Our horses all have a color. Dijon is purple, Nilla blue, and Shasta green. Their halters, saddle pads, lead ropes, feed bucket, and blankets are all their assigned color. This started out simply as the color that we each liked on them and has sort of morphed into an assigned color.
While the color coding serves an aesthetic purpose, it also has a practical purpose. It makes it easy to identify which item belongs to which horse. When I'm making up their feed and adding supplements, I know which bucket to add each supplement to without having to turn them around and bend down to look at the Sharpied name.
Our barn owner recently started offering blanketing services. In the past we had to do them ourselves, which was a PITA when it was warm during the day and the blankets needed to come off in the morning and go back on at night. Now we don't have to do them ourselves, I went out to the barn to show the BO which blanket belong to each horse and it was really easy as they're color coded. Nilla and Shasta have a blanket and a sheet each and Dijon just has a blanket (I need to get a sheet for him). With the colors, the BO can easily pull the correct blanket from the bin as needed.
Do you assign colors to each of your horses? Is it just for fun or does it serve any practical purpose?Labels: Dijon, Nilla, Shasta
