Color Coded

Olivia   November 12, 2015   15 Comments on Color Coded

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?

15 thoughts on “Color Coded

  1. emma

    a lot of izzy's stuff is purple – just bc her owner liked it and i also happened to have quite a bit of purple. but then i got a navy xc vest so i've been adding in more blue…. so, long story short, no, no color coding!

  2. Sarah Fowler

    Robin was purple back in the day, then she graduated into a non-rope halter and Copper earned the rope halter. ha. And his blanket is purple plaid, so I guess it is his now. I kinda have so much stuff that color is irrelevant at this point. Robin now wears Lil Man's old blue/black halter, Copper wears Robin's old rope halter, and Paige wears a turquoise one that I bought for Copper but it was too big for his dainty face. I have over ten halter/lead ropes in the tack room for general use though. So much stuff.

  3. Megan

    TC's colors are blue and silver for anything I buy him from now on, but he also has a lot of Rico's hand-me-downs, which are mostly green.

  4. Olivia

    I'm a total cheapskate. My blankets are all cheap and crappy. Shasta and Nilla's are both 4 years old as well. Some of my stuff is held together with duct tape and bailing twine.

  5. HolyBully

    We are color coded at our house too! Pandora (red), Vegas (turquoise), Bacon (purple) and Lucy (green). I like it and my husband and I know what goes on who or where!

  6. Carly

    I absolutely did that when I had more than one horse at a time. Now it's just all purple all the time which I guess does make it easier for the barn help!

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