Haldane Icelandic Horses

20/08/2025

We are very thankful to the “peanut gallery” aka the alpacas, sheep and goats for helping the horses get used to other critters. “Weird Al” the alpaca adores the horses and they seem to be very affectionate with him too.

14/08/2025

Some highlights from Block 4 at ACEP.
Busy days and so much information being shared by the fabulous lecturers.
Loving the opportunity to be a student and slowly collecting knowledge and improving my trimming. 🌸

12/08/2025

Back from another awesome week Block at Australian College of Equine Podiotherapy. Lots of trimming practice with ponies, donkeys and the big horses. With great lectures on functional anatomy, biomechanics and plenty of awesome learning activities. As always our lecturers are brilliant, fellow students more and more like family and just so grateful for the wonderfully patient horses. Am enjoying it all so much.

24/06/2025

Interesting article for those trying to get their horses through the drought.
Hopefully the rain this week will make a difference.
Thinking of everyone trying their best to get through and keep horses fed.

🤗🤗🤗
Amy 🌸

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1CM4mmamib/?mibextid=wwXIfr

Drought Feeding: 🌾Lucerne Hay + Teff Hay by Dr John Kohnke

Many horse owners in Southern States faced with drought conditions are obliged to feed hay to paddocked horses to provide them with roughage when pastures are eaten out. Under drought conditions, it is good practice to sacrifice one paddock to hold the horses, which although it will be eaten completely out, at least adjacent paddocks will not be affected by overgrazing. The drought holding paddock can be re-established with new pasture after the break of the season.

Under current drought conditions, often only lucerne hay grown interstate or under irrigation is available. Leafy lucerne can provide a source of energy, good quality protein (17% crude protein) and amino acids, calcium, magnesium and other trace-minerals. However, providing lucerne as roughage source is not only expensive, but over 4 biscuits daily may exceed the daily protein needs of grazing resting and retired horse. Owners may have reduced access to grassy hay, but over recent years, teff hay is becoming more plentiful and at a reasonable cost in most areas.

Whilst teff hay is popular as a low “sugar’ alternative to grassy hay for sugar sensitive EMS affected horses to reduce the risk of laminitis, it can vary greatly in Non-Structural Carbohydrate (NSC) content from 6-14%, depending on its maturity when harvested and during end of season dry conditions.

Lucerne has a NSC content of around 7-8% and rarely exceeds 10% as it is a legume, so it is safe for sugar sensitive, EMS affected horses and ponies. It can be fed in conjunction with Teff Hay to reduce the overall protein intake, but Teff Hay should be tested and tagged to state its NSC content for EMS affected horses if it provided more than 50% of the total roughage intake. As a tropical grass, Teff Hay also contains a lower level of calcium relative to its natural content of calcium binding oxalate compounds, which can be corrected by feeding it with high calcium containing lucerne hay. Small amounts of 2-3 kg daily of Teff Hay have no adverse effect on the uptake of calcium of a 450-500 kg horse, when feeding half and half of lucerne and Teff Hay exceeding this amount each a day, ideally is best to feed one hay in the morning and the other hay in the evening to minimise the chance of calcium binding by oxalates in a mixed hay blend.

If other forms of grassy hay low in calcium are offered, then a daily supplement of Kohnkes Own Cal-Xtra is recommended.
Don’t forget that for performance and show horses, Teff Hay may contain a natural source of synephrine, as detectable drug which increases the heart rate and is banned for use in competitive horses of all disciplines. It must be removed from the ration at least 7 days prior to competition for this reason.

23/06/2025

Although we’ve had a bit of rain here it’s still very much a “green drought”. All the horses, cows and the peanut gallery ( sheep,alpacas & goats) are enjoying me dropping off hay to them each day. It’s stretching the hay out a bit better than just giving them the few precious round bales to adlib. They weather has been very mild and lots of sunshine ☀️ which has been amazing. Looking forward to the forecast rains coming.

05/06/2025

“Weird Al” alpaca loves the horses. The little boys weren’t sure at first but he won them over!

05/06/2025

Need a recharge? Or need a good dose of Icelandic Horse goodness?
Renska at HestaViska has a beautiful day planned with her herd coming up soon.
13th June Arthur’s Creek ( Melbourne)
🌸

I still have some spots available for this lovely day.

05/06/2025

So a fun podcast with Icelandic news delivered in English with a great sense of humour.
Sharing this one as its Icelandic Horse related. At about 7min 40 sec in the youtube podcast they talk about Icelands oldest horse at 36.

https://grapevine.is/news/2025/05/26/iceland-roundup-valur-polly-visit-old-horse-socialists-pickpockets-tanks-more/?fbclid=IwQ0xDSwKuAUpleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHq4t2rB_mbNE32ZwjN1TJXuxKQhzmhhWW0NOfJjSNEN27Zgem-NzfycfovQs_aem_lnCYqKetgOSB2-N0duquzQ

The Reykjavík Grapevine’s Iceland Roundup brings you the top news with a healthy dash of local views. In this episode,...

24/05/2025

We had a great week getting animals and yards moved around so we were ready for branding and microchip day yesterday. Our 11 - one and a bit year olds got their freeze brands. A viking ship on one shoulder and their number on the other. All little superstars. And the 8 babies had microchips so that they can be registered on the international database of purebred Icelandic horses.

17/05/2025

Aaah rain! Finally a bit of rain last night and today. Enough to create some puddles and settle the dust. Horses had knocked the rain gauge off the fence so not sure how much we got!

13/05/2025

Back from another amazing week at the Australian College of Equine Podiotherapy. Block 3 is done and dusted which means we’re half way through the year!

My head is full of information!

Got to trim my first donkey! Such cute feet!

Massive thanks to the amazing lecturers for pouring their lifetimes of learning into us. And the ever so patient and generous horses we get to trim.

Having such awesome fellow hoof nerds to share the experiences of each block has been the icing on the cake! Beautiful to think that these people are so keen to make a difference in the future of hoof and horse care.

Back on the farm I’m pencilling in many days of pony pedicures.

13/05/2025

Icelandic Horses in the mist. Wishing you all a beautiful day. 🌸