Once you take the leap of faith and move your horses from full-time livery service to keeping them in your own backyard it truly is, hard to go back. Not because the boarding barn owner wouldn't be happy to see you, but because once you've taken your horse care matters into your own hands you quickly learn the nuances of all aspects of horse care matters, and learn they are more important than you ever imagined.
 |
| Early Days At WVH North |
Blessed with my husband being as avid a dressage personage as I am, the notion of keeping horses at home was never far from our minds when we moved from the U.K. to the U.S.A. way back when. With his vast experience training horses and my lesser experience with formal riding education but lots of 'hands-on' experience spent riding and working in foxhunting, elite showjumping and horse breeding yards in England, our combination of experience worked well.
 |
| Gambol's Georgy Girl - one of our WVH DWB homebreds |
As you age toward milestone birthdays as I am right now, I find myself reflecting on the ups and downs of our career horse breeding, training, selling, competing and look with a cynical eye at the level of care some horse boarding facilities offer to those that utilize them in today's marketplace.
I have spent countless hours at boarding barns during our clinic giving experiences, shopping trips for horses and training times. Both here and abroad.
 |
| Hubbie Paul - Antonio Monteiro Borba's barn, Portugal |
I have seen great horse boarding operations, good operations and those that I question and would never return to again.
Horse boarding barns don't have to be fancy to offer good care.Take the barn (Stal Andre) close to Lisbon, of the noted Antonio Monteiro Borba, (incidentally the barn once home to the master Nuno Oliveria who began his apprenticeship there). The horses are happy and healthy and the care excellent, but the barn is aged.
It is rather beautiful in its own way, though now set amid the encroaching development of suburban Lisbon including low-income housing and questionably safe neighborhoods. An island oasis for horse people close to the capital seeking horse time that does a good lesson business. Though of course, not the grand space of Sintra where the owner keeps his main horse stock.
It still amazes me that in today's very connected world where educational resources are so readily available, poor horse care is still an issue at some horse barns.
Recently a family member who lives some distance away in Massachusetts, and has no provision to keep her horse herself, had her mare subjected to poor management at the barn that included both hay feed issues and water requirements during winter weather.
The property owner (who had for some almost inexplicable reason decided to offer horse boarding given her own lack of knowledge on topic), bought poor quality hay which the mare in question did not find palatable. The horse left hay on the ground in the pasture, and the horse began to lose weight. The water trough meantime, was left frozen with no heater or any attempt to break the ice by the barn owner. Though in the cold weather the trough soon became the ice brick it was destined to become anyway, so the mare owner had to trudge buckets of water back and forth to water her 'rough boarded' equine.
There is rough board and then there is rough board. Rough board does not give the boarding barn the opportunity to not provide basic services unless of course, that was the initial arrangement. That was not the original arrangement here, but soon became the 'go to' everyday, forcing the horse owner to rather sensibly, move!
Horses that are noticed to be underfed on a property will soon become a well-earned target for attention from educated equine aficionados that understand that unless there is a good reason for thin horses ( such as a rehabilitation of a rescue horse etc.), action should be taken to address the issue.
But the horse that stands out in the winter weather without a proper hay or water supply, whose owner then has to step in to try and identify why the horse is losing weight (which was not immediately apparent as the hay seemed to be present), can be a challenge to address. In this case the barn owner determined as the horse was leaving the hay it should receive less hay which simply made the situation worse.
Hay is a difficult commodity for some to resource and without a certain amount of knowledge the quality of the hay can be hard to determine. Admittedly if a horse is apparently 'wasting' what is perceived as good hay, it is easy to think maybe less should be fed and make the horse clear it up.
In today's hay market the tremendous number of 'add-on' sprays and chemical preservatives that farmer's use to bale hay to conserve labor, fuel and time needed on the field for hay to dry and cure using Mother Nature as the only drying agent, all offer the opportunity for a discerning horse to snub hay. Most of these 'add-ons' are not tested for safety in regard to ingestion by horses, and the equine's delicate microbiome can certainly be easily upset, leading to equine gastric ulcers and other digestive issues, including the dreaded colic.
 |
| A great article on topic from Grand Meadows' Nick Hartog |
There is a lot to learn about hay, as I explain often to horse folks. You can listen in to my podcast here - my appearance on Stall and Stable Network -
The obvious false economy of buying cheaper hay that is of less quality notwithstanding, there truly is no good reason to deny any animal water.
In Britain, a nation where everything imaginable is heavily regulated, horse barn boarding businesses have to be licensed. Their operations are scrutinized and routinely inspected by the authorities. And as a believer in freedom from overzealous interference from government I am not advocating a similar mind-set be adopted here in the U.S.
But should there be something other than the power of market forces that could be adopted to highlight and help manage barns that set themselves up as horse barn boarding options? Consider that a neophyte horse owner would easily be ambushed if they began keeping their horse at such a poorly run equine establishment as mentioned above and their horse became sick or even died as a result of such negligent care. It is a tough question to answer.
Despite the work that keeping horses at home certainly encompasses it would be hard for me to go back to risking my beloved horses' care to someone else. I realize that being able to keep your horses at home yourself truly is a luxury, and one I appreciate everyday. When we first bought horses in the U.S.A. and faced a similar dilemma of horse care options and had to use a boarding barn, that livery barn also had times where water was not provided to the horses and turnout options were limited, so I am aware first hand of how difficult keeping your horse at livery can be to manage.
I appreciate that horse barn boarding facility owners find it hard to build a prosperous business. But cutting corners is never the way to succeed in any type of industry, and the horse business is no different. There are good barns and bad ones, make sure as a horse owner that is seeking livery for your horse you know the difference. If you find yourself in a bad barn, then do as this horse owner did and move your horse somewhere else promptly.
Paying a bit more for peace of mind is always worth it.
 |
| Remember - Happy Horse - Happy Owner |
Comments
Post a Comment