Horses are unpredictable, accident prone, fussy eaters that unlike other livestock like cows have been tamed and domesticated to not fear humans often challenging their master-ship and instead becoming the boss over their human slaves.
I am a mug.
My grey mare Miss Beast has had my full attention for all her dietary, medical, health and comfort requirements for the last eight...nine years. I learnt my horse and "stable" management from reading every horse book I could get hold of as a child. Graduating to pony club and then working with horses through my teens and twenties, including being the head girl for an Olympic event rider.
Horses have deceptively complicated digestive requirements. They are grazing heard animals yet they cannot and will not eat just any greenery. There are a surprising amount of poisonous plants growing in the idyllic meadows we would like to place horses in, for example;
- Oxford Ragwort - fatal liver damage
- Foxglove/Rhododendrons - Heart failure
- Buttercups - UV sensitivity, burns, seizures
- Hemlock - respiratory paralysis
- Cuckoo-pint
- Yew - sudden death
- Oak - impaction colic from eating the acorns
- Sycamore/maples - Atypical myopathy/death
- Rosebay willow herb/Bracken - nerve damage
We have many varieties of plants at Eight Little Acres, thankfully few of the above. However since we have grazed the meadow, allowing light, air and water to the soil, the Ragwort population as exploded!
The wrong kind of grass!
Not only can there be poisonous plants, the grass itself can be harmful. Horses are designed to graze for aprox 20hours a day, "trickle feeders" requiring forage to be taken little and often. Now if you are designed to eat for that length of time every day what do you think you should be eating... salad and oat crackers...or chocolate cake and doughnuts? Well it depends on what your energy requirements are but generally you would lay off the sugar!
The grass equivalent to sugary junk food would be Rye Grass, ideal for high yield milk producing cows but not horses. Too much sugar can interfere with horses insulin production leading to Diabetes type problems such as Laminitis or Cushings as well as gut problems like colic or ulcers.
We know from the soil test taken earlier this year our patch has poor, acidic soil that would not be able to support this type of rich grazing so keeping cattle would not really be viable without major treatment the ground. However it is perfect for grazing sheep and ponies, "good doers", not so good for animals that needed a little bit extra.
We know from the soil test taken earlier this year our patch has poor, acidic soil that would not be able to support this type of rich grazing so keeping cattle would not really be viable without major treatment the ground. However it is perfect for grazing sheep and ponies, "good doers", not so good for animals that needed a little bit extra.
We currently have Miss Beast plus the two welsh hill ponies who's needs are all rather different. The ponies arrived in March, undernourished both needed to gain weight with a balanced diet to promote health and growth so they were allowed to graze freely with small regular feeds of a low calorie balanced pony cube.
The bigger horse was fit and in good health requiring access to fresh grass after a winter of living on hard feed and hay still had one feed a day of energy mix with linseed for good skin and coat.
Six month later while the ponies thrived the competition horse began to show signs that all was not right; weight loss, depression and lethargy was enough to worry me enough to get blood tests done thinking that there had been some plant poisoning.
The results came back clear although the vet suspected stomach ulcers due to the acidity level in the grass. There are treatments for this but I felt simply eliminating her intake of the acidic culprit, the poor value grass and swapping it with high nutritional haylage to help neutralize her stomach, letting it settle naturally would be better. The results after only six weeks were fantastic both physically and mentally she was back to her old self and full of beans!
Going into winter all the ponies are in great condition, wormed and corrals have been set up to start a regime of winter feeding and haying to keep optimum nutrition levels for their individual requirements; I don't want the ponies getting too much haylage early on or they will balloon! There is plenty of natural shelter allowing them all time to browse in the hedgerow as well as in the meadow along with supplemented forage and hard feed if needed. Fencing a large part of the pony area off will also allow us to add the long awaited Calci-Lime to re-balance the soil nutrient and pH levels, this may take some time but will be worth it for long term horse grazing.
Winter? I think we're ready....!
