Natural horse keeping, how we got it wrong.

Its a scary thing when you realise the rules have changed.
When all you thought was true is shown to not only be wrong, but in some cases harmful.

Me and Kim have always considered ourselves professionals when it came to horses.
We have the qualifications in our relevant disciplines, years of practical experience working in a wide range of yards, from veterinary to riding schools, racing to eventing, livery yards and hunter yards and all in between.
We've owned our own horses for years and learned the heartache and expense that comes with being the "Boss".
From time to time we've had other peoples horses to school or back.

Its not showing off.
I'm just trying to set a scene here.
   
Its been brewing for a while, this change.
We took the horses barefoot a few yeas ago and have been steadily learning all about this concept of natural horse keeping.
Through that we had read about track systems, a method by where you no longer use traditional paddocks for grazing, but instead adopted a series of tracks with varying going to keep your horse mobile and their (bare) feet in good condition, as they would in the wild.

We liked the idea, we understood the advantages.

But it was all abstract.
Something to do "One day."

The biggest myth buster came in the form on grazing.

Like many people in the UK (I can't speak for other countries), our system is made up of paddocks of varying grass. From lush to nearly bare earth, a system we thought was the way to do it.
We kept Mouse on the "diet" paddock nearly all year and Badger would join her for a few hours a day. Comet and Jo would graze the "in-between" paddocks with Comet maybe getting a couple of hours a day on the lusher stuff.

Sounds sensible right?

Everyones needs catered for, we thought we were doing a pretty good job.

So why was it all going wrong?

The trouble is that "bare" paddock was anything but.
Oh sure you were hard pressed to SEE any grass, but that was because the "fat" ponies spent all day nibbling at the tiny sugar rich shoots as they popped up.
Mouse actually has worn front teeth from grazing so low.
When you hold your hands up and exclaim "I don't know WHAT she lives on!" you don't realise that you are basically letting the fat kid eat burgers all day.
The diet paddock should really be re-names the "junk food zone".

The other problem with keeping grass very short is weeds.
The horse is only interested in grass so as the grass gets shorter, the docks, thistles, buttercups and clover get higher.
Before you know it you have a healthy crop of rubbish. (see pics 9, 10 & 11)

At the moment we have Mouse, Badger and Comet living in on full ration hay.
Mouse is totally zero grazing with only hay and her Top Spec anti-lam (a feed balancer which provides her with the essential minerals and vitamins she can't get from hay alone).
Badger is going out for 2 hours twice a day with the grazing muzzle on (see pic 1) and also gets hay and anti-lam.
Comet free grazes for 2 hours twice a day and gets a little less hay and a low release energy feed.

So wait a second....what grass are they eating?

Having done our homework we have gone against our educated selves and have given the boys a small paddock (@ 30, x 30') of very tall grass. (pic 4)
Its the kind of grazing I would have had a fit about letting them on at this time of year a few months ago. I was of the opinion that if your going to do that you may as well fence it off with police tape and call the vet ambulance!

But guess what.
After years of being told that horses like "pasture", no longer than a few short inches, we have discovered that this is..we;;..horse shit.
The boys happily chowed down on the long tough stems, spending time ruminating them and ignoring the lush grass. (pic 3& 5).
As they grazed I was surprise to see them CHOOSE the long stuff over the lush grass they uncovered.

After a couple of weeks we moved the boys to a new patch and they had left a perfect pasture of grass no shorter than 4" long and in patches much longer, proving that they preferred the long, almost dead, grass to the short sugar laden ones. (pic 8)
Its intresting to watch them graze.Before they where like eating amchines, constantly chewing as much grass as they could get, now they tend to take a large mouthful and raise their heads, chewing well until its gone before going down for the nexy mouthful.

This flies in the face of normal horse management.

But why is this?

Horses in the wild live in pretty hostile environments.
Think about the horses of the Mongolian steppes or the mustang's in the mountains and plains of America or even the truly wild equids like zebra in Africa.
These horses all evolved to eat the rough stemmy grass of these lands, ts what their guts evolved for.
We corralled our horses ancestors and changed their way of eating and exercising.
We took an animal meant to survive o the poorest of feed stuff and yet still travel 30 miles a day and we basically put them in a cell full of sweets.

The closest thing we have in fodder is hay, the second best thing is long grass.

The trouble is, while we can now control what our horses eat we have also had to take away the freedom they have been used to for so long.
We have always tried to keep them outside 24/7 in all but the harshest weather but now this isn;t an option.

This of course is where the track systems come in, but more about those as we make them!

Here's to working towards feeding our horses AND keeping our horses in as natural a way as possible!!
No more compromise!        
            

1.His face just say's it all really.

"My cup runeth over with joy."

2.Hole in the bottom allows limited grazing

3.Long stem of grass dissapearing up the hole! nomnom!

4.Check out the length of that grass!

5.Ruminating on long stemmy grass.

6.The boys chowing down.

7.Notice how stemmy the grass gets here, like "wild" grass.

8.The paddock they came off the day before, notice how they left the "lush" grass

 in favour of the long stemmy grasses.

9.Clover flourishing.

Horse sick grass one year on.

10.Over grazed this year (within 3 weeks).

Note how the thistles and clover are already florishing.

11.This paddock never had a dock problem,

but two years of using it as a "diet" paddock have left it a mess.

Horses fighting the chemical generation.

Those of you that know us know we have horses.
Those that know horses understand they are a blessing and a curse.

For the last couple of weeks we have been plagued by problems.

Three of our four our now stabled after various complaints.
Badger went "footy" indicating a mild bout of laminitis.
Comet also went "footy" and added an interesting allergic reaction t the mix as well.
And Mouse almost definitely has Equine Metabolic Syndrome, which is fun.

It all started when we noticed mouse was not losing her winter coat. It was June, we had already had a good week of 20-24oC weather and she was still wearing a 6 inch hair suit.
So I got the clippers out and shaved the pony!
We brought her into the stable and upped her exercise to two 30 min lunging sessions a day and limited grazing of 3 hours max on short grass.

Mouse on June 11th 2010. Note the winter coat, the distended "pot" belly and lumpy crest.

She seemed to improve and we thought we'd cracked it, then she started to get "footy" and was obviously lame in both front feet.

Laminitis.
How frustrating when we are so careful with her exercise and diet!
We initially thought she maybe had Cushing's disease, which is often caused by a tumor on the pituitary gland, but luckily a blood test was negative.
EMS is the most likely cause. The weight gain which included uneven fat deposits on her crest and shoulders specifically, the laminitis, the hairy coat.
The blood test was inconclusive but that's not unusual.
We have been given three choices by the vet.

Number 1 is too wait and see. If she is doing well on her current regime, it might be worth just monitoring her carefully.
Number 2 is to re-blood test under stricter conditions, so fasting then feeding a high concentrate of glucose then blood testing within 2 hrs.
Number 3 is to start her on meds and see what happen.

More on this in a sec!

Now the other two horses were frustrating!
Badger obviously had a touch of laminitis despite being on a bare paddock and being in work, and Comet was also footy and in addition to that developed a really nasty skin rash which he rubbed raw!

Interestingly these horses developed their problems within a week or so of being wormed.

Usually we get worm counts of dropping done and only worm infrequently as the worm counts necessitate.
But this last winter, Badger managed to get Pin worm, because we were feeding them in the snow, he was soiling in his hay and instead of leaving it would make sure he ate every last bit! But Badger is a pig ;)
.

A little look into reactions to wormers yielded some interesting results some of which you can see HERE.

I'm not saying the wormers contributed solely to these problems but we feel is was definitely a contributing factor.
Interestingly enough worming did not become common in horses until the 1960's and as late as the 1980's was still only seen as an occasional medication. Now drug companies urge you to worm every few weeks with more and more potent chemical wormers as natural immunity to some parasites is lost and worms become immune to regular wormers.

Another factor which played its part was our grazing set up.
As all our horses are barefoot we tend to notice changes that affect feet more than the owner of a shod horse might.
In this instance, when Badger developed mild laminitis it may not have been detected had he been wearing shoes. It may have only shown in a reluctance to go forwards when ridden rather than a clear footy-ness.

We've been talking for a while now about adopting track grazing systems as promoted by the likes of Jamie Jackson. 
The theory is that horses have only been kept on pasture for our own convenience and that a track system which includes various goings, hay, shelter  and water along the way to keep them moving, is much more natural.
Wild/feral horses adapted to graze sparse tundra and mountainous pains, not prim beef fattening grass!
But here's the rub.
Too little grass is almost worse than too much grass!
We all have one if we keep horses.
The "diet" paddock.
The one that's kept really short, almost bare for the fatty on your yard.
Trouble is that the grass at this time of year keeps growing so the grass your fatty DOES get is sooopah charged with sugars.
Hence, the ponies who seem to get fat on nothing.
Far better apparently to give your horse restricted access to LONG stemmy grass, which is far more like the grass a wild horse would get.

With all this in mind, and Mouse's EMS, which will necessitate a Zero grazing regime, we are embarking on a green and natural overhaul of our horses lives.

Zero grazing is easy, all you do is feed the appropriate amount of hay for your horses weight/height and type and a feed balancer like Top-Spec Anti Lam for all the right vitamins and minerals.
However its hardly natural to confine a horse to his stable for their whole life so we need t make some serious changes.

The first one is to give each stable its own "yard". This way a horse like mouse who may need to spend prolonged time off any grass can have extra outdoor space outside the stable.
The next one is to develop a series of tracks for the horses to graze. Different types of going incorporated into the tracks (stone, bark, grass, pea gravel etc) means that barefoot hooves get a good "work out" everyday. The tracks encourage the horses to keep on the move rather than putting their heads down on pasture and not moving **ehem..cough...badger!**

The over worming of horses can have detrimental effects elsewhere.
Who uses horse poo in the garden???
So now you have highly toxic anti-parasitic chemicals on your veg as well!
            
That's it for us.
We're going back to worm counting every couple of months and looking into natural remedies. For these three, Mouse with her compromised metabolism, Badger with his delicate feet and Comet with his sensitive skin, its no longer worth the risk.