Having a horse is a huge responsibility and caring for it does take up a lot of time and before adopting a horse you need to ensure you know the essential things you’ll need to do to have a happy and healthy horse.
Hoof care
Caring for you horses hooves are really important as if you don’t the horse can grow uncomfortable and will have issues with their hooves over time, here are some steps you should follow to ensure that doesn’t happen;
- Regularly trim your horses hooves
- Use a hoof pick to remove rocks, turf or other objects lodged in the hoof
- Apply hoof moisturisers during dry weather or when hooves are brittle or cracking
- Provide good nutrition and commercially available hoof supplements to improve hoof quality
- Dry off the hooves after work and apply hoof oil to provide a protective barrier against excessive moisture.
Exercise
Exercise is very important in a horses life as it is part of caring for a horse, it is not acceptable to keep them confined without providing open areas for exercise. Here are some tips you can follow to ensure your horse has healthy exercises.
- Warming your horse up before activity is really helpful, starting with a stroll then a trot, slowly bringing it into the exercise.
- Riding you horse is a great way to exercise you horse, galloping too
- After big exercises you need to cool down your horse, before another, taking it for a 1-3 mile walk
- Jumping activities for horses are also beneficial for its health
- Get your horse toys, horses love pushing a big ball around
- Horses can actually go swimming, and they quite enjoy it#
Diet
Horses have a very easy diet which primarily consists of natural roughage such as pasture grasses, hay and forage, here are some key points of a horses diet;
- Hay, grass and grain are common components of a horses diet
- Good pasture contains most of the nutrition a horse needs
- Silica in pasture grass is important for dental health
- Salt, concentrates and fruit or vegetables are great for them – horses love carrots!
Teeth
Horse’s dental care are very important and they should have a dentist check at least once a year, or more if they’re not properly cared for. Here are things you need to look out for which could cause mouth discomfort for horses;
- Quidding, which is when they spit out half-chewed food
- leaning on one rein or headtilting
- Any sun of gum disease, such as, bad breath, dark green nasal discharge, face swelling around the sinus or lower jaw
- Refusing to take the contact
- Erratic/changed behaviour when ridden, such as rearing, head tossing, running away from the rein contact
Worm Control
Horses can get a variety of different internal and external parasites throughout their lifetime, having a low worm burden will have little or no effect of a horse’s health, a high parasite burden can cause serious health problems if untreated. Things to do to prevent worm damage;
- Keep horse’s pasture clean and use a targeted approach to de-worming
- Test each horse before making the decision to de-worm them
- Testing the horse will allow treatment of horses who need it
- ‘Blanket’ de-worming has resulted in parasites becoming resistant to many of the drugs we use
General Health
Many things could happen to your horse when you least expect it, whether it’s injuries or illnesses, and you will need to call a vet to your yard to asses and treat your horse. It is important that you monitor your horse carefully as any of the above and below could happen, this will ensure a long and good life for your horse.
Mental Wellbeing
Horse owners are most content when their horse is happy and healthy, horses can have good and bad mental health just like humans can, but what makes you happy might not align with what makes a horse happy. There are three F’s to ensure your horses mental health is at its best;
- Friends – horses need friends/ companionships and if you only have one horse, to ensure it doesn’t get lonely you need to make sure the horse can at least have neighbours.
- Freedom – Horses need a lot of space to feel free and roam around freely and mirroring how they would live in the wild.
- Forage – Contains digestive fibre broken down by the microbial population in the hindgut to provide energy, also helps meet the horse’s psychological need to spend a proportion of their time chewing.