Believe it or not most of the problems your horse has are due to the environment the horse is in. Most people don’t believe it but it is true.  The common problems on my website farrierfletcher.com they are all common because they are all environmental issues that are common when it comes to horses. There are other problems that I don’t get into because it falls more to the other health issues other than movement and feet.

 One good common problem is the heaves. Heaves is when a horse coughs like the horse is going to die or have an asthma attack. Heaves are mainly caused by dust in the lungs. If you have horses out on dirt roads and there is lots of dust in the air constantly, guest what? Your horse is going to get the heaves. Same with the hay, if you get hey from a back road with dust all over, your horse is going to get heaves. Feeding round bales will do the same but it doesn’t matter if you bale the hay in central park in New York City, there is dust because the large amount of hay drying in the bale. Yep Drying hay makes dust. The smaller the bale the less dust you have in the bale.

Dried hooves are one of the biggest problems I see. It seems like every horse has them sooner or later. On the web page I talk about hoof oil to help keep the hooves from drying out but, I’ve seen horses go from completely dry, cracked, brittle hooves to the most well conditioned hooves I’ve seen in days when you take a horse fetlock high in mud to nice lush green grass pasture. I think it is the oils in the grass constantly in contact with the hooves that make them so conditioned.

The big thing is getting the horse out of the mud and muck. That’s the biggest thing you can do. If you have small acres stalls are what you need with hand walk to turn pasture.  But horses can’t live in the pasture with small acres. They will just tear it up too fast. Feed and water the horses in the stalls and move the water around a lot in the pasture. The horses will gather where ever food and/or water are. You leave it in one place guess what, mud and muck? It sounds like a lot of work. Well owning animals are. If you just like to look at horses out your window get a picture. Don’t let the animals suffer.

If you have large acres, you want to split the land up and rotate the land. You still need to move the food and water around to prevent the horses from hanging around in one spot too much.  Shelter still needs to be clean daily. I find wood floors make things easy to clean in lean-tos.  Horses can live out in large acres with out mucking it up but you still need to take care of them.  One of the drawbacks to large acres is that you have to go get your horse. Plus, in wide open space anything can happen. Wood chuck holes, predators, many things you can control because of the distance.

A lot more injuries and accidents happen to pasture horse vs. stalled horses. I’m not saying one is better than the other, I’m just stating a fact. It all depends on your life style which is better for you and your horses. Remember it’s all about the horse. I am a big fan of stalls. I feel it makes me give more attention to the horse because if I don’t do anything then the horse is stuck in a stall all day which makes me feel bad. Other people just won’t care. For them pasture is the better option.

 I hope you have enjoyed reading this blog. Please fill free to comment, tweet, facebook, etc. This information is for all. I only ask that you make sure that the author me Gene Fletcher is put on all the copies. Thank you and if you have suggestions on topics please fill free to contact me. You can sign up to be notified of new blogs by entering your e mail to the right. This is so you don't have to keep looking to see if I posted a new blog. Again thank you for reading.