Culinary courage: Could diverse tastes build braver horses?
The science behind the intuition As it is for humans, change is a constant in the life of virtually every horse. They will routinely be expected to cope with new situations, adjust to new people and get along with new horses, often with nothing in their life up to that point to prepare them for […]
Benefits of Horse Track Systems in Fire-Prone Areas
What is a Horse Track System? A Horse Track System is a potential layout for an equestrian property as defined by Jaime Jackson in his book Paddock Paradise: A guide to Natural Horse Boarding. The concept has grown in popularity all over the world, for its advantages in managing the growing number of horses with […]
Is it possible that traditional stables and paddocks are no longer the best option for our horses?
Imagine you bought a ride-on lawn mower to cut the grass on your property. Provided you serviced it every now and again, there’d be no reason to think that it wouldn’t keep running for ages with no issues, would there? If it did keep breaking down, you could keep fixing the broken parts or you […]
What is a horse track system?
The what, when, why, where, who and how The what A horse track system is a style of horse keeping and property management that’s gaining in popularity around the world. The design of the system is based on the natural movement patterns of horses and almost every other browsing/grazing animal of the African savannah, compared […]
The Maths of Unlimited Hay
DISCLAIMER: This article is written from my perspective as the owner of two horses used for pleasure riding. It’s not intended to be taken as a recommendation for every horse, combination of horses or owner’s situation, rather, a different perspective on a subject that most owners have to think about to a greater or lesser […]
The relationship between temperature and distance travelled
Over the course of an 8 month period, I tracked the movement of a pony in a couple of different management settings – stable yard, small paddock, small track, large track and recorded the information, which can be found here. While I was collecting tracking information for particular areas, I noticed something quite unexpected. As […]
Results of 8 month movement tracking exercise
This was an informal research project, conducted and reviewed by me for the purpose of establishing estimates and trends, to use in decision making for my own horses. I used the measurement tools I had available to me, and interpreted the data in the most impartial and logical way that I could. What started me […]
How to understand what a horse is trying to tell you – a guide for inexperienced horse handlers
Please note: This isn’t an exhaustive explanation of the topic. It’s a 7 minute speech that I gave at the Toastmasters Club I joined last year to get less rubbish at public speaking, so what’s in here is what would fit in the time I had available. Anyone who has been around horses will tell […]
How keeping horses on a track could help in the fight against climate change
Please be aware that I’m not a scientist, so what follows is a simplistic explanation of the principles as I understand them and as they apply to the climate of Western Australia. In the previous article, we looked at how keeping horses on horse track systems might be better for horses in the long term […]
Ideas for making your hay go further this year
This year in Western Australia most horse owners are asking themselves the same question. How they’re going to make the hay they’ve got or can get, last until next season’s harvest becomes available. For the first time in a long time, everybody’s having to make hay buying decisions based on what they can get, not […]