Aberdeenshire Mobile Livery

20/06/2025

🙌🙌

I’ve done a lot of cruel things to horses in the past that I deeply regret.

It wasn’t out of malice, it was because it was what I was taught to do from the time I was a child.

However, my emotional regulation was poor and I often took out my frustration on horses and would justify harsh corrections by saying the horse was “being naughty” and “can’t get anyway with that.”

It led to a lack of self reflection because I could conveniently blame the horse for disrespecting me or claim that they knew better and were doing it on purpose.

I hit horses when they were bad. I was taught to knee horses in the gut if they bloated while girthing. I’ve punished horses for reactions that were out of pain or fear.

Because I viewed the unwanted behaviour as a bad thing that needed to be eradicated immediately rather than the symptom of the horse’s emotional state.

Dominance in horse training is very common.

Equestrians are often told things like “you need to be the herd leader” and “you have to show him who’s boss or he’ll walk all over you.”

All sorts of training gadgets, supplements, bits and equipment are also sold as solutions to problems.

People are often encouraged to ride through problem behaviours no matter what.

This focus on viewing unwanted behaviours as the horse trying to disrespect you turns the horse into your adversary when they aren’t being obedient.

Respect is then viewed as synonymous with obedient.

The horse doesn’t get to communicate as a partner when this is the case.

Horses get “loud” in their behaviour for a number of reasons.

Oftentimes, those reasons involve unmet needs and/or the handler missing earlier signs of stress.

Then, when stress builds to a boiling point, the horse reacts and this is viewed as unacceptable and punished accordingly.

I pushed horses into states of high stress for years and then punished them when they acted out.

I expected horses to be predictable and obedient even when I wasn’t meeting their needs.

I kept my first horse stalled for the majority of the time and then became frustrated when he would bolt with me under saddle and spook at everything.

It was due to a lack of knowledge and a lack of emotional control on my part.

And for years, I resisted the information that exposed the gaps in my understanding of horses because it felt threatening and I had a lot of deep seated guilt and shame.

But then, little by little, my perspective changed.

Once I knew better, I started to do better.

Making mistakes with horses doesn’t mean you’re doomed to repeat them forever.

People can and do change.

We don’t have to let guilt and shame overwhelm us to the point where we defend our behaviour and refuse to change out of fear of being vulnerable.

A lot of the people advocating for horse welfare the loudest right now are doing so because they’ve made a lot of the same mistakes.

You aren’t doomed to be a terrible person because you’ve been unkind to your horse.

What matters the most is how you self reflect and make adjustments once you do know better.

This is why I would love to see the industry adapt to be more horse welfare focused and normalize more education on horse behaviour and operant conditioning.

Most people don’t start out in horse sports wanting to harm horses.

Everyone is capable of changing and adapting.

Modernizing the horse world with an evidence informed perspective on horse welfare and training will benefit the horses AND people.

I am incredibly grateful for the people who relentlessly shared information that helped lead to me recognizing how I had gone wrong.

While I denied it initially, fought with them and commented in the same ways as many do in my comments sections now, their words planted seeds.

Seeds that matured into a major paradigm shift.

So, if fear of being labelled as a bad person is holding you back from being honest with yourself about toxic behaviour patterns, don’t let it.

The commitment to doing better by your horses is a noble journey and making that choice speaks for your love of horses.

Growth is sometimes messy and no one is born perfect.

I don’t advocate for welfare because I’ve always been this way.

I advocate for it because I have been on the other side and I wish I had learned earlier.

Top photo is me on my Arabian gelding at ~ age 15 (2011)

Bottom is Milo and me in 2024.

20/04/2024

It’s important to remember if we are grazing our horses on short over grazed grass we must must must provide hay!!

20/04/2024

Friday focus…feeding in spring and summer!

I always advise feeding a balancer or vitamin and mineral supplement all through the summer months as the summer grass will not provide a balanced diet and there will be vital nutrients missing. This is where I usually get comments saying that ‘they have never fed in the summer or that they never feed a balancer or vitamin and mineral supplement and that their horse is ok’! They may be ‘ok’, but we know that ensuring our equines have all the nutrients they need is essential for good basic health. A balanced diet with all the vitamins, minerals and trace elements they need is really important to ensure all body systems have what they need to function as they should. It is easier than ever to provide our equines with all their bodies need and to ensure they have balanced diets, so I really do not understand why anyone would not want to!

This also includes the good doing types or overweight horses and ponies! Just because a horse or pony is overweight, it does not mean they do not need nutrients. ‘He’s / she’s fat, they do not need any feed’ is what I hear frequently! This is absolutely not the case at all, they still need vitamins and minerals just like any other horse or pony!

It is even more important if you are soaking hay over the summer and they have no access to grass or are on restricted grazing; you can’t take everything out and put nothing back in! But even with access to grass and with good quality hay, vital nutrients will still be missing, so providing a good quality vitamin and mineral supplement or balancer will bridge that gap and ensure their body is still getting the nourishment needed for overall health and well-being.

28/02/2024

14/01/2024

This!!

02/10/2023

Absolutely true!! we see people strip grazing or restricting horses giving them no choice but to eat short stressed grass, the sugars and nitrates in short grass are just to rich for our horses and cause an array of health issues, we must then substitute with hay as horses need fibre. What happens to a horses stomach when they are grazed of short grass? Because the stomach is never full it becomes a very acidic environment, this can also cause hind gut problems. We need to find ways of reducing sugar intake and increasing fibre whilst also meeting the horses needs to move and socialise.
As we see more and more overweight horses we see people looking for solutions to control weight that are not always ideal. Exercise exercise exercise!! The answer is not locking your horse on a small restricted paddock with short stressed grass!!
Strip graze requires the use of two fences ideally moved twice daily, small areas are not ideal as horses are designed to walk 25 to 30 miles daily, taking away his ability to move won’t help his weight or his mental wellbeing!!

The dangers of paddock grass to our equine friends is not a new subject we are constantly talking about it all over the world due to it’s often catastrophic impact on our domesticated horses .

We talk about the spring and early summer burst of fresh lush grass .
We talk about the autumn flush of lush grass .
We even talk about winter frosts and sunny days with its impact on the grass .

So now it’s a year round problem for so many horses including most of mine .

How can we safely allow our horses to graze in the paddock without the worry of laminitis.

NOT EASY THAT FOR SURE. 😣and trust me I dont always get it right either.

We know that Grass that is shorter than six inches is very problematic and the shorter it is the more dangerous it becomes.

That said even if still fresh and green looking even at six inches and above can be a disaster for many .

Very Short eaten down to stubs grass is FULL of sugars as this is often called stressed grass which they love as it’s so sweet but this is extremely dangerous.

Sunlight , dew and dampness especially at spring and autumn causes this to absorb and replenish its reserves so at the end of a lovely sunny day it’s literally full of sugar and uses this over night to grow .

Early morning grazing is generally safer on this grass but certainly not full safe proof .

Adding to issues as temperatures drops over night to almost freezing or even a few degrees above this allow the grass to hold on to the sugar and not use it so early morning grazing is just as dangerous.

Mind blowing and very difficult to manage a sensitive horse , and even non sensitive types can very suddenly be affected by these spikes in grasses .

So can we help to create safer grazing by allowing the paddocks to grow to maturity before allowing any grazing , and keep moving the area so not allow short stressed grass to become a problem .
Putting in track systems are certainly the way forward and feeding ad lib hays , but again not everyone can afford to keep feeding ad lib hays or indeed it’s been difficult for many finding the right hay for horses all year round .
A combination of both track systems and correct management for the paddocks grasses and plant appropriate species may be a safer option for many .

This management should ensure lower sugars and better diversity fibre management intake plus more chewing time which is more species appropriate on their digestive system.

Any thoughts and are owners out there adapting to this practice.

Photo of one of my mature winter grass fields on the right that’s been left all summer to grow to full maturity ( verses a young lush area of growing unsafe autumn grass . 👇

15/08/2023

17/07/2023

Nitrates Affect Horses Differently to Cattle

A good subject to understand when grazing horses in winter

Potassium & Nitrate spikes in the grass occur whenever growth is inhibited - cold or freezing night-time temperatures or lack of sunshine.

Nitrates affect mono-gastric animals like horses DIFFERENTLY to ruminants. In ruminants the Nitrates are rapidly converted to Nitrites which cause oxygen starvation and sudden death. Evidenced by brownish discolouration of blood.

Due to the different layout of the digestive tract Nitrates affect horses differently.
Refer the “Mineral Tolerances of Animals” - Non-ruminant animals (including horses) have NO requirement for Nitrates at all “and a toxic effect of acute nitrate levels is generally severe gastritis” (Page 456)

What are the symptoms of nitrate toxicity?
Note this is referred to as ‘toxicity’ but nitrates are not toxins like mycotoxins and are not eliminated by toxin-binders.

Obviously you should immediately call your veterinarian for any of the following.
Symptoms can come and go over weeks - or suddenly

The primary effects of 'severe gastritis' are softening of manure/diarrhea/ weight loss due to loss of protein and inability to produce critical Vitamins (especially B Vitamins), lethargy, loss of appetite, excessive drinking and urinating to excrete the excess urea/edemas (ventral and lower limb swellings).

More serious secondary effects occur under certain climatic conditions which directly affect the nutrient composition of the grass.

They include drowsiness, lethargy, weakness, more serious weight loss, muscle tremors, increased respiratory rates, staggering, inability to chew (like 'lockjaw') and recumbency (lying down flat on their sides), and even grass tetany.

Why is feeding SALT helpful:
There are multiple reasons but here is the relevant one for this subject: Salt is ‘sodium chloride’. Sodium is the positively charged cation for which the negatively charged nitrate ion has the greatest affinity – nitrates can be excreted as Sodium Nitrate.

However, all forage is very low in Sodium and in the absence of sufficient salt in the diet, magnesium and calcium ions are used instead and can thus be rapidly depleted in the efforts to excrete nitrates, causing acute deficiencies of these minerals – the secondary effects listed above.

They may or may not show up in blood tests (eg high BUN -urea, low calcium) because the blood is responsible for keeping the heart beating so is kept 'topped up' as long as possible.

To minimise risk:

If possible, over a week, so it isn’t a sudden change, eliminate the cause (the green grass) and replace with plain grass hay, no lucerne.

If you have no means of doing so feed as much hay every day as the horse will eat

For the reasons outlined above add SALT, CALCIUM, MAGNESIUM and B-VITAMINS to feeds twice daily.

As explained in the Grass & the Domestic Horse video the metabolic consequences of excesses of potassium and nitrate can be serious -ANY grass of ANY species whether short or lush, if it is green and growing under changeable environmental conditions, poses a significant risk especially where there is rye/clover or capeweed (known to be high nitrates).

References:
**“Mineral Tolerances of Animals” (2nd Revised Edition 2005) Page 456
***Nitrate Toxicity, Sodium Deficiency and the Grass Tetany Syndrome - T.W. Swerczek, DVM, PhD.