Book Do Little Be More for an Equine Land health check.
Do you feel like owning a horse has become a drudgery of endless chores? Are you tired of hours of poo picking & wading through mud? Are your horses always hanging around gateways just waiting for their next input from you?
Help is here!
Book Do Little Be More to visit your land for tips and advice on how to minimise your workload and at the same time improve the health of your horse & your land. It's a win win situation. Book a 2 hr visit, where we will accompany you around your land, meet your equines & support you with some tailor made options for land improvements, time saving solutions & equine enrichment ideas.
Below is a short clip that demonstrates an easy way to turn a wasted boggy corner of your field into a space that provides extra forage and shelter, but also soaks up unwanted surface water that turns everything to mud!
How it used to be.
When at 12 years old, I first started keeping a horse I paid 50p a week to keep him with 3 other horses in 8 acres of beautiful fields, that included a small copse, wonderful thick hedges, a lot of single mature trees dotted around including lime, hazel and walnut, great wooden fencing all round and stables set within the field so they were always in contact with the other horses even if stabled. We kept them off part of the field some of the year and were able to bale our own meadow hay. It just made sense. Many years later when I became a horse owner once again I discovered the methods of horse keeping had changed drastically, with most places not meeting the standards of equine care as set by the Animal Welfare Act for the five freedoms. Click link for Defra code of practice for equine care.
Modern Equine Management
Much of the current provision has been driven by horse owners having different demands & timings for their horses & fear of horses harming each other. It has also been by fuelled by greedy landowners wanting to make the most money out of relatively small amounts of land. The results are a disaster for horse and land.
I was not prepared to keep my horse in a small square paddock with no shelter or forage, away from other horses, in the name of so called safety. I was also not prepared to sacrifice the state of the land & contribute to the climate crisis, in order to graze my horse, so I went in search of people who had done the research & had worked out how to keep a horse healthy at the same time as regenerating the land & keeping water sources clean.
Help at Hand! Healthy Land equals Happy Herd.
I found Equiculture!
Founders of Equiculture, Jane and Stuart Myers are pictured to the left with myself and landowner Louise, when they came to do a consultation at the horse property where I keep my mare, who is photo bombing on the right!
Jane and Stuart, have created a great easy to understand study and a thoroughly practical system to encourage horse, land, water and human back to health.
I am so impressed with this way of working, seeing the bigger picture and working within nature, that I have become an affiliate of their company and would like to encourage you to investigate and implement their ideas.
The course is inexpensive and therefore accessible. It is underpinned with the science behind the concepts but also packed with common sense and easy step by step ways to improve your land and the experiences for you, your horses and the wildlife.
If you money is no object, you can set it all up in one, but if like me you have no land and limited funding, the books and courses are full of small nuggets of knowledge and practical ideas, that get you moving in the right direction straight away.
An example of implementing Equiculture.
Here are a few things we have been able to introduce that have really taken the pressure off the land and off our workload at the same time as improving the quality of life for the herd.
- Collaborated with the Woodland Trust to plant 1200 native trees, to enhance biodiversity whilst also providing extra shelter and forage for the herd. Also improving the possibilities of resting land by creating 4 fields where there was once only 2.
- Rotated grazing and allowed meadow grass to grow long and seed in order to out compete rye and unwanted weeds and provide excellent high fibre grazing. We have allowed hedgerows to flourish, to provide great wildlife habitat whilst also providing the forage that is so important for horses.
- We have introduced an area of hard standing and shelter with 24/7 hay and access to water trough.
- We have ensured that our horses do not become sleep deprived, by allowing them safe spaces to feel relaxed and comfortable enough to lie down.
- We have not used rugs so that they can continue the important social act of grooming each other and also grow their own coats as thick as necessary to protect them through the winter, whilst allowing them to lose excess weight gained with the summer grass.
- We have taken horrible muddy areas and planted willow to help slow the flow of water and provide extra shelter and forage in a boggy corner of the field.
- We are cherishing our dung beetles and leaving them to do their work in the field, only removing dung from the hard standing area.
To find out more about Equiculture go to:
..or contact me directly to book a visit for your personal Equine Land Health Check.
Equiculture talks a lot of common sense, especially if you're a horse. The lifestyle it offers you & your herd brings the joy back into horse management.
Check out the video below for a snap shot into a herd enjoying their 5 freedoms, the Equiculture way.