Barton Riding & Livery Stables

25/04/2025

18/04/2025

Yep

07/04/2025

*** THE MANY REASONS NOT TO BREED FROM YOUR MARE ***

It’s that time of year again, when lots of people are considering putting their mare in foal, so sharing this again….

The idea of breeding a foal from your own mare is a lovely idea, but can have less than ideal outcomes. Instead of writing an article on breeding, I thought it was more sensible to write a piece on what to consider before breeding from your mare, and why it is often completely the wrong idea. The following is aimed at the one or two horse owner, and not at big breeding operations, obviously.

1. Do NOT breed from your mare because she is useless/dangerous/you don’t know what else to do with her. A dangerous or nasty mare, is very likely to produce a dangerous or nasty foal. Do NOT be tempted to breed from your mare just because the only other options you have left are giving her away (irresponsible;sorry) or putting her to sleep. Breeding from a mare in the hope it will mellow her, is not a reason to breed.
2. Do NOT breed from your mare because her conformation was so awful that she had to retire from a ridden career at the age of six. Unfortunate accidents and injuries not due to poor conformation, can obviously be forgiven.
3. Do NOT breed from your mare unless you are prepared to accept that nothing is guaranteed; your foal may pop out as a mix of the worst bits of both sire and dam, and you can’t return it!
4. Do NOT breed from your mare if you struggle to afford vet bills and feed etc for your current horses. You will need plenty of money available if you intend to breed a foal. Your stud fee is the tiniest portion of what it costs to get a healthy foal on the ground, unless you get very lucky. You may need to send your mare away to foal down; your mare may need veterinary help to foal; your mare may need a caesarian; your foal may need a plasma transfusion; your mare may retain her placenta. You get the idea.
5. Do NOT breed in the hope to make lots of money. Or any money.
6. Do NOT breed from your mare unless you are experienced in handling youngstock, or are prepared to seek help from an expert when needed. A badly handled foal will likely turn into a tricky yearling, and so on.
7. Do NOT breed from your mare because she is old. The risks of complications in older mares, is high.
8. Do NOT breed from your mare unless you have suitable facilities for a mare and foal. By this, I mean safe fencing, and ideally, other mares and foals. It’s not ideal to have just one foal in the field; this means the foal has no play mates, and makes weaning difficult.
9. Do NOT breed from your mare unless you are realistic about complications. You may lose your mare, your foal, or both. It happens.
10. Do NOT breed from your mare thinking the country needs more horses. Just look at the amount of horses at rescue centres/RSPCA/WHW/Blue Cross, to see that the country has more than enough horses and ponies.
11. Do NOT breed from your mare unless you have the time to check your horses at least twice a day, or the funds to pay someone to. In fact, don’t even have a horse if you can’t do that.
12. Do NOT breed from your mare and plan to foal down at home, unless you have the time and energy to stay up and check all night close to foaling.

Sorry for the slightly negative post, but there are many, many points to consider.
We have too many unwanted and neglected horses and ponies in the U.K.

If you do still want to breed from your mare after this post, then you have thought through all of the major points. I will end by reiterating again that you must never underestimate the funds you need to get a foal on the ground, and to weaning, let alone to the point of a ridden career.

Photo of my little Alfred when he was a teeny baby!

05/04/2025

*** COLIC MYTH - IT’S ESSENTIAL TO WALK ANY HORSE SHOWING SIGNS OF COLIC ***

Reposting this, as I was asked about it yesterday from someone who had seen incorrect advice!

I think one of the main myths surrounding colic, is that you must walk them, even if they don’t want to walk. There are definitely some types of colic when movement is good/essential for the horse, but there are equally many occasions when it’s actually detrimental to keep the horse moving.

Before knowing whether or not you need to keep your horse moving, you need your vet to diagnose what is causing your horse to colic. If your horse has a classic “twisted gut” then no amount of movement will help. In fact, forcing horses to walk if they’ve got intestinal torsion will result in extreme pain. If surgery is an option, then continuing to walk a horse with intestinal torsion (twisted gut) will also wear him out, and potentially cause even more damage to the gut itself, reducing the odds of surgery being a success.

My general rule of thumb for any colicking horse is to allow them to do what they want to do whilst waiting for the vet. If they are standing quietly, then that’s perfect. If they are down in the field then I do normally advise getting them up and to somewhere easily accessible for the vet. If they are thrashing about in a stable and could hurt themselves, then getting them out and into the safety of a lunge pen or arena is a good idea, as long as you don’t risk injuring yourself. If they want to march around, then let them walk. It’s a complete myth that a horse rolling around will result in him twisting his intestine; we’d obviously be seeing hundreds of colic cases daily if this were true.

To conclude, walking a horse with colic MAY be advisable, but you need your vet to diagnose the cause of the colic first. If your horse is reluctant to walk, then definitely don’t force them to move.

Feel free to share, but not to copy and paste.

29/03/2025

*UPDATE* Thank you all for your shares. We are no longer looking for a foster mare.

18/03/2025

Please share to help these horses get a better life in the uk

Please read 🙏🏼

Today the last truck carrying six of our beautiful babies have crossed over to the UK where loving homes and foster families have been waiting for them ❤️ Photo below is of our beautiful Furioso A Quira. This is a heartwarming moment to see the horses we worked so hard to save for only to begin a new chapter of their lives in the UK, however the sad reality is the one below 👇🏼

Unfortunately though like every truck, we are left with thousands in costs to cover. We know we are always asking for help but the reality is that we have a €4,000 pending feed bill and waiting for the one in March plus remaining transport fees still unpaid. Despite the happy updates we share things are far from running smoothly and the truth is that we are struggling to keep up 🙁

Our team dedicates entire weekends to fundraising, but it’s never enough to cover all the costs. The start of this year was especially painful. We had to turn away six horses simply because we couldn’t afford to take them in. We tried everything to find a solution or a place for them but in the end we have no information on them. That weight stays with us yet we have to keep going even with tears in our eyes 💔

Truck are one of our biggest expense and we have now come to the conclusion that we are going to start the fundraising way we use to do in the past 👉🏼 We are going to fundraise for each and every horse prior to getting on the truck. This means we probably will not be able to send trucks each month until we raise the funds we need and therefore have to limit the number of horses that will come in our care due to lack of space and funds 💔

We always have the same people donating and we feel guilty about this. We have over 13k followers and we are pretty sure if we have everyone donate a tiny each we can get some of our bills paid.

We don’t want to stop saving lives. If you can help us keep moving forward, please donate😓

The first two horses we are going to raise funds for is Vangiskan & Dio Doti. They both are ready to get on the next truck but we need to raise the first €1k for both of them before.

https://gogetfunding.com/third-truck-❤%EF%B8%8F/

Paypal : [email protected]

Revolut/BOV +356 77610851

26/10/2024

*** owners response added below now ❤️***

Good evening

It’s nice when I come across something really different in my day and I thought I would share what happened to me earlier in the week. I have permission from the owner to share this as it will be quite easy to identify her and it’s still very personal, but I feel we can all learn from this partnership.

So, a bit of background, this lady has owned this mare for 3 years and they have been getting on well and starting to get out and do a few events etc. unfortunately the owner was involved in a car accident in May this year and lost most of her left arm.

Understandably she is currently not riding and is waiting for her arm to heal enough to be able to get a prosthetic arm fitted.
We can kind of have an idea how the lady is coping, it’s a massive adjustment for her but maybe we don’t always think about how it can affect the horse.

They were having a few issues and I was called out to see if I could help. So what came out of the conversation was amazing and explained a lot and you will need to keep an open mind.

The horse explained she could still see the arm, she described it as a long black lace glove in a shadow. So, she still moved and responded as though it was still there. This mare has a ‘floater’ in one of her eyes anyway and this can add to the confusion.

I asked her why she thought she could see the arm and she said it was because her owner hadn’t accepted it had gone. It wasn’t healing properly because the owner was still angry about losing her arm as she was blocking the energy needed to heal it.

Part of the solution was to send blue healing energy to the arm; this was done by the mare requesting the healing energy through me and transferring it to the owner. We googled it (as you do) and the first definition was blue healing energy is used for forgiveness, understanding & truth, it is also good for grounding.

But this helps explain why the horse is barging / moving into her arm as the horse can still feel the arms presence, then gets frustrated /confused when she is wrong. There were also some other solutions we talked through and she had some unusual requests but it was lovely to be able to understand & help this partnership work through this and move forward.

Honestly the more I find out with animals the less I feel I know.

Hope you enjoyed reading this.

This photos is one a friend of mine drew & I loved it so mucJessica Hillt Jessica Hill it seemed very appropriate, it’s called Wisdom 👻

Please if you read this remember to like, comment, share etc, it’s lovely to open people’s minds to what we can all do to help be better owner / riders / keepers etc. Plus feel free to ask any questions.

26/08/2024

Does anyone know of grazing in Daccombe, Rocombe area for two horses please.

25/08/2024

*** DOG WALKERS: PLEASE KEEP YOUR DOGS UNDER CONTROL AROUND HORSES, FOR YOUR DOGS’ SAKE ***

One kick from a shod horse to a dog’s head will most likely be fatal. It will be you that has to see your dog’s skull in pieces on the road or path. One kick from a shod horse to your dog’s abdomen may be fatal; at best, your dog will probably have internal bleeding, organ damage, and need surgery. This will not be the horse’s fault if you allowed your dog to run around a horse loose, with absolutely zero control of your dog. It will be YOUR fault.

Today I was out on the country lanes on Mabel, who was in a horrible mood, and spent most of the ride napping (refusing to go forwards and spinning around) and spooking. We safely passed many walkers and cyclists, so there was no issue with standing still or walking past people, but she is a big horse and was in an unpredictable mood.

As we got close to home, a dog leapt out of some woods and ran straight into the road behind Mabel. It was very windy today, so perhaps the dog does normally have some self preservation and would have heard a vehicle. I can but hope. I understand that sometimes dogs run off away from their owner, but this chap is a repeat offender and his dogs are always running loose all over the roads. Yes, they are very quiet country lanes, but he’s often not within their sight. Today, he was nowhere to be seen. The dog was up behind Mabel’s hind legs, trying to dodge to get past her. Mabel will kick out if she feels threatened and I will never discourage that l, I’m afraid. She happily walks past dogs under control, or dogs walking quietly next to their owners, but I wouldn’t blame her for lashing out at something that had just run up behind her. I shouted several times at the dog to “stay back”, which seemed to work, as it kept the dog away from Mabel’s legs (we were only walking). The owner then finally came into view, and started shouting at ME not to scare his dog?!! I said that the dog would get kicked if it carried on like that, to which he replied, “no, she won’t”. There really is no helping some people, but please don’t own animals if you want to approach life with that kind of attitude. It clearly wasn’t attacking Mabel, so I was trying to keep it away from her legs purely in the interest of keeping the dog safe.

Horses have an enormous reach when they kick out, and can also “cow kick”, which is when they swipe their hind leg forwards and then quickly sideways. If their shod foot hit a dog in a cow kick, it would be a mess. Most horses don’t mean to kick, but as a prey species, it is their natural instinct when they feel under attack by something suddenly approaching them, especially from the side or behind, as they haven’t had a chance to see what this threat is. It’s basic common sense to not allow your dog to run off into wooded areas by a road, to be honest, but I hope this post may be of use to any non-horsey dog owners who think it’s perfectly safe to allow their dogs to run up behind/close to horses they don’t know.

Obviously this post isn’t much help to most of my followers, but please share with any non horsey dog owners. We aren’t telling your dog to stay out of the way for our sake; it’s for your dog’s safety.

For the record, if this gentleman continues to walk his dogs off leads on the lanes, I will actually get on and report him to the police, as it is indeed a criminal offence to walk dogs off leads on public roads. I was trying to live and let live, but not after today. Well done to Mabel for managing to keep her cool when it leapt out of the woods behind her, as she was a witch for most of the rest of the ride! She was also absolutely 100% in the traffic on the busy road, yet again, so not all bad!

Recycled photo of Mabel, but it shows the hind legs you really don’t want your dog to be running up behind….