I am a fanatic about it also. My horse is out in a 14 acre pasture with 4 buddies. Summer with the bugs and extreme heat, it’s out at 5pm in by 8:30am under a fan, rest of year it’s 24/7 except on rainy or icy winter nights. Nothing is cuter than going to get him at 6AM in the dark and seeing them all asleep cuddled next to each other. He is living his best life.
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Oh sorry! In Florida/some southern states we have large compressed blocks of alfalfa hay available. They’re usually around 500 pounds for the smalls and 1000 pounds for the large. The hay is chopped more than regular hay and then compressed into the blocks, which are easier to feed out in the fields. It’s the cheapest way to feed alfalfa down here, too.
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bending_line, your farm sounds like paradise!!
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I agree with you 100%. I think everyone in this thread is getting hung up on grass and slightly making fun of people advocating for maximum turnout that everything has to be rolling green fields. For me, what’s critical about turnout is being able to move freely, walking around, and have varied stimulation. Even if a horse isn’t galloping over a field, those small movements during the day add up. Being ridden is different. It’s like saying it’s okay to sit most of the day as long as someone works out in the gym–there is value in just moving the body independently IMHO.
I know it’s not always feasible to have the ideal but I think “purposeless movement” certainly has a valuable purpose.
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I am too from the Mid-Atlantic area and have been almost my whole life, lived in multiple states in the area. Honestly, in my 30ish years of experience, the more turn out the better. At my current barn in the late spring/summer/early fall the horses are out as much as possible and as much as they will tolerate(they all have sheds but don’t appreciate not being in front of their fans in 90+ temps with humidity and bugs). The other times of the year they rotate through dry lots to help maintain the pastures and ensure that we have grass. There are not as many dry lots as fields, so the horses typically get ~4 hours outside a day, weather permitting. Every single horse at the barn is much, much happier when they are allowed to be outside and a different animal when we are able to turn them out overnight.
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That describes most of the people with a desk job. Laugh.
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Yeah, and it’s not great for our bodies and minds either!
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I think you should be very careful with this line of thinking. The reason our sports are diminishing is because the cost of keeping horses and the willingness of clients to pay for that cost is going away. We’re losing farms right and left because quite honestly, it doesn’t pay to do it “right”.
My farm, once it sells, will be development land. In order to make a profit on it as a boarding barn, I would have to put a lot of horses on it, and I’d have to train like hell - they’d be miserable. I’m smack in the middle of a city and I’m the only barn within 15 minutes of downtown - everything else is 45+ minutes. It could be a fantastic lesson barn, recruiting youngsters into the sport, but instead it’s mostly private and once the boarders that are here finally move on or put their horses down, I won’t be replacing them.
The further and further people have to drive, the less likely equine sports are to compete with soccer and dance that are right in people’s neighborhoods. The less we get kids in to the sport, the fewer riders we have as adults.
Like everything else, there’s a balance. Hard lines often have consequences.
And I do turn my horses out - but I’m saying, I see why people do what they do. You, as a horse person, benefit from it even if that’s not “your barn”. It would be wise to evaluate the whole system and make judgements based on that.
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I am a firm believer in lots of turnout. I own and manage a dressage barn, and we turn clients away if they aren’t OK with lots of turnout. We have a couple of clients who came here BECAUSE I turn the horses out. I turn them out in mud and snow. I keep them in for ice and storms, that is about it.
Even still, I have one horse in my care who spends a lot of his time in, because his feet absolutely fall apart when they get wet. He’s been here years and is on all the supps etc. possible. Not every horse works in every situation! I also transition new horses used to stall time to turn out gradually. I tell people if they are Ok with the concept of lots of turnout to give it a try, even if they think their horse won’t handle it. The last one that came in like that has now transitioned to 24/7 pasture board and goes feral if she has to come IN for some reason.
Horses don’t read the book, unfortunately. Same with things like “free choice hay.” I have most of the horses on my place on free choice hay, and prefer it. But I also have a small group of fatties who would founder if kept that way, so they are treated differently.
At the end of the day, I think they best horsemen are those who listen to their horses (and vets) instead of applying a “one size fits all” approach.
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Agreed on this.
My struggle with this thread (as others have already said) (and this is not directed at fordtraktor) is the focus on grass/grass equating to turnout. We’ve managed to breed a lot of traits into (and out of) horses, and sure, some of them would absolutely fall apart if we didn’t baby their feet, and definitely wouldn’t make it with a mustang’s life, etc., but one thing that I truly don’t think we’ve bred out is the need to wander (the above-referenced “purposeless movement”). Just like horses are meant to be eating all day, they’re also designed to be moving in small amounts most of the time (one could argue the same for humans, really).
I live in the northeast. The grass is going to die sooner than later and my trainer is going to start having round bales delivered, and every time she gets one, she’s going to unroll it in whichever field it’s for prior to putting the horses out on it in order to encourage as much natural movement (aka wandering to “graze”) as possible. Forage matters but I don’t really care what form it comes in as long as a horse is getting enough. I do care that they have freedom to move as they choose in a bigger space than a 12x12 stall for a significant portion of the day, whether that’s a dry lot or a 20-acre pasture or whatever it may be.
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I’ve never heard of that. Does it look like a regular bale? What makes it stick together?
No they look pretty different. They’re held together with either metal wires or a plastic sleeve. Once those come off they can fall apart some depending on how they were baled. Sometimes they stick together. BOs typically leave them in the fields with the wires (or sleeve) on, and remove each wire as it comes loose as the block is eaten.
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The cost of horse keeping is just part of why horse sports are diminishing. The outrageous cost of showing, therefore creating high costs of training and lessons, are more reasons.
And yes, horse owners are notoriously cheap and don’t realize the actual costs that barns have, therefore don’t think they should have to pay what it costs for the BO to make some semblance of a profit. This is also partly because so many people view horses as pets, not livestock, and therefore they don’t view barns as businesses that should be running at a profit to be viable.
I know plenty of moms who are happy to shell out $1k/month or more on cheer but say horseback riding is too expensive. Or will travel all over the country every weekend for basketball games, but oh no a 40 minute drive twice a week? Way too far. People are willing to put effort into the things they see value in. So how do you make the general public see value in horse sports? I don’t know. But I have some thoughts that belong in Off Topic, not here. And I know that cheer and basketball offer college scholarships. And basketball offers a chance at the NBA.
There’s a lot of reasons horse sports are dwindling. No, I don’t know what the answers are to drum up interest in the sport (though I have some ideas). But I surely cannot agree that shoving horses into 12’x12’ stalls 24/7 or 22/7 for sake of convenience is the right, much less moral, solution.
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Precisely! My poor back. And knees. And neck.
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I don’t think anyone, even the people with a bunch of stalls on 5 acres, are doing that. It’s just whether they have smaller dry lots, less turn out time, and/or more enrichment activities such as treadmills & aquacizers.
Plenty of ways to skin that particular cat.
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Well, you would be wrong.
In central Ohio alone I know of at least four barns that do exactly that.
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No there are a lot of barns who do that. Hell, I boarded at a barn in Virginia with plenty of grazing. Nope. Half the fields were for show. This wasn’t a big name barn either. Just a young trainer who had family money behind her emulating whatever.
She was an excellent trainer for my purposes, but her ideas on horse care and assumptions of how much money I had made me leave
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As an aside, I see growing interest and attendance at local “open” shows and “play days”. One local venue was recently remodeled (big covered arena) and opened to equestrian events after being closed to horses for decades. Lots of attendees bringing their backyard and cattle farm horses to these things it seems. I’m not rural like 30 miles to a gas station rural, but this isn’t the big city either.
I’m pleased to see people enjoying keeping horses at home as pets and able to take them to local horse things if they like. I’m also pleased to see the powers that be investing in equestrian facilities in our communities. I’m pleased to see so many young people riding and loving horses.
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The horses never leave their stalls?
I know plenty of barns that have big fields that are empty, but the horses always get some sort of turnout or exercise.
I also know of some local barns that don’t turn out their show horses. They might get 30 minutes in the indoor, hand grazing, or supervised turnout in a small paddock but the big pastures are empty.
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