Everyone has this impression that you can just leave a horse to roam and all is well. They will take care of themselves. Though this is the case in some horses, not all of them can be just let go to do whatever they want. Some horses need to be taken care of and watched like a child.

    In nature, predators make herds stronger by taking out the weak of the herd. If a horse doesn’t take care of itself the horse becomes “wolf food”, just the opposite of human hunters. Humans go for the biggest and strongest of animals thereby weakening the herd. You could say humans continue weakening herds through their breeding selection as well.   

    Domesticated horses are not the same way as wild ones. Humans breed for looks or abilities to work. They really don’t look at natural strengths or weaknesses. Plus the domesticated horse doesn’t worry much about predators. The most a domesticated horse worries about is how humans treat them. So the domesticated horse can slowly learn after generations not to take care of themselves.

    Even wild horses, once you start to feed them, you pretty much have to take care of them. You don’t even have to touch the horse to start to ruin its natural ways. The wild horse forages with its hooves to find food. Once humans start to feed the horse, the horse stops foraging and the hooves start to look like “elf shoes” before long with splits and all.

    It’s not just longs hooves either; horses get into habits that can cause all kinds of problems, like over eating, eating poisonous plants, other hoof problems sometimes referred to as chronic problems. Chronic problems are related to horses doing something to themselves, over and over again. Doesn’t make sense that the reason why it is a chronic problem is because the horse has a habit?

    The most common problem I see when it comes to habits is thrush and other bacteria problems. The horse gets a habit of cooling its feet off in mud and/or muck. Even if you only have one mud puddle in your whole 50 acres, that horse will find it and stand in it with one foot or maybe two either fronts or hinds or maybe all four feet. This habit happens daily. It could be all day long. You can bleach and water your horse’s hooves ever day and the bacteria will never go away. Why because you kill the bacteria and then the horse goes stand back in it. That is a never ending circle.

     To fix the problem you have to start at the root of the problem. Somehow you have to stop the horse from going to the mud and muck then, treat the bacteria. You have to baby sit that horse. Sometimes people just don’t have the time, money or environment for a horse. In a case such as that the best thing to do is get rid of the horse. If you can’t take care of it find one you can. Not all horses are the same. Some horse work good in a place full of mud but some don’t. Try to find the horse that naturally works well for you or be prepared to put extra time and effort into taking care of a horse.

    How do you know if you may have to “babysit” your horse? If you have a chronic problem of some of sort you have to babysit. If there is a chronic problem there is a habit that horse is doing to harm itself. No, you can’t make the stop a habit by allowing it to really harm itself. You will just end up with a big farrier bill and/or vet bill and the horse will continue its habit.

     When it comes to chronic bacteria you have to keep the horse away from all mud and muck. The horse must have nothing but a clean dry surface to stand on. Stalls with lots of sawdust or some other kind of absorbing material and no wetness what so ever in the pasture or limit the time in pasture to an hour or two then back to the stall will help. I know a lot of work but some horses’ demand that much work to keep them sound and again if you can’t keep up, just look for another horse that works better for you.

    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 subscribe to my blog too. Just enter your email in the subscribe box to the right.