Horse Safety: Oh No, Your Bare Bulbs are Showing!

How embarrassing! Your bare light bulbs are showing!

Yes, there, in your barn, they're totally bare nekkid!

Don't understand? Let me explain.

I live in Wisconsin, land of dairy barns. The barn my horses shelter in is a dairy barn-- a very old one. That means its smallish; old-time farmers couldn't handle more than 10-30 cows at a time, and they didn't waste building materials making fancy high ceilings. I can stand on my toes and touch the support beams in the ceiling-- and I am short. That means DANGER for my horses. Why?

Excited horse + light bulbs = broken glass or worse

My horses don't rear much that I've ever seen, they're not "wild" and there's only two of them. But if you know horses at all, you know that they will someday take advantage of any opportunity to hurt themselves. 

That's why it's important to cover up those naked light bulbs! Even in a "normal" sized horse barn, a rearing horse can do serious damage to itself if it crashes into a light fixture. There are two easy ways to fix this farm fashion faux pas: 

1) Put a plastic or safety glass "cone" around the bulb.

2) Screw a metal cage around the bulb.

In this picture, I have option one on the light bulb and show option two hanging above it. Of course, it would also improve the safety of the barn if I removed the big damn bolt the cage is currently hanging on, but I am super scared that it's holding up something important. Why else is it there?!

Both of these should be cheap and available through home improvement or hardware stores. A couple of bucks and ten minutes work (or ten minutes of your husband's work) could save you some heartbreak down the road.