01.22.07

Horse Paddock Paradise winter New Hampshire

Posted in Horses for the horse crazy at 3:33 pm by petArtist Cmoses

Hoping to improve our barefoot horses’ self-maintenance and self-conditioning, I recently read Jaime Jackson’s book Paddock Paradise and am adapting his theories to a New Hampshire winter. He advocates a paddock arrangement designed to encourage horses to move a great deal (healthier for the horses and for their hooves) and to restrict the amount of fresh grass available (also healthier for them.)

Yearling Perch/Arab walking on track in New Hampshire snowstorm.

Jackson’s TRACK concept is meant to get domestic horses to imitate behavior of horses in the wild, who travel repeatedly and almost continually along established routes or tracks. To do this, he sets up a 15-20 foot wide path around the inside perimeter of a typical pasture, by using an interior (electric) fenceline which can be adjusted as necessary for an optimum track width for the number of horses.

Horses are motivated to move around and around this track by various areas of interest placed along it– such as water, sand piles and mud spots to roll in, trees, resting areas– and also by spreading their hay out along the length of it. Apparently horses are quite inclined to keep moving on a track just BECAUSE it is fairly narrow and restricted. Reports are that formerly-pastured horses start moving on their own (directionally) and do MUCH more walking when placed on a track.

20 year old Arabian mare moves around a lot searching for grass under snowcover.

With our frozen solid ground, we are unable in winter to install any new fencing to build a track right now; instead, we modified our horsekeeping methods, trying to thereby increase their movement. Our turnout area lends itself to this; it is about 1/4 mile long straight-line distance (a series of connected paddocks and pastures and some woods,) with the barn/shelter at one end and the horses’ favorite large pasture at the other end.

To increase their time available for movement, we started giving our three horses 24/7 turnout (we used to restrict them overnight to a small paddock.) They are walking a lot and running on frozen ground with hard pack ice under a light snow cover. They get their hay and light grain fed at the barn twice daily (they come to a ringing bell at feed time.) In between hay feedings AND OVERNIGHT they travel to the far pasture where they spend their time pawing through the snow and ice for dead grass. They chew bark off trees, nibble underbrush and acorns, run and play, posture with neighbor horses, and return to the barn for shelter IF and WHEN they want to (which happens rarely even when temps are well below freezing.) They have to return to the barn to get water.

Yearling and mom stand in pea stone gravel in their run-in shelter (November ‘06.)

Pea stone gravel is also advocated by natural hoof trimmers to both stimulate growth and wear hoofwalls, and to help toughen the soles and frogs. We installed a large 12×20 pea stove gravel area 4-5 inches deep in the run-in shelter at the barn, plus 3-4 small areas of pea stone in gateways and around their water trough. We feed out their hay on the pea gravel, and if they do feel like sheltering, they choose to mill around on the pea stone under the shed roof rather than go into their (open-doored) stalls.

FYI, our three horses– ages 20, 3 and a yearling, arabian and perch/arab crosses– are never blanketed and have healthy insulating winter coats of fur; they are also very compatible with each other. I admit that occasionally, when around zero degrees with roaring winds, we have made ourselves feel better by stalling them overnight. Freezing rain has not been a problem, it sheds off and does not penetrate their coats.

Time will tell how well our horses’ hooves maintain themselves in these winter conditions. They are acting happy as clams. Of course their hooves do not grow nearly so fast in winter as in summer. This past summer and fall, they maintained well enough on an 8-week trimming schedule. Then they had mostly 24/7 turnout but on more restricted space of grass, woods, some hardpack and rocky paths, and often mud. Our using them lightly on asphalt helped wear their hooves as well.

I hope in spring and summer we will add tracks around our pastures a la Paddock Paradise and keep them moving, as many other horseowners’ experiments are indicating that this track concept can work.

See all the updated blog info on using peastone gravel for horsekeeping… and be sure to look for other folks’ COMMENTS at the end of these posts.

For related stories, see:
barefoot
turnout

NOTE: See my Horse Blogs/Links for other peoples’ articles on paddock paradise-type turnout and barefoot hoofcare.
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Connie Moses– Blog: petArtistWithPeaches
website: PortraitsWithHorses.com (horse and pet portraits)

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