In this last week I've taken a good look at our residents and in the case of the ponies I don't much like what I'm seeing.
Despite bitter cold lasting weeks and weeks and only hay to eat for the majority they are decidedly porky! I can't think how or why that's happened... and then I began to think about the long gone days of my youth and pony keeping then and it got me questioning that perhaps there are a lot of things 'wrong' with the way we pamper and overfeed these hardly beasts in this media mad world. Advertising is very clever, making owners out to be 'uninformed' or actually just plain ignorant if they don't feed this or that wonderful mix or 'balance' It seems we have forgotten how to think for ourselves or trust our own instincts.
And are we, for instance, humanising these animals too much? We human horse keepers go out and think "Brrrr it's so cold !" so we slap on extra rugs on our horses, imagining them shivering and covered in icicles or frozen to death unless we clad them out in humongous tog rated duvet like head to toe rip stop nylon creations...
We forget horses have layers of fat, greasy skin, insulating hair growth and the ability to keep warm by movement ( if allowed) and by steady intake of fibre (natures own central heating) aka rough hay. Nature intends for all it's beings to eat while there is glut and use those body fat reserves when food supply is poor.
Being human in today's world means for many never going hungry, ever, in fact we too have become so detached from our real and natural way of food intake that our own digestion is at peril too. Few of us ever have to draw on reserves for real need only doing so when our body weight becomes a real health issue.
Humanising our horses again we feed them in winter in similar ways to our own meal times. Knowing we are going home to a hot meal we then start heating up their feed too, cooking this and that which is great for adding weight on real anyskinnies but is not necessary for those with good body condition and for an animal who's natural food source is at current air temps we are giving totally unnatural heat to the gut. Our fat nation is getting ever fatter
Despite bitter cold lasting weeks and weeks and only hay to eat for the majority they are decidedly porky! I can't think how or why that's happened... and then I began to think about the long gone days of my youth and pony keeping then and it got me questioning that perhaps there are a lot of things 'wrong' with the way we pamper and overfeed these hardly beasts in this media mad world. Advertising is very clever, making owners out to be 'uninformed' or actually just plain ignorant if they don't feed this or that wonderful mix or 'balance' It seems we have forgotten how to think for ourselves or trust our own instincts.
And are we, for instance, humanising these animals too much? We human horse keepers go out and think "Brrrr it's so cold !" so we slap on extra rugs on our horses, imagining them shivering and covered in icicles or frozen to death unless we clad them out in humongous tog rated duvet like head to toe rip stop nylon creations...
We forget horses have layers of fat, greasy skin, insulating hair growth and the ability to keep warm by movement ( if allowed) and by steady intake of fibre (natures own central heating) aka rough hay. Nature intends for all it's beings to eat while there is glut and use those body fat reserves when food supply is poor.
Being human in today's world means for many never going hungry, ever, in fact we too have become so detached from our real and natural way of food intake that our own digestion is at peril too. Few of us ever have to draw on reserves for real need only doing so when our body weight becomes a real health issue.
Humanising our horses again we feed them in winter in similar ways to our own meal times. Knowing we are going home to a hot meal we then start heating up their feed too, cooking this and that which is great for adding weight on real anyskinnies but is not necessary for those with good body condition and for an animal who's natural food source is at current air temps we are giving totally unnatural heat to the gut. Our fat nation is getting ever fatter
In my long gone days of youth ( 1960/70's) you fed a bit of hay IF the ground was covered ( frost/snow) never daily, never ever twice a day and most certainly not like we do in todays world of feeding if there happens to be a 'Y' in weekday or the air temp drops by a couple of degrees!
The thing is we don't allow for these pampered 'pets' to use up their reserves anymore, to get lean during the winter months.
Out we go laden down with overflowing barrows of hay cursing as we struggle through wind and rain and mud and whatever we do we MUST MUST MUST keep those horses chomping despite Dobbin having a neck like a crested newt and pads of fat that a sumo would be proud of...and no sign of any frostbite anywhere!
Back in my day laminitis was unknown pretty much, that's a long time ago but not THAT long ago... so overfeeding is causing problems for sure, but what else? we know that land is over fertilized these days and more so back in the 70's 80's and 90's....back then however ponies were mostly kept off that grazing, it was reserved for fattening cattle, sheep and pigs ...ponies and even hunters were contained in scrub orchards, rough grazing paddocks and hill sides where the meat animals couldn't be kept so no expensive fertilizers were put on that ground. Back then ponies didn't get any hard feed at all. Nothing was pre mixed, if you fed horses, and only in the harshest of winter did that happen or if they were working hard hunting /racing or pulling working carts etc, you fed oats, flaked maize, bran and chaff. Nothing sweet added other than molasses the day after hunting to encourage the consumption of bran mash ( that was fed warm with a handful of epsom salts added)
Now we have moved horses on to much of the over fertilized land of yesteryear while the reserves of those chemicals must lay in the soil for many many years...have we produced a grass that is toxic? I believe so. Cushings disease appearing in younger and younger horses and ponies and other metabolic ailments are now far more common place, there has to be a link to some wrong doing somewhere.
The thing is we don't allow for these pampered 'pets' to use up their reserves anymore, to get lean during the winter months.
Out we go laden down with overflowing barrows of hay cursing as we struggle through wind and rain and mud and whatever we do we MUST MUST MUST keep those horses chomping despite Dobbin having a neck like a crested newt and pads of fat that a sumo would be proud of...and no sign of any frostbite anywhere!
Back in my day laminitis was unknown pretty much, that's a long time ago but not THAT long ago... so overfeeding is causing problems for sure, but what else? we know that land is over fertilized these days and more so back in the 70's 80's and 90's....back then however ponies were mostly kept off that grazing, it was reserved for fattening cattle, sheep and pigs ...ponies and even hunters were contained in scrub orchards, rough grazing paddocks and hill sides where the meat animals couldn't be kept so no expensive fertilizers were put on that ground. Back then ponies didn't get any hard feed at all. Nothing was pre mixed, if you fed horses, and only in the harshest of winter did that happen or if they were working hard hunting /racing or pulling working carts etc, you fed oats, flaked maize, bran and chaff. Nothing sweet added other than molasses the day after hunting to encourage the consumption of bran mash ( that was fed warm with a handful of epsom salts added)
Now we have moved horses on to much of the over fertilized land of yesteryear while the reserves of those chemicals must lay in the soil for many many years...have we produced a grass that is toxic? I believe so. Cushings disease appearing in younger and younger horses and ponies and other metabolic ailments are now far more common place, there has to be a link to some wrong doing somewhere.
All of the above I'm ranting about I now openly and freely admit to and am holding up my hand and admitting I've been brain washed with the rest of the horse keepers across the UK, knowing all the time that the old way, coupled with common sense and using the best natural options from today's market, is really the only way forward if we are to lose our podgy equine friends and find the fit active and fun ponies hiding in that fatty exterior
So going back to today...here I go.. we're going to take a trip back in time, nothing detrimental, nothing untoward, just strip those ponies right back to basics and lets see what happens. My guess is we'll see health improve very quickly indeed. Watch this space!
No comments:
Post a Comment