Graining the ranch horses.

It's funny, the little things you notice about a horses personality when you're graining.

Each of our horses eats so differently.

Keiki's the slowest eater. She seems to get easily sidetracked. She stops eating to notice the dogs playing in the field, or a fly zipping around, before lazily taking another small bite.
We use large plastic buckets for graining. One time a bucket had a small crack in the bottom. We knew it was there, but ignored it because it wasn't a large enough crack for any of the grain to actually fall out. One day Keiki decided to put her foot inside her bucket which led to her putting her entire foot through the bottom of the bucket. She's such a good horse. She didn't panic, like a lot of other horses would have done when in such a predicament. She calmly let us remove the bucket, which was no small feat. It took three of us tugging on it to get it off her her leg. Now we use buckets that don't crack.

Pharaoh insists on kicking over his bucket so he can eat his grain from the ground. No matter how we configure his bucket, he'll keep trying to knock it over until at least some of the grain is spilled.

Maverick's the fastest eater. We don't think he actually tastes the grain. He gulps it down as fast as possible with every intention of not only finishing his own grain, but finishing everyone elses grain as well. We try to stagger it so that Maverick can't eat anyone elses, but sometimes he's just too fast.

Tigger's a nervous eater. He knows that at any given time Maverick is going to finish his grain and come charging over for more. He kind-of eats while looking over his shoulder all the time.

Lady's in Wyoming for the winter, but she's always the champion eater. She doesn't really eat faster than Maverick, but she loves eating the most, in general, and not just grain.