Paddock paradise Archives - Lessons from Nelipot Cottage

The perfect barefoot trim; Keeping the Ridden Horse Barefoot

The perfect barefoot trim is a bit like rocking horse pooh. The perfect barefoot trim is an elusive and illusory premise. There is a very good reason why Trim is part 4 of “Keeping the Ridden Horse Barefoot”.

I have previously described the 4 pillars of barefoot performance- they are Diet, Exercise, Environment and now finally I’m going to talk about Trim. The perfect barefoot trim.

Time for another disclaimer. I am not a trained hoof care professional. I am pretty handy with a rasp by necessity. I do trim my two working horses as required, and then get some muscle (sorry trimming expert) in to do a check up every few months.

Call landing confidently a good way round the 80 at Eland Lodge

Over the years I have been the responsible human for a few barefoot horses, doing all sorts of work, both in Europe and in Australia, some a long time before the barefoot movement was even a thing! And one of the more recent horses has turned out to be a very tricky barefooter- through whom I have met more hoofcare professionals than I ever thought possible!

When I look back over the years, I have always known horses that didn’t need shoes. And back in my youth, I don’t remember the horses that didn’t wear shoes needing a special trimmer.

But in my youth I’d never known so many horses shod back to back literally for years without a break. I’d never seen 3 year olds shod as soon as they started work. We had really fast polo ponies in Australia that didn’t wear shoes. And some really classy show jumpers. Looking back I don’t think I ever met a farrier in Australia, despite working as a full time groom for a year. My sister and her friends have trekked hundreds of miles around the forests of Germany in unshod horses. The Argie polo grooms, the Australian farmers and the German happy hackers all had rasps in their grooming kit to tidy up any cracks or splits in the hooves.

The reason I saved “Trim” until last is because if the Diet, Exercise and Environment are right, then radical trimming can become unnecessary. We can split hairs (or hooves) about the definition of a self trimming (or self maintaining) horse but life is pretty sweet when we achieve this; for the horse and the human

Another self trimming horse

And if the diet or environment aren’t good enough, then specialist or remedial trimming may be necessary to compensate or alleviate pathology to some degree; for example, navicular can be really successfully rehabbed barefooot

Navicular rehab at Rockley Farm

as can laminitis be treated and avoided

Laminitis- prevention first

Nic Barker at Rockley Farm has not trimmed any of her horses for about 9 years

The famous celery post

but I’m still not sure whether this approach is feasible for the majority of horse owners. The tracks at Rockley Farm are pretty unique, as is the rough Exmoor grass in between.

Over recent years trying to get Cal’s feet right I have met trimmers trained under all umbrellas: the UKNHCP, the EPA, trimmers who trained with Jaime Jackson (Mr Paddock Paradise) himself, others who followed KC La Pierre, and a couple of farriers, including one who practises under ‘grandfather’ rights. I spent years looking for the magic solution, the one person who would be able to make Cal’s weird feet look like nice round hooves and function better.

Cal 2016 — They never look pretty, but they do now work

I drove myself, and many trimmers and hoof care professionals to distraction.

When I met Emma Bailey, I found someone I could have an ongoing conversation with. We tried every approach; super radical trims every 2-3 weeks, trying to model the hoof into a specific shape, we let the hoof wall get long to act like a natural version of rim shoes, we tried keeping the toes super short, controlling the flare, leaving the heels, balancing the heels, rasping the heels, taking down the bars, leaving the bars…..

Can I tell you a secret?

No matter what we did, the hoof always looked the same two weeks later….

Just like the horse grows enough foot to keep up with the wear created by work, the more you trim a hoof, the more exuberantly it grows!

The more you trim a particular flare, the more it responds, with more flare.

And you can’t force a pathological hoof to change to a healthy shape, until you remove the pathological stimulus. Sort the diet, correct the movement with training and bodywork, and then the foot will reflect the change inside and above.

Cal did grow better feet, eventually. Once I had the inflammatory conditions damped down with a diet that is starch and sugar free, organic, and varied with plentiful anti oxidants. Once I knew to avoid combination wormers, fertilised forage and processed food. Once I understood the importance of hind gut health, and the role of the biome in driving or controlling inflammation, his feet improved immensely.

The perfect barefoot husbandry regime leaves your horse sound, functional, comfortable, balanced and landing heel first confidently on most terrain.

Barefoot Hoof poetry in slow motion

True rock crunchers are a joy to behold, but not all horses will get there whilst living in England’s pleasant pastures and mountains green, particularly now rye grass, fertilisers, and pesticides are so ubiquitous.

My long and painful journey to get Cal to a point where his hooves are functional is the whole purpose of this blog- I hope by sharing the knowledge I have acquired I can save some of you either time, tears or money.

This was a lightbulb photo – this is a not just a funny shape it a sub clinical laminitic hoof- curved hair line, subtle event rings.

So here are my hard won words of wisdom:

Hooves reflect what is going on in the physiology of the horse. If the horse is footsore, sensitive, tentative on challenging surfaces, there is an issue with the metabolism that has not been addressed. The short version is that there is inflammation somewhere in the body. The foot is quite possibly showing signs of sub clinical laminitis.
Laminitis is a systemic disease- the horse’s feet are the affected end organ, like a diabetic foot in humans. It is not cured by focusing on the foot.
The inflammation may require a holistic approach to damp it down. Putting shoes on a sore horse is like putting a sticking plaster on a pressure sore; it hides the wound but doesn’t address the problem.
Inflammation can be addressed from the hindgut first; the more I learn about the biome, the more convinced I am that the answers to many diseases, both horse and human, are to be found in the micro-biome.
Once the horse is healthy, GUT first remember, and there is no inflammation, then the feet reflect the biomechanics of the horse. This can be improved, by careful attention and good, classical gymnastic training.
In the meantime you can trim those flares as much as you need to but until the loading pattern from above is altered, the wear pattern will persist and the flares will keep coming back. This stage is a bit chicken and egg; you may need to keep the flares under control to allow correct loading of the limb while the horse develops and changes.
So to summarise: trim, as much as you need to, and as little as you can get away with. Take frequent photos and video. And if the feet aren’t performing, don’t just keep blaming the trim, sort out the rest of the horse first. SERIOUSLY. That particular nugget of truth has taken me 6 years to understand, accept, and completely internalise as a guide to keeping my horse well. Save yourselves the pain and learn from my journey.

If you do shoe your horse, please be aware that you miss many of the early warning signs that he is only just coping with our even warmer, wet weather giving us increasingly more lethal green, lush, rich British pastures.

And give him a shoeing break- this photo is the most scary I have ever seen

This is a diagram from a book by Bracy Clark (1771-1860), an English Veterinary surgeon, who specialised in the hoof and wrote extensively about the harm caused by shoeing

There is no perfect barefoot trim. But once the Diet, Exercise and Environment are in balance, then the hoof will be healthy and we should be able to trim as little as possible and as rarely as required.

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Of Course the Environment Matters- keeping the ridden horse barefoot

Of course the environment matters for keeping the ridden horse barefoot successfully. By environment, I mean all the places your horse works plays and relaxes in.

Ask yourself- Where does he spend most of his hours? And how helpful is that particular environment for building high performance barefoot hooves?

How many hours does he spend in a stable? That’s x number of hours he’s not moving. It’s also x number of hours that’s he’s standing in/on bedding mixed with urine and faeces. And what is he eating while he’s standing there?

If your horses are the fortunate ones that get plenty of turnout, how many hours is that? What sort of surface are they turned out on? What are they eating while turned out? Are they on a track system or in a small individual paddock square? How many miles do they move while turned out? How far do they have to move for their food and water? And all that is before we consider whether their social and behavioural needs are met.

We know that the horses with healthiest barefoot hooves are found in the feral horse populations.

#friendsforagefreedom – the Carneddau ponies have the perfect life

In our part of the UK our nearest feral population are the Carneddau ponies of North Wales. This ancient herd of ponies are truly wild, and have frequented this mountain range in Snowdonia for thousands of years. Their numbers are controlled but other than that they are not managed in any way.

Photo by Hannah_morrellt find her on Instagram

A recent segment in a wildlife programme featured a stallion in his prime chasing off a usurper- both ponies cantering effortlessly over the rough stony ground. The Mongolian ponies had similar skills.

Photo by Nasta, zoologist on our SES expedition to Mongolia July 2018

Could you canter over rough ground in your bare feet without any training or conditioning? I know I couldn’t: not straight away. I do spend a lot of my time barefoot, and when I was travelling through Israel and Australia and shoes were mostly optional, I could run miles barefoot on packed dirt and tarmac. But it did take some time to toughen feet up, human and horse. And these days they are soft and ouchy again LOL.

If your horse spends most of his time standing in a field of soft mud or working in a soft arena, of course he don’t be able to march briskly down a stony track. Just like muscles, bones and tendons, feet need conditioning.

A good diet sets the barefoot horse up for success (see part 1), while the miles will build and shape the feet (see part 2) but at the end of the day the feet will perform best on the surface to which they have become most accustomed.

If you want your horse to be rock crunching, then he will have to crunch some rocks!! He can be exposed to gravelly then rocky surfaces, bit by bit, building tough feet incrementally.

So yes of course the environment matters. Track systems in summer are great because they encourage movement, limit grass intake and tend to pack down into hard dirt. You can enrich sections; with pea gravel or hard core, best done on the horses’ route to a favourite spot so they traverse the surface regularly.

Google earth snap of the first Nelipot track

Be realistic out hacking. Build up the exposure to challenging surfaces gradually, initially at slow speeds, possibly hop off for a challenging section. Let the horse pick his way, slowly if required. One of the major benefits of keeping your ridden horse barefoot is the increase in proprioception and the way that allows him to choose his balance over challenging terrain and protect his joints- give him the time to learn the skills.

if you only ever work on a beautiful level surface, be that grass, dirt or arena footing, how will your horse learn to dodge tree roots, deal with camber or adapt to undulating terrain? It’s like the difference between road running and cross country running- in human terms it’s a different sport!

So of course the environment matters for keeping the ridden horse barefoot. It matters for both physical and mental health.

The way we keep horses is profoundly unnatural, even when we are doing our best by them. Low level stress and gut dysfunction are often contributors to poor hoof performance- as well as the physical, you could think of the hooves as the most sensitive barometer of your horses mental and psychological health.

So does the environment your keep your horse in meet all his needs? And I don’t mean shelter feeds and water here- that’s the minimum to keep the RSPCA away; I mean his species specific needs for mental and psychological health. Is he living a full and satisfying life in horse terms?

#friendsforagefreedom

Or is he being kept alive and functional purely for human use?

That’s a whole new dilemma!

My name is Fran McNicol and I am an amateur equestrienne living in Cheshire, UK. I am a doctor, specialising in colorectal surgery, and my MD research thesis was on inflammation and sepsis. Through my day job, I understand and fix the human digestive system, and I know a huge amount about inflammation and the human animal, but the most useful thing about becoming a “Doctor Doctor Miss Miss” (MBChB, MD, MRCS, FRCS) is that I have learned how to read other people’s research, evaluate the evidence and then critically test apparently good theory on my own horses. My writing is therefore my opinion, and current state of learning, from 25 years of full-time doctoring, a few years working as a polo groom around the world and many years of keeping my own horses. I love training young horses, and focus on riding the sport horse both classically and holistically. I compete regularly in all disciplines at our local riding club especially one day eventing. I started blogging as a way to share the experience gained from taking a selection of horses barefoot and working towards the dream barefoot property. I blog regularly at www.nelipotcottage.com

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Turn out versus living out

Or show us your mud rugs!

Another phrase that should have made me a millionaire;

“my horse could never live out, he loves his stable. He’s always begging to come in at night.”

Apart from the fact that this begging is a learned behaviour, because horses live for routine, we also need to understand the difference between providing ‘turn out’ versus providing adequate facilities for them to live out full time in a suitable environment.

Now don’t get me wrong: I would much rather horses spent a measly hour turned out than no time out at all. But we have to acknowledge that horses are movement, and the more they can move the happier and healthier they are. And that all our husbandry practises are a compromise chosen by humans between cost, practicality and ease of use of the animal. Turn out versus living out is a good example of a human chosen compromise.

I tolerate thick mud on my horses from November through to March, and many other days in between.

Other than competition days, I only groom to ride. I only wash a tail or pull a mane to compete. And I am comfortable with those choices. You won’t shame me into bathing my horse in winter- he needs his greasy coat for waterproofing. Likewise his feathers stay full all winter. And I very rarely brush his legs- layers of super dry mud wellies are the best protection against mud fever.

Mud wellies and ice baubles in fetlocks- natural insulation

Many people mistakenly believe that how a horse behaves in a turn out situation will determine how prepared that horse is to live out full time.

But there is a huge difference between turn out versus living out.

To understand why, we need to know more about the behaviour of the wild horse.

Horses much prefer to be too cold than too hot. They can warm themselves up, by increasing their activity, or by eating plenty of forage that then gets fermented in the caecum a.k.a. hindgut, producing heat. Effectively horses have their very own central heating system, and as long as they have adequate access to forage, will keep fermenting that forage and keep warm.

Horses left in their natural state will grow a fabulous winter coat. This has at least two layers, an underneath fluffy insulating layer and a longer coarser protective layer on top. If you have ever turned your horse out naked in the rain you may have noticed the herringbone pattern that the dried in rain has left?

Gorgeous herringbone courtesy of Sarah Oliver

This is no accident. The herringbone acts like a guttering system, allowing the water to run off the top of the coat while keeping the fluff underneath dry.

Mud herringbones for a cold night- Rocky's mum Willow in Weymouth

As long as the fluff has enough air in between the hairs it acts as an amazing insulation layer.

It used to amaze me, coming home after work to ride and pulling a naked horse in from the field, how dry the horses’ backs actually were most of the time.

Mud herringbones- dry underneath- Willow again

And all horses can grow a good coat if left to adapt. Paddy is 7/8 thoroughbred, thin skinned with a very fine coat, so I thought. The first year, we moved to Delamere from livery in March so all the horses were rugged. The second year we just didn’t rug.

I trace clipped Cal to allow me to work him, but with a shallow trace clip, he still didn’t need a rug. He’s half Irish Draught so grows the most beautiful fluffy winter coat, and thrives on fresh air.

Incidentally I also never dried him off after riding- I had to walk him back to the field from the house so he cooled off a bit; then the first thing he would do when turned out was roll in the cool sandy mud, good for his coat and his body temperature.

When it did snow, the horses loved rolling in the snow- it was like a spa day.

Insulation properties of snow- Sarah Oliver

Snow is also strangely insulating- the horses all wore snow rugs when they could, and their backs were toasty warm underneath!

Snow rugged pony in North Wales- Jo Ellis’ Rockstar

Snow pony in the Cumbrian fells- Sarah Oliver

Rolling is also a bonding activity I discovered. I took a book down to the field one summer day to sunbathe. I was flat on my back reading and enjoying the damp grass on my sweaty back when all 3 horses came over to join me for a rolling session. That was a pretty cool moment.

Rolling is a bonding activity – my 3 in Delamere

Paddy grew a good enough coat year 2, although he still looked a bit poorer than I would have liked coming into spring. Year 3, a really cold, wet year , he grew the most amazing triple layered pelt and wintered really well.

Environment is key though. Our horses had a field shelter, which they rarely used, but also had really good hawthorn hedges all around the field perimeter, good tree cover in the bottom corner, and most importantly the field had dips and hollows that offered varying natural windbreaks.

Their favourite spot was down in the dip in the bottom corner of the field. Eddisbury Hill formed a high level wind break, the hollow has quite deep sides and is south facing. I used to think they had all escaped as you literally couldn’t see them until you were on top of them, sun bathing down out of the wind.

Each part of the field served a different purpose. The sandy area near the field shelter was the sand rolling area. The steeper side of the slope below the field shelter was the mud rolling area.

The horses were very particular in their personal grooming routine. They would do a very thorough sand roll every morning after breakfast. The mud roll occurred in the afternoon generally, coating themselves up with extra insulation for the night.

Fluff and mud- super high tech thermal protection – Lyddy Putt’s ponies in North Wales

The Pzrewalski horses in Mongolia coated themselves in mud in the morning to keep the midges away but our field didn’t have good mud in summer. I could always tell when a cold night was due though- they would be coated in mud from eyelash to fetlock.

And the undisputed winner is- Lyddy’s Tawela

They never got rain scald- the twice daily self grooming regime works much better than the human version.

When it rained, they might occasionally hide in the field shelter for a half an hour break if it was really relentless. More often, they would be found grazing down in the dip, or browsing huddled under the hedge. Once there was a lull in the weather, they would charge around a bit to warm themselves up, then get back to the serious business of grazing.

They would graze for a couple of hours, then nap, then have some haylage, roll or groom, then go for a wander around the perimeter and stop for a drink. I used to love to spend the hours watching them just being horses.

So if your horse is “begging” to come in at night, ask yourself

1) have you trained that behaviour (yes obviously) and

2) what is missing from that turnout environment that would make your horse less keen to come in?

Does he have #friendsforagefreedom

Tearing themselves away from the hedgerow for a fuss

Is there enough forage? Enough stimulation?

A place to hide from the sun? A place to shelter? A place to roll? Room to get up some speed and play?

A place to look out over the surrounding area?

Now we are back at livery my 3 wait by the gate at 3pm, expecting to come in.

Before we moved back to livery, they used to wait by the gate of the big field at 6pm for evening feeds. But they weren’t asking to come in. They would eat their dinner, say thank you and then wander off down the field to the water trough and the haylage feeders.

Now they know their new routine – they are coming into a stable for dinner, and the turnout, although lovely, isn’t an environment good enough to support happily living out. They have adapted back to overnight confinement, for now.

But when we find our next dream Nelipot, I’m determined that I’m going to need a school dinner bell to call them down off the big wooded hill 😎😎

Because even happy healthy filthy horses should work occasionally 😜

buy the book- “Bare Hooves and Open Hearts”

If you have enjoyed this blog then please consider buying an author signed paperback copy of my recent book. It contains more of my philosophy on husbandry and training, based on my experience, research and learning. Price includes 2nd class postage to anywhere in Europe. Other regions may cost more- email me and we can always arrange.

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Another self trimming horse

After owning Cal for 7 years I am very proud and pleased to announce that I have another self trimming horse!!

And once again, now it’s a reality, I’m wondering why it took me so long to understand that even funny feet Cal could be a self trimming horse.

For any self respecting hoof nerd, a self trimming horse is the ultimate aim. The self trimming horse has a perfect balance between wear and growth, balances his own feet through work to the shape that suits him, and is sound in the work he does.

I never thought Cal could be a self trimming horse, until my barefoot life seemed to come full circle.

I’ve written previously about how my barefoot journey began

Barefoot Brain-ache

And about my trials and tribulations with funny feet Cal

Horse needs shoes and pads

Including the point where we thought we had really cracked it.

Barefoot Breakthrough

but all along, I was operating from within a false paradigm, despite hoof geeking obsessively all these years!

I thought a horse’s hooves had to be good before he could become a self trimming horse.

Barefoot beginnings

Now, I started my barefoot journey thanks to Sarah of Forageplus. Sarah wrote a book with Nic Barker (of Rockley Farm rehab fame) called Feet First

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Feet-First-Barefoot-Performance-Rehabilitation/dp/0851319602

which was the original barefoot bible for those brave souls bucking the trend in the late 90’s!

Diet

It was early days- barefoot horse owners were considered eccentric freaks. Sarah drove around the county to trim clients horses with a huge tub of magnesium oxide in the back of her jeep and a set of scales. Who knows what the police would have made of her white powder delivery round?

We didn’t know as much about best nutrition for healthy feet as we do now, although we knew diet was the key.

As was work.

Exercise

When I transitioned Paddy he was being looked after by Mel the polo groom. He did at least 5 miles daily plus whatever I did with him in the evenings and weekends. And luckily, due to the facilities locally, he was able to do that comfortably from the first day his shoes came off. Glass smooth tarmac really is the best surface for conditioning rock crunching feet!!

Hoof boots were really hard to buy, really clumpy and mostly imported from America and made for little horses with dainty feet. I didn’t bother for Paddy- he never needed them.

Then along came Cal. He arrived from Ireland in the most horrific set of shoes. Looking back I’m really not sure how I didn’t spot the really funny feet.

I can’t find any early feet photos but believe me the whole of the hoof capsule sat in front of a line dropped down the cannon bone!!

This photo is from about 18months after I bought him. In that time he had fractured a carpal bone (in shoes) tripping over that toe, and was about a year into his barefoot rehab.

Now you would never say that foot could belong to a self trimming horse would you?

Environment

Shortly after this photo was taken we bought our own place and started applying everything we knew about creating the perfect feet. We had our six acre field which we proudly put a track around, our very own #paddockparadise

I mineral balanced to our now steady supply of late cut meadow hay, and then later Haylage.

We soil tested and actually applied the chemicals as recommended by the Albrecht protocol.

Grow your own….

We tried to do our rock crunching milage around the fabulous #Delamereforest and surrounding area.

Trim

and we kept looking for the perfect trim that would finally turn that peculiar set of feet into something functional. I went through a posse of trimmers over the first few years. Sarah wasn’t trimming much as her business grew, so we needed an alternative. My first choice wasn’t flexible enough to fit in around my hectic work schedule. The next was lovely but then got poorly and needed a couple of operations. I went back to a UKHNCP trimmer for an alternative view. The alternative then moved down south! I sought a couple of second opinions, one of whom did a really radical trim which left him sore for weeks. Then I eventually met Emma Bailey, who is a good listener, really knows her nutrition and is always keen to discuss with and learn from all horses and clients. She is also good friends with Nick Hill and Ralitsa, the holistic vet, so we got 3 heads to scratch.

We went through gentle trims, more invasive trims, leaving the flares, taking the flare off, trim the bars, leave the bars, attack the toe, swipe the heels… yet no matter what we tried, the feet improved a bit month by month yet remained stubbornly slipper like

With thin soles, shallow collateral grooves and little heel height.

He was surprisingly functional over the years, despite the feet looking flat and poor, he has worked hard on all surfaces except stones and we have had some great fun

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL55sjNB8nhYVHUrASlthXCJkdGsqql_RF

Then Emma went on a workshop with Nic Barker and my barefoot life came full circle.

Any self respecting hoof nerd will know of Nic’s seminal blog piece ‘Celery’

http://rockleyfarm.blogspot.com/2011/04/dont-even-think-of-touching-that-hoof.html

And in the most recent blog follow up on that theme, not much in her learning and experience has changed

http://rockleyfarm.blogspot.com/2018/09/put-down-rasp-and-pick-up-celery.html

Now I always have believed in self trimming horses! Paddy was essentially self trimming apart from a check every 3 months, and a touch up for trips out, and Rocky looks like he will go the same way, but for some reason, it had never occurred to me with Cal. How could those pathological feet possibly become healthier without help?

Luckily Emma is a good listener. She cane back from the workshop and basically waved a rasp at all 3 horses. And told me to get out there and work them and see what occurs.

There’s been a sub solar abscess or something funky by my hand on this foot- there’s a load of false sole and a chip out of the bar

And guess what?

Cal’s finally growing the feet he needs.

Yes -there is lots of bar- he obviously needs it.

Yes -theoretically you could tighten the foot up to the white line…but it opens up again more or less straight away.

Yes -there looks like some flare from the top but from the bottom they are actually not too bad.

And yes- that toe can still come back, and it does, a few gentle swipes every time I ride.

And best of all- look at the depth of those collateral grooves!! That is new and special and exciting!

Now I’m not saying he’ll never get trimmed again. Those toes need touching up, as do any cracks and chips.

But the more we trimmed, the more hoof he grew, but exactly the same foot! Now we are not trimming so persistently, the foot is growing more slowly but is also building itself up, from the inside.

And so I’ve come full circle, back to celery – in a healthy horse, barefoot is never all about the trim.

I think I finally have a healthy horse- that’s been another journey, getting the diet right, and now we have stopped messing around ‘fixing’ his feet, we seem to have acquired another self trimming horse.

I’ll leave you with the Rockley rehabs for inspiration. The feet in this barefoot ‘hoof porn’ film are all self trimming, and all incredibly functional.

N.B. Until you’ve seen a horse move and the hoof land you cannot judge the level of function.

http://rockleyfarm.blogspot.com/p/barefoot-in-slow-motion.html

Is your horse self trimming?

Does it land heel first?

If not, have you ever thought that less could be more?

Grow your own….

When you can’t get hold of the organic, GMO, low sugar forage you need, one alternative is to grow your own…if you are lucky enough to own your own land.

We are very lucky; we have a consistent supply of organic meadow Haylage from a producer large enough to keep our little herd going all winter, although it was close this year! It hadn’t occurred to me that we could grow your own…

This summer is the horses’ third year of living on our field. After a couple of years of experimenting, we now track around the edge in summer, growing the grass in the middle long for winter foggage, also known as standing hay.

Over the last couple of years I have learned more about how natural biodiversity in the horse’s diet is vital for good hindgut function. I have been following the wonderful work that Carol Hughes does at Phytorigins, using the wild Carneddau ponies of North Wales and their environment as a source of inspiration and study. Carol is very generous with her knowledge and shares much priceless information on her public Facebook page

https://m.facebook.com/groups/1862115997153052

Sarah at Forageplus has also been a big part of my learning journey and introduced me to the work of Albrecht, an American agronomist who was all about preserving the diversity of the micro-ecosystem within the soil itself, vital for the health of all animals and for our survival.

Forageplus offer a soil testing service and advice on soil mineral balancing to Albrecht principles. As far as I know, they are the only company in the UK to offer this service.

I wrote a couple of years ago about our early experience trying to explain Albrecht to our local agronomist-

https://www.nelipotcottage.com/albrecht-and-the-agronomist/

Since then we did manage to soil test and treat as per the recommendations for two years, giving ourselves a budget break this year because treating your land isn’t a cheap fix, although much cheaper than vets bills!!

I have also been reading about re-wilding, and the remarkable ability of the land to heal itself if left alone. Our land would have started life as a lowland meadow

http://jncc.defra.gov.uk/pdf/UKBAP_BAPHabitats-29-Lowland%20Meadows.pdf

With a bit of mere and moss thrown in

https://www.cheshirewildlifetrust.org.uk/wildlife/our-work-wildlife/living-landscapes/meres-and-mosses

A work colleague recently bought a house in North Wales with a 3 acre native upland hay meadow. Talking over coffee about the recommendations he had to follow for the preservation of this incredibly rare habitat made me think- could I get our field nearer to its original ecological state? And how much healthier for our horses would that be?

So, no chemical fertilisers or weed killers. In fact

Encourage and embrace plant diversity. Rik gave us some seeds from Wales, and I bought some native wildflower seeds from https://www.meadowmania.co.uk/

A single hay- cut followed by grazing, but the grass clippings must be cleared not allowed to rot and thereby fertilise the field.

Regular aeration- we have not achieved this yet- seems to be he hardest job to convince a contractor to do, but it is vital as it gets oxygen into the soil for the roots and the root dwelling organisms.

After cutting, grazing by herbivores is allowed and harrowing the dung. Ideally the herbivores should not have been treated with wormers as these kill the dung eating insects. We don’t worm unless necessitated by faecal egg counts and tapeworm saliva tests

https://www.nelipotcottage.com/targeted-equine-worming-programme-action/

So what changes have I noticed?

We had over 10 species of grass that I could differentiate in the field this year. We have had almost no ragwort this year – 15 plants pulled to date in the improved area, the track has a few more tiny rosettes but has not been treated as per Albrecht.

We have lots of new herbs and wildflowers, including this wonderful Prunalla Vulgaris, also known as ‘self-heal’.

The huge expanses of clover were not evident this year- instead we had swathes of new grass.

And we had enough grass to cut!! I was thinking we would have to pay someone to cut it and take it away as there wouldn’t be enough to bale but in this funny spring the grass just grew and grew.

And then shrank again in the heat…

Nonetheless it was still worth a go.

It doesn’t look like much once it’s mowed and rowed

However the baler kept spitting out good sized round bales

So there we have it- 3 months worth of home grown organic meadow Haylage. I am both delighted and gobsmacked. If you can’t buy what you need, do think about whether you could find a way to grow your own… there is no more satisfying feeling than seeing your own land produce a crop.

Although strictly speaking, we grow horses, not grass.

I hope I have inspired you- it is possible to grow your own hay or Haylage, to suit your own horses’ needs.

Next time, I’ll be able to tell you all about these guys

And what I will have learned from meeting them in their own natural habitat- in the wilds of Mongolia 🇲🇳

Big fit horses in reasonable work can get laminitis too…

Laminitis is not just a disease for small natives: big, fit horses in medium work can get laminitis too, as I discovered to my chagrin a few weeks ago.

I was chatting about our recent troubles at the area 20 qualifiers yesterday and the lady I was chatting too said “Oh, he’s a big horse, we forget they can get laminitis too” as if this was rare?

It had never occurred to me that laminitis was mainly a disease of small ponies, although I do associate it mostly with good doers. Cal is a good doer, but he is also a big, fit horse in medium level work and had been eventing the week before he showed that big fit horses in reasonable work can get laminitis too.

The causes of laminitis are now known to be metabolic, either associated with Equine Metabolic Syndrome ( a sort of type II Diabetes for horses) or Equine PID, more commonly known as Cushing’s disease. Metabolic causes means that laminitis is a disease of the whole horse, the cause and the treatment are not limited to the foot.

I’m pretty sure Cal has EMS, although I’ve never tested him properly. How do I know this? Because he has been such a tricky barefooter over the years. For those of you who do not fully embrace the barefoot concept, let me share with you my paradigm.

Any horse with the correct diet, environment, exercise and trim should be able to go barefoot and work hard barefoot.

Those 4 simple sounding words are not simple things to achieve in the U.K. Cal is an Irish Spirts horse, so he is half Irish Draught, and he looks like he got quite a lot of Connemara in the mix, so a dose of Spanish blood too. He didn’t get much TB in his phenotype, that’s for sure.

Diet- Cal is finely tuned to survive in the Irish peat bogs, or possibly also in Spanish scrubland. He doesn’t get much green grass, a sniff makes him footsore so a good bellyfull would probably kill him. He is the main reason our horses are track dwellers, and his story is partly why we bought our house and land, because traditional livery yards simply could not cater for his needs. This horse loves fresh thistles, bashes down nettles to let them wilt, eats a bit of bracken for the insulin like compound, goes for ivy, again for the sugar busting properties. He is pretty good at managing his own condition, as long as he is offered the variety of herbs and plants he needs to offset the green posion. He gets a small bucket feed which contains salt, Phytorigin GI, a hindgut balancer ained at feeding the good bacteria, Phytolean plus, a plant based supplement with lots of anti-oxidants designed to support the immune system and homeostasis of tricky metabolic horses.

Environment: he on a track system or paddock paradise. His main needs #friendsforagefreedom are met as best we can. He lives out 24/7, in a stable herd with his mates, to groom, play, commune with and boss around. They have access to constant ad lib forage, and are safe from stress. As he is pretty dominant he is the safest of all from stress, especially as Paddy is the lookout.

Exercise: he’s my main horse. He lives on a track so does about 5 miles a day mooching around on there, he also gets ridden 3-4 times a week, a mixture of hacking, schooling, jumping and fast work every 10 days or so. Of course he could do more, if I had more time.

Trim: trim has always been tricky. But that’s mainly because Cal has been tricky. The more I learn about feet, the more I think there difference between a good trim and a bad trim is a bit like a clip: two weeks!! Bad feet are impossible to trim into a healthy shape and function, and good healthy working feet are really hard to trim into bad shape because they just wear themselves correct again with work and movement. Cal has been footy on stones for his entire barefoot career. We use nice little euphemisms but make no mistake, a slightly sore foot is a slightly weak or a pathological foot. That’s why I would never call a horse sound unless it was truly sound without shoes: if the horse is sore when you take the shoes off, the shoes are disguising a problem. It took me a few years of looking at hoof photos to realise that Cal was a sub-clinical laminitic.

When I bought him his feet ran so far forward the whole foot sat in front on his legs, but he was sound as a pound in shoes! When he broke his carpal bone and we took the shoes off it took 3 full years to get a hoof that actually had hoof under the leg bones, and 4 years to get the heel bulbs in line with the middle of his cannon bones. The under run heels, the slipper like toes, the occasional growth ring, these were all subtle laminitic stigmata. Yet he had worked hard, team chased, hunted, evented, with the only sign of challenge being on very stony ground. So many people said I should just shoe him, as if that would solve all our problems, and that advice even came from some barefoot trimmers and vets.

Had he been shod, I might not have spotted the mild attack of laminitis until it was a full blown disaster.

I had brought him down to the house ready to compete at the weekend. I had ridden him in the school, bathed, cleaned tack and left him in the stable at the house for an early start. Normally when at the house they get Horsehage HiFi Haylage,

but our local shop had run out so I had bought some West Lancs Haylage instead. I gave him a good feed and a good big section of Haylage to last him overnight. The next day he was pointing a foot at me, and shifting around behind.

It took me a few days to twig what was going on: because one foot seemed to be worse I thought abscess first of all. And I was still feeding the West Lancs Haylage. It was only when I realised it was pure Ryegrass Haylage that I put two and two together. After a few days at the house no abscess had appeared and he wasn’t actually a welfare case so I moved him back to the field. He got better there but after 10days was still not looking rideable. He had palpable pulses in all 4 legs and was moving very slowly and appeared miserable.

I got the vet out, who agreed with me that it was laminitis, but very mild, to the extent that, I quote, “a lot of owners wouldn’t have noticed there was anything wrong”. He gave Cal a shot of i.v. analgesia which allowed me to get hoof boots on his front feet so he was comfortable enough to walk back to the house, and then to march him up the big hill. I kept him at the house, rationing every mouthful: no grass at all, a section of Hifi or a tiny feed very 4 hours and walking up the hill once or twice daily. All this strict diet and exercise was aimed to sharpen his insulin response again. He had Phytorigins Rescue Remedy which is a 5 day course, double dose PhytoGI, double dose Phytolean Plus for maximum antioxidants and a sachet Danilone twice daily.

http://phytorigins.co.uk/Phyto-Rescue-Remedy

After 4 days he was much improved, back to hacking out and schooling again at 10days. He went back to the now very dry sandy grass free track (thanks weather) on about day 5 (more to do with work than precise symptoms).

The vet offered to do a glucose stimulation test to see if it was definitely EMS- I have declined this. The blood test says it’s not Cushings, there is no really effective treatment for EMS other than really tight management which we do already, and there is a significant risk of laminitis from the stimulation test.

I now know that every mouthful counts, that I will never switch Haylage again for my own convenience, and that this horse needs to work every week, no matter how busy I am with my job.

It’s been a bad spring. I have another medical friend whose horse got laminitis because she was a bit busy with work and didn’t ride for a week: nothing else changed. And I have heard local tales of other big, fit horses in reasonable work who have succombed to the condition after a seemingly innocent change in diet or management. The grass this spring has been bonkers, wet and warm and then sunny is a great combination for really rich Cheshire cow grass. Our track looks totally bare now but it’s the scorching sun that has killed the green stuff the last couple of weeks, before that it was the horses munching away that kept the grass looking poor.

Do you check your horse’s pulses every day?

http://www.ironfreehoof.com/equine-digital-pulses.html

Shod or not, a palpable pulse might be the first sign of impending laminitis and feeling a change early might just save your horse from a full blown attack.

https://thehorse.com/111374/10-early-warning-signs-of-laminitis/

Do you watch every mouthful your horse eats?

Keeping a tricky barefoot horse sound, healthy and in full work is a sure way to turn into a feed geek; Paddy could eat more or less what he liked and still trot and canter on any stony surface in the forest.

Since having Cal my rudimentary knowledge of horse physiology and nutrition is now more or less at degree level; of course it helps that I am already an expert in human physiology so the proper equine textbooks are legible to me. I have tried every supplement on the market, tried every supposedly healthy bagged feed and have come around to the acceptance that maintaining a healthy hindgut is key, and that all is really required is hay, water, salt and enough variety in their environment to allow them to forage for what they need. in the absence of variety, supplements might be required and it’s the Phytorigins approach that makes the most sense to the cynical scientist in me.

Do you reduce the bucket feed if your horse is doing less work?

Cal isn’t on anything rich or high in protein or sugar, we use Agrobs, but I have cut down significantly from what I was feeding and will cut down even more if he has a quiet week. He wasn’t fat, but his condition hasn’t really changed on less food so I think feeding the minimum required to keep him fit is definitely the way to go. Even in a busy month, he will never be in hard work like a polo pony or a racehorse.

If wishes were horses

“If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride”.

As a child, all my wishes were for horses. All my dreams and all my games involved horses, and all my wishes were horses and all my prayers were for a horse of my own (just in case there was a kind deity out there who could dish out real life miracle horses).

If wishes were horses, then I would have ridden every single day of my childhood.

I did OK. I had some riding lessons aged 7, which stopped pretty quickly once my mum realised that this inconvenient obsession would not be cured by increased exposure. The bus to secondary school passed an equestrian centre, as well as Mill Hill Boys School. While all my friends were getting off the bus to flirt with real boys, I was racing down to the stables, mucking out in return for the privilege of a fleeting bareback ride, bringing the horses in from the field.

If wishes were horses…I wrote poems about horses, practised drawing horses, covered every exercise book with doodles of horses’ heads.

If wishes were horses, I would have had a full stable!

I wonder how the books we chose shaped our equestrian dreams?

I read/devoured/memorised the Colt from Snowy River series, the Black Stallion series, the Thunderhead trilogy, the Shantih series. My horsey idols all lived out, in fields on the moors, or on the range, were often ridden bareback, had their natural instincts and characters kept intact, and seemed to have a mystical connection with their human hero/ine.

I dreamed of jumping, and galloping, mane and hair flowing in the wind, communicating by mind meld, not of fighting, or struggling, or arguing with my horse to achieve results.

I didn’t dream of rosettes, or winning. Just of being out with my horses, day after day, enjoying freedom and fun.

My mum took me to see the Spanish Riding School in London in the 80s. In those days, they were still the bastion of correct classical training. The advanced work looked effortless, the horses appeared magical, the synergy between horse and rider invisible. Years later, when I started competing, and having ‘proper’ lessons, the difference between what I had seen that evening and what I was being told to do seemed completely incongruous.

I didn’t dream of pulling my horse’s head in, of making him rounder, of making him submissive. I had dreamed of a willing partner, of being able to ride with my seat, without force, without pain.

I didn’t dream of whipping my horse to make him do something. The theory that your horse needs to be more scared of you than of the fence is just nonsense. I want my horses to trust me, so when they see a scary fence they check in, ask is it OK, and then go for it because I say we can. And after good training, I want my horses to be so confident that when they see a scary fence, it isn’t scary because they have seen similar stuff before, been allowed to work it out, and learned that they can. In the long run, I want my horse to be saying “it’s OK mum, I’ve got this, let’s go”. We don’t get to that point by force, but by education.

Anna Blake wrote a fabulous blog about that process

https://annablakeblog.com/2018/03/09/the-middle-path-peaceful-persistence/

Anna writes with a lot of wisdom: her blogs contain life lessons as well as horse lessons. Most of us need life lessons first 😉

And most horse lessons are life lessons, in the end.

I do ride with a schooling whip, as did the masters, for communication to say “this hip”, “this shoulder”, “lift your belly”, or to see “hey, I’m talking to you”. A whip is never to be used for punishment, never against the horse. It’s a communication device, for very specific aiding moments.

‘Aider’- verb, French- to help, assist, support, to help to do

That’s what the aids should be…

I also do lots of exercises where the whips are used as flags in my hands to show floppy wrists, or held down behind a straight back. My horses tolerate all sorts of waving whips around, because they know the whip won’t hurt them, and also because they know intent. They know when the whip is something to do with them: pointing at a particular body part during in hand work for example, or when the whip is absolutely nothing to do with them.

I do also wear spurs, but again they are for refinement. I have done years of work on my legs, with many more years to go, so that I can give an aid for energy with the inside of my foot, not my heel or calf. That means I can use my spurs for specific aids- currently “Cal, lift your belly!” I am nowhere perfect- our work as a rider is never done, but I can choose, leg or spur?

I do jump in spurs, but was surprised to find that cross country times became much more achievable once I loosened my legs and learned to balance on my legs not grip with my calves. Cal’s hindleg could then come forward into the space allowed, his stride got longer and smoother, and hey presto, the magnificent half draught learned to gallop.

When I recall my early reading choices, It’s no surprise our horses live out, unrugged, in a herd, with their key needs catered for #friendsforagefreedom.

And a dog. Every horse should have a pet dog😂.

Our horses have 6 acres, so cannot be described as free range, but they have as much freedom and movement and equine free time as we can allow them. As well as ample forage, a field with an increasing number of plants, grasses and herbs to choose from, and plenty of life to watch.

Our summer Paddock Paradise style track along the bottom edge of the field

l’m not trying to tell anyone how to do things- we all find our own path and our own compromises. And we should all continue learning and examining our “truths” every day.

But what I would ask is that you look back to your childhood dreams of horses and just reflect on how close you are to those ideals? Did your wishes turn into the horses you dreamed of? Did the horses turn into happy, healthy, willing partners?

And did you turn into the owner your horse would dream of?

Would your horse pick you?

Cal and Lilly, our neighbour. Every horse deserves to be loved by a little girl- looks like Lilly is going to be Cal’s little girl…when she’s a bit bigger

Lilly is about to start riding lessons, at a local riding school where children aren’t given whips. I look forward to hearing about the ethical riding lessons as she learns the basics, properly.

Another ethical establishment – East Devon Riding Academy- blog regularly about their approach to teaching children the joys of horsemanhip.

http://www.ridingacademy.co.uk

Because who remembers falling in love with horses and then somehow, along the way, we are taught that it is OK to hit them, OK to tie their mouths tight shut, OK to force their heads down, rather than allow them to express their opinion about our riding?

When I dreamed of horses, my childhood dreams were full of sound, happy horses.

Now that I have learned to listen to the horses I have, to allow them a voice, an opinion and a good equine life of their own, now all my dreams are coming true.

And I hope Lilly’s will too.

Winter is coming…

Winter is coming…whether we like it or not. For the traditional horse keepers amongst you, this means months of mucking out in the dark, clipping, changing sodden rugs, riding for fitness in the dark or paying for indoor arenas.

Winter is coming, and the winter preparation for track kept horses is slightly different. Our field is about 6 acres. We have a summer track around the edge, a hard standing area for giant hay feeders and the middle is split into 3 paddocks. This summer, one paddock has been grazed by Gary’s TB, who needed extra weight and needed to be segregated from the others because they bullied him horribly. It turns out he has had Kissing Spines, and now his back has been injected, and he is moving better, he is allowed into the herd; presumable he doesn’t look like the weakest link anymore. That’s another story for another day though.

Winter is coming, which means the grass will finally be safe for the grass sensitive Cal to eat without going footsore. The other two paddocks have been left long to act as standing hay for winter. Our grass doesn’t really turn onto foggage as our weather generally is not cold or dry enough, but we had great success last year introducing them to the long grass one paddock at a time, until they had access to the whole 6 acres for the worst part of winter. Allowing wider access reduced the footfall in any one area, and thereby reduced the mud damage. A couple of the gateway gaps were trashed by spring but they have recovered really well over the summer. And the gravelled feed area proved a life saver last year: the feeders were easy to fill, the horses didn’t get mud fever, their feet were brilliant from standing and loafing on pea gravel. I’ve made a road from haylage store to feed area from old stable mats, eventually this will be stoned too.

The horses made their own gateways last year. This year the electric tape is staying up and electrified for now, but if they start barging through willy-nilly again, it will get unstrung and put away for winter. I’m not sure how well the solar energiser will work over winter!

Winter is coming, and it’s a good time to take stock.

Gary and I have had the most excellent year. We have continued the brilliant monthly clinic lessons with Patrice- Cal is getting stronger and more established in his work, Rocky got through his teenage tantrums, although we had a bit of outside help with that, and Beat settled in lovely and will be the most fabulous event horse if his KS come right. Cal and I have been to 2 British Riding Club Championships, both team trips with friends from the Exceptionally Cool Riding Club. The East Clwyd Riding Club is most excellent, and has been rightly shortlisted for the NAF Riding Club of the Year Award- Please vote here

The Horse Trials Championships were obviously the most fun; bonus was we had a season best dressage and a lovely double clear.

Previously known as sicknote, Cal managed to remain sound for a whole summer. I got really brave and took him down to the Dovecote Stables for 2 ridden lessons with the legendary Charles de Kunffy. Now I will admit, in my dreams I wanted it to be a breakthrough clinic where we got to clean changes. However, Charles is a genius at getting to THE thing; and the breakthrough turned out to be that there is no point doing all the funky stuff until his body submission issues are completely sorted. Many people who know him think Cal is an angel; he’s not hot, he doesn’t dance or jig or bronc, but he does just do this tiny brace in his neck, and fractionally lock his jaw, and he doesn’t ever yield his brain. So the Charles lessons turned out to be all about ensuring we get a good topline, with a lifted back, swinging shoulders and a soft lumbar back. And that’s OK, because when I take that horse to the harder work, that works much better too! Except for trot/canter transitions…if Cal can’t brace we can’t yet do them on demand…..more practise.

We have done 6 ODEs, including an unaffiliated 90 at Eland. Not bad for a full time surgeon! And finally we finished our summer season with the FOTH qualifier at Berriewood- first out on course for individual 3rd and a team win. It was at 80 level again, rather than the planned 90, but this last month has been mad busy so I didn’t feel ready to step up.

For those of you who haven’t noticed, this was all done without shoes. With 24/7 turnout on a track system.

Naughty turned out leg in the showjumping photo- much winter homework required!

Winter is coming, and the horses are getting furry. The working horses will get a shallow trace clip when they get really furry, just to enable us to ride them. I think the TB will need a rug, depending on how much coat he grows, but based on last year’s experience, the others won’t need a rug.

Winter is coming. I was musing the other day that we need to work out how much of what we traditionally do over winter is done for our human convenience, and how much is done for the horse’s benefit. Shoes exist for human convenience. Horses don’t need shoes, they need good feet. And good feet don’t come easily once they are brought into the sphere of human influence. Stables exist only for human convenience. Stables don’t make good feet. Clips are for humans really- people want to use their horses over winter and are taught they can’t do so unless the horse is clipped. Clips lead to rugs, and lead to stables being required. Horses can easily deal with temperatures from -5 to 25 degrees Celsius, if they have adequate forage, shelter and hair. As well as friends. Friends are crucial. When it rains, our horses huddle behind the hedge, or in the dip, taking it in turns to be on the outside. When it stops, they go for a mad 10 minutes play, get warmed up and then get back to eating. Forage ferments in the equine caecum, providing their own central heating system. They eat for about 16 hours a day, to trickle feed their caecum. Their fur can stand up, fluff out, the dense layers of unclipped fur resist rain beautifully and they are often completely dry underneath the herringbone pattern the rain forms in the long top hair. Mud is a great insulator, as is snow and ice if we get a proper cold spell. Our horses only really use the field shelters if it’s wet and windy, or nights like tonight, persistently wet with their full winter coat not quite through yet.

So our choice is to let them deal with winter as naturally as possible. We still ride regularly, with fluffy numnahs to prevent damp hair rubbing. We hack and school and jump and drag-hunt and do farm rides. I’m careful not to work them so hard that they overheat on warmer winter days. The horses cool themselves off perfectly mooching around the field after being worked. We feed ad lib unlimited haylage and grass, along with one hard feed a day. They have ample shelter and they have each other. And the natural lifestyle keeps them fit, in mind and body. It’s not always easy. It’s certainly not always convenient. But it is a valid choice, and our horses are the better for it.

And all we have to do is pooh pick and knock off the odd bit of mud.

Winter is coming. So what? Horses have been doing winter for millions of years, without us as well as with us. Here’s to winter training!

Targeted Equine Worming Programme in action

We have had a targeted equine worming programme in action since 2010. In 2013 a cool phone app was released that has allowed me to monitor my targeted equine worming programme in action. Following on from my last post, I thought it might be interesting for readers if I shared just one of our horse’s worming record over these last few years.

Paddy- 17 year old ISH

March 2013- new yard Ivermectin/Praziquantel

June 2013 test 50 eggs NO DOSE NEEDED

Sept 2013 test 150 egg

Tape weak pos DOSE DEFERRED to wait for frost

Dec 2013 encysted redworm Moxidectin/Praziquantel

March 2014 test 0 eggs NO DOSE NEEDED

Aug 2014 test 0 eggs

Tapeworm neg NO DOSE NEEDED

Dec 2014 encysted redworm Moxidectin

March 2015 test 50

Tapeworm neg NO DOSE NEEDED

July 2015 test 0 NO DOSE NEEDED

Nov 2015 Tape positive Ivermectin/Praziquantel

Feb 2016 encysted redworm Moxidectin

May 2016 test 0 NO DOSE NEEDED

Sept 2016 test 0 NO DOSE NEEDED

Tapeworm pos Praziquantel

DEC 2016 Will need worming for encysted redworm-

I will use Moxidectin as only moxidectin or febendazole deal with encysted redworm and there is well documented resistance to febendazole.

So there you have it- a real targeted equine worming programme in action. My testing dates aren’t perfect; life can get in the way for all of us. Looking at this record also made me realise that I have used a lot of Moxidectin (Equest). As this is the only wormer left for Strongyles with no recorded resistance in the UK or Ireland we should probably use it as sparingly as possible to preserve its’ effectiveness for the future. So I should use more straight Ivermectin, or even Febendazole or Mebendazole with a resistance test following dosing. By testing more or less regularly for tapeworm I have given 4 worming doses for Tapeworm out of a possible 8. By doing regular Faecal Egg Counts I have avoided 8 doses for redworm.

Why bother? Why not just worm and be done with it?

Well, wormers are essentially a poison- they are designed to kill worms but do also have other deleterious effects on the gut flora and the immune system. The horse’s hooves show event lines after worming, particularly with combination wormers, a sure sign that there is a systemic inflammatory effect reflected in the hooves.

Most horses don’t need regular worming. In a stable herd, 2/3 at least have a basic resistance to redworm and don’t build up high intestinal populations quickly. Why worm the horses that don’t have worms?

Emerging resistance will be a problem for all of us. In modern hospital there are superbugs which only a few select antibiotics can beat. Some of those select antibiotics were released years ago, unpopular initially because they were not particularly effective, and are now back in favour because their lack of widespread use meant that the common bugs didn’t get over-exposed to them and so didn’t mutate to resist their effects. Once resistance becomes a problem drug companies are less incentives to release new drugs 15 years ago a newly developed antibiotic would quickly sell a billion doses, now a new antibiotic is kept in reserve, to prevent resistance and to save the lives of those infected with multi-resistant organisms. There may well come a time where bowel cancer surgery becomes high risk again despite amazing technical advances because we cannot eliminate infection. The same will happen with wormers- new compounds are likely to be kept for best and as such are much less profitable and therefore slower to be developed and released.

Testing can be expensive. I pay £11.50 for FEC and £17.50 for Tapeworm saliva tests. If the horse then needs worming that month is expensive. But most of the time, testing is cheaper than just worming. It’s very unusual for more than 1 horse to need worming after testing. This year none needed worming in May, two of 4 didn’t need anything this time and the other 2 needed a dose for either redworm or tapeworm but not both.

I hope I have demonstrated that it’s worth thinking about a implementing a targeted equine worming programme.

Getting ready for a barefoot winter

Getting ready for a barefoot winter- are you ready?

Getting ready for a barefoot winter; because it can be a gruesome time when your horses live out in a herd in a field. Last year there was a fortnight when I didn’t actually see the horses in daylight at all; luckily we have a lady who pooh picks, necessarily a daytime actvity, and she helped to keep an eye on them. I remember taking flash photos on my phone at feeding time to check them over, as well as making good use of the phone torch option.

Getting ready for a barefoot winter; we have promised ourselves to be better prepared this year. We have put some pea gravel down around the hay feeder so Gill doesn’t have to do the gloopy mud dance with the wheelbarrow. We each slipped at least once in the mud last year, although there were no full festival style face plants. We have made a short track going onto the field from the gate for the haylage deliveries; the truck can drive on, drop the bales and they are stored in an electric fence square next to the gravelled feed area- luxury indeed. There is still a churned up area in the corner of the field from the tractor deliveries last winter.

We have done our autumn worm counts and saliva tests. Four horses had four different results. One clear, two weakly positive for tapeworm, one with a medium redworm count. Typically Con, the loan horse who was due to go home, was the clear one, and it was our three that needed treating. So two wormed with Equitape and one with Strongid- P. They will all get wormed again for encysted redworm once the temperature drops and we will worm count and saliva test again in Spring. Since we started doing targeted worming 3 years ago, I have only had to worm for tapeworm once about 18months ago and the two old horses have consistently low faecal egg counts. We saliva test twice a year and egg count three times a year. We use Westgate labs for all our test kits, resonably priced, fabulous service, very prompt resuts and great advice over the phone.

http://www.westgatelabs.co.uk/info

Rocky is 4 now and still seems to have a susceptibility to redworm; I guess he will be the one in the herd that often needs worming. By testing and doing targeted worming we are doing our bit to slow the spread of drug resistent parasites in our area.

Apparently there is an ELISA test for encysted redworm in development: in theory we could get to a situation where none of the horses need worming for years at a time once that is available.

We have also weight-taped all the horses and, a great suggestion from a friend, I also have a selection of condition photos to allow for comparison as winter drags on.

And finally, we have acquired a new horse. Gary has an ex-racer called Beat to go hunting on. He tried him with 3 shoes on, the horse then arrived with no back shoes and actually seems to be coping quite well. We will aim to transition him in Spring once hunting is over, as Gary wants to crack on and have some fun first.

Rocky is cantering under saddle and stomping around the forest. Cal has had some foot X-rays and a combined consultation with a trimmer and a holistic barefoot friendly vet. I’m still porcessing all the information and gathering more advice to see if we can come up with new ideas to get his feet going better.

Spot the shiny new Scoot Boot on the other foot 🙂

And the super Equisafety Mercury jacket- my favourtie piece of equatrian clothing. No one can say they haven’t seen you!!

So lots of stuff to report on over the next few weeks I hope.

Getting ready for a barefoot winter- bring it on!!

Tag: Paddock paradise

The perfect barefoot trim; Keeping the Ridden Horse Barefoot

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Of Course the Environment Matters- keeping the ridden horse barefoot

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Turn out versus living out

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Another self trimming horse

Barefoot beginnings

Diet

Exercise

Environment

Trim

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Grow your own….

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Big fit horses in reasonable work can get laminitis too…

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If wishes were horses

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Winter is coming…

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Targeted Equine Worming Programme in action

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Getting ready for a barefoot winter

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Barefoot beginnings

Diet

Exercise

Environment

Trim

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