, Flower or Apple
* Two of our popular Meadow Herbal Terrain Hay Mixers (two 1/2 pound bags) that can be sprinkled on hay and/or mash meals and are made of 100% certified organic herbs that help to cleanse your horse’s body of any Winter stagnancy as well as to open her heart to the joy of Spring
* Two Herbal Terrain Meadow Mashes with Wild Berry/Apple fruits, a daily ration of human grade flax meal, crunchy sunflower seeds, ancient sea salts and guaranteed low sugar/starch, sun cured orchard and timothy hay pellets (simply add water and stir).
Don’t forget to email Skode after placing your order to let her know which cookie choices your horse would like. Your shipping refund will be applied to your credit card or paypal account within 24 hours.

Click the cookie pan image to go directly to the sale!

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April Drop in the Bucket Fund: THE HEARTBREAK KIDS – Nurse Mare Foals.? So sad. Born to be thrown away. But there are people who rescue these fine foals. To learn all about the Bucket Fund and to donate towards the care of The Heartbreak Kids, please click on the photo (photo credit, Trish Lowe)

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Copyright

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Your purchase with Riding Warehouse through this link helps the Bucket Fund!

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Is there a Healthy Equine Cookie out there? Really?… Yes!

Luckily, the equine cookie world is a bit different than the human cookie world. To most of us, if a human cookie is truly healthy, we won’t eat it. Or, we put it into another category like Vitamin bar or Healthy bar (and most of those aren’t really healthy anyway…). Basically, the true vitamin or nutrient enhanced human cookies, to me, kinda taste like dust. Patooey.

But, that isn’t the case with Equine “value added” cookies. Thank Goodness. Horses like what they are supposed to eat and they gobble up the goodness.

Now, I’m not saying that horses won’t eat ‘bad for them’ cookies. I know they do. But, what I am saying is that they won’t throw out ‘good for them’ cookies like we do.

ARE THERE GOOD EQUINE COOKIES OUT THERE, REALLY?

I have researched and found 2 equine cookie makers who are painstakingly and thoughtfully making cookies for the nutritional good of the horse. I’m sure there are more out there… these are just the two that I found. Kam Animal Services Cookies with a Clue and Skode’s Horse Treats. (I have no affiliation with either.)

SKODE’S COOKIES

Skode’s Horse Treats was created after the owner had a horrible bout of Laminitis in three of her horses several years ago. The experience was traumatic. Out of that trauma came a huge desire to learn about the foods that promote laminitis and IR as well as the foods the help a horse fight (or more specifically, don’t aggravate) laminitis and IR. Skode’s whole goal with her company was to help others steer clear of laminitis/IR through diet. Makes sense to me… we are what we eat.

Click to visit the website!

I received a sample bucket of low sugar and low starch Skode’s Cookies. They are guaranteed to be carefully balanced to a simple sugar and starch ratio of below 10 percent. In my humble opinion, cookies with low sugar and low starch are good for all horses, not just IR horses or horses prone to laminitis. Why push the envelope, right?

Click for horse cookies that look like people cookies!

MOM, IS THAT YOU?

I opened up the box and felt like I had just received a care package from home. As you can see by the photos, the cookie packets felt like Mom just baked them up and sent them over — which in fact, is exactly what happens at Skode’s. There is no factory other than her kitchen. No middle man finds her ingredients for her, she does it. And, every ingredient is the best she can find for the purpose of equine nutrition – no gimmicks and no shortcuts. I like that.

The delicious selection!

MY CARE PACKAGE

My care package included Apple Pie Cookies, Pumpkin Spice Cookies, Ginger Snaps, Enchanted Flower Cookies and Banana Cookies. Wow. Yummy! They smelled GREAT! I looked at the analysis on each label and then sought out my taste testers.

Nomar loooved them, too! He kept eyeing me... "Gonna drop that?..."

First though, I have to tell you that these cookies don’t look processed at all. They look like real cookies with special ingredients that are obvious. You can see the pumpkin seeds. You can see the Flowers. You can smell the apple and the banana and the fragrance is real, not enhanced or extracted. So, I took a bite. Yup. I took a bite of each one. And, I’m still here today… so that went well. But, I have to say that I didn’t enjoy them as much as my horses.

Gimme more, Gimme more! The ponies respond to the Apple Pie Cookies!

OMG! My horses went wild for these! It was like I was serving a 5-Star dinner! They practically came through the fences after the first bites! Even my dog, Nomar, was eating them. He followed me all around and stood there waiting for a cookie as I took his picture. He never stands for photos! To a horse or a dog, these cookies are tasty, let me tell you!

Finn tried to come through the fence to get more of the Enchanted Flower Blossom Cookies!

WHAT I LIKE ABOUT SKODE’S COOKIES

I like that there are Special Blends or formulas for different ailments, per se. She has the Ultra Low-Sugar cookies in quite a few varieties, the Digestion Blend and the Terrain Blends (blends with different types of vegetation according to type of terrain in that area), as well as Support Minerals.

Tess and her baby, Wrigley, were fighting over the Ginger Snaps! Tess was sure he got a better cookie than she did...

I like that you can purchase in bulk and get a discount. I like that the shipping costs are very reasonable. I really like that she offers the cookie mixes (unbaked) so that you can bake them at home (at a discount). I like that you can have them automatically sent to you and I like that you can call Skode and talk about your needs…

I also liked that they look like cookies! Itty Bitty bite-sized cookies!

GREAT HOLIDAY IDEAS FROM SKODE’S

Here is a wonderful assortment sampler that you could try for yourself or gift to other people. She also has Trail Mix samplers and just lots and lots of inventive and interesting treats for your horses. She even has special Mashes to warm your horses’ souls on these stormy nights!

SKODE’S OTHER ELIXERS

I haven’t tried the other mashes and multitude of other ‘good for your horse’ elixers on the Skode’s website. But, I want to try the Support Minerals for Norma. These minerals are specifically for IR horses, especially those who retain odd fat areas (she does) with a proclivity for founder (which seems to be happening). From Skode’s point of view, magnesium was the ‘wonder drug that saved her horse’s life’ so she refined the blend and put it in her line up.

Anyway, you can look on her website to peruse the various blends and formulas listed and see what tickles your fancy.

Here is a mash from Skode's which includes the sugar free apple sauce! Just add water!

THE SCIENCE BEHIND HER BLENDS

These cookies are all organic (which can mean nothing, truth to tell, but in herbs it is good because it means no sprays or chemicals).and that she has done extensive lay-person research into herbs and minerals for equine nutrition with the help of:

Catherine Bird, Dr. Juliet Getty, PHD, and Dr. Eleanor Kellon, DVM. You can read about them here.

KAM ANIMAL SERVICES

Gabrielle Sutton is an equine nutritionist that I admire. She has spent many years figuring out why and how nutrition works inside humans and horses. She also has a list of well known experts who advise her. If you click here, you can read about them.

I’ve written about Gabrielle before and you can read that here. She has an entire equine nutrition practice devoted to equine wellness. If you go to her website, you can see how robust it is around equine nutrition and disease. I call her the Equine Nutritional Wizard.

Today I would like to speak about her cookies.

COOKIES WITH A CLUE (that is what they are named….)

Gabrielle has come up with cookies that are good for certain issues. The names pretty much spell it out…

Booster Bites (gives your horse an ‘all around’ nutrient boost, without making your horse ‘hot’)

Belly Bites (This organic nutrient specific treat provides great gut support)

Chubbies (This organic nutrient specific treat is SAFE for horses with EMS and IR)

Owchees (This organic nutrient specific treat offers support when there is pain, discomfort and suffering from inflammation)

Stress-Busters (This organic nutrient specific treat works fast when needed).

Now, it is tough for me to believe that a cookie will help with all of these issues – but you need to think of it as a bite of nutrition instead of a treat. It makes sense how over time these cookies add missing elements to the equine system. I am very curious, however, to see if the Stress-Busters do really work quickly. The website says they have ‘homeopathic remedies”. I’d like something that works quickly! Interesting and I’d like to try them.

But first, my experiment.

MY EXPERIMENT WITH BELLY BITES

I was given a bucket full of individually wrapped bags of Belly Bites. Nice! But, I know they usually come in Bucket form so you don’t have to worry about a bunch of little bags. However, I like having them and will distribute them to my horsey friends. From my perspective, the cute little individual packets would be FABULOUS stocking stuffer or gifts or holiday party favors. Loved them! The tiny bags have a nice label and a green pipe cleaner twisty-tie. Cute. Of course, if I was feeding these daily as you are supposed to, I’d want just the big ol’ bucket of bites.

The form is like a pellet, not like a cookie. So, not too attractive to a human but the horses didn’t care. They did smelled great!…

The bucket with the individual packs inside

Dodger anticipating his second Belly Bite!

The horses loved them! Again, they wanted MORE! No problem getting them to eat the Belly Bites! But, having not had these cookies for a long time and not experimenting with a horse who has a gut issue, I cannot attest to their results. I know the idea is to use these daily so that the nutrients help the gut over time. Coming from Gabrielle, I trust that these products do what they say they will do… But again, I haven’t done that kind of testing.

Hey, are you coming back with those?!...

ANOTHER FUN COOKIE GROUPING FROM KAM – THE SURVIVAL KIT

If you want a nice assortment of all the cookies to have on hand, this is an economical deal when you break it down.

HERE’S A GREAT HOLIDAY COOKIE GIFT ASSORTMENT IDEA

I thought this Holiday Gift Bucket was a terrific idea. You get a bucket of 20 individually wrapped assorted cookies for $29.95 plus shipping. You can use these as little gifts! Or, gift yourself and try them all!

KAM’S COOKIE CONTEST

Well, I’m always up for a good contest! If you email your Cookie success stories to Kam, you might win the monthly prize! Yup, Cookies! Here is the link for the contest.

TIP OF THE WEEK AND GABRIELLE’S TELESEMINAR

A few other wonderful things on Kam’s website are the Tip of the Week (very insightful and helpful — I wish I could pilfer some of those ideas for my blog!…) and they also have A FREE WEBINAR about nutrition on Dec 6th. Here is the link with information. I signed up…

CLICK here for tip of the week!

HORSE AND MAN is a blog in growth… if you like this, please pass it around!

INSTANT KARMA DO GOODING! Our December Bucket Fund
HELP WITH PAYBACK!! Donation Gift Certificates are here! Yup, if you donate to help Tullie (the burned horse), Gump (the ugly horse), Dixie (the starved and sick horse) or the Wild Mustangs/Burros (the gathered horses), you can now get “A Donation has been made in Your Honor” certificates to give as gifts! You can give them to coworkers, family, friends or even in lost pets’ names… for this Holiday Season. Yay! INSTANT KARMA!

Click to go the the Certificate Page!