Half term pony fun been very popular

Well, we're nearly at the end of a VERY busy half term week. All the ponies have behaved impeccably, as has the weather and all our visitors!
A number of people booked in for a private 90 minute holiday activity, one parent commenting how relaxing he found the session-even our parties are pretty chilled-I think the children pick up on the quiet nature of the ponies and our quiet way with them and act accordingly!
Our hour long pony experiences have been popular as ever.
We held an open morning for the first time- 2 1/2 hours of informal pony fun. Feedback was great and a couple of the mums have made suggestions which we will implement for the next one on 5th March. Fortunately everyone took my advice and pre-booked as there were so many visitors we would have had to have turned visitors wanting to pay on the day away-take note!!
We created a quiz for the open day which went down well and visitors had obviously listened to my ramblings as everyone got at least 10 of the 14 questions correct-well done!
We've been so busy that on some days all four ponies have been working-Maisie was worked for the first time since she arrived in October. She was pampered a couple of times and was quite happy munching the grass whilst children groomed and decorated her mane. We will continue her ridden training and hope that she'll be ready for visitors to ride as well as pamper at Easter.
Today's visitors were lucky enough to see the start of the change of coat for Poppy-her long winter hairs have started to come out to leave just the short hairs so she won't be too hot for summer. This is great for the ponies but not for me as I end up covered in horse hair!

Fab outdoor pony fun for the school holidays

For pony rides, pony petting and pampering for all those horse and animal mad children book now to come and visit Cheshire Pony Centre during the school holidays. Come and meet our 5 ponies, pet, pamper and ride one pony and take in the joys of the outdoors in our idyllic orchard. Our snowdrops are shouting that spring is here! NEW for 2011 is our open morning-only £5.50(online bookings) per child for 2 1/2 hours of informal pony fun. We still have a few places available on our kids holiday activities for 4-10 years. If you'd like to bring a group of 5 or 6 children aged between 2 and 12 you can have an exclusive 90 minutes of your own! Or book in for a wonderful hours experience for up to 3 children, with lots of pony contact and special riding tricks for more confident children. Ages 2-10. Pre-schoolers can develop their confidence with a tiny riders 45 minute pony session-a cut-down version of a pony experience. All hosted by horsey mums with oodles of fascinating pony facts, who also work with children. Do you know what's special about horses teeth? Come and ask me!

New horse, Kandi's story so far

Whilst searching for another tiny pony to assist in parties I happened upon Kandi who I thought would make a lovely brood mare as she is very pretty, nicely put together and is well bred, being a pink papered Oldenburgh horse imported from the continent.(Her sire/father is the well know horse K1 who has competed at top level in dressage and her mother a state premium mare).
She'd not been in work for a number of months, so we weren't able to ride her when we went over to see her near Derby. The young lady lunged her for us to see and she was VERY lame, which was explained away by one shoe coming off recently (she only had 3 shoes on when we saw her!). Her breeding and overall pleasure to the eye held my attention and I decided to buy her, subject to 'having her vetted' ie the vet gives the horse a general check to make sure there's nothing drastically wrong.
The owner put new shoes on Kandi and we gave her a few days to settle into them, as sometimes they're a little 'foot sore' after having new shoes.
The vet then arrived but couldn't complete the vetting as Kandi was still lame. She confirmed that she had one slightly boxy foot but that just like humans, horses manage and even compete with all sorts of weird bodies and that she wasn't overly concerned.
As my main purpose of buying her was as a brood mare it wasn't so much of an issue about the lameness and in my mind I thought that I'd give her a bit of time hoping that the lameness was linked to the missing shoe and she'd be right as rain in a few weeks.
Well! She arrived and immediately lost the same shoe (on the boxy foot) again as a chunk of hoof had fallen away where the nails needed to be! So I left her for a few more weeks, let the hoof grow and then had new front shoes put on.
Each week I've lunged her in the school just for 5 or 10 minutes to see if the lameness was going. Sometimes she was noticeably lame, sometimes she wasn't-very peculiar. However, since the front shoes have gone on she is markedly improved and seems to be improving each week.
With time marching on I need to know what is causing the lameness, if it can be rectified, if it is something that could be passed on to a foal and if she can be ridden, will it affect her in any way. She was bought principally to be a brood mare but it's not responsible to breed from a mare known to be carrying a genetic problem. If she is to have a foal she needs to go to the stud around May time so I need to know what my options are to make a decision about breeding from her.
When Kandi arrived I was a little concerned-she'd obviously not had a lot of attention-she kicked out when I brushed down her legs and she was VERY stressed when we first put her in the stable-initially I thought I'd bought a stress-head-not good!
Fortunately she's settled down really well. She's pretty laid back and is quite happy to take direction and confidence from me. She has a lovely temperament-always keen to say hello and is very amenable-she goes in the sand arena and does what I say even when she's lame.
I really like this attidude and it's made me want to ride her now. She has lovely paces, is very pretty and I think she'd do very well in the dressage arena-I'd LOVE to have a horse capable of competeing higher up the ladder than I've done so far and I LOVE training them. So exciting!
So the current plan is to do some investigative work on her boxy foot/leg to establish WHERE the problem is in the leg and WHAT the problem is. This will be done by the vet nerve blocking different bits of the leg to see which solves the lameness. Then they'll do some x-rays. They'll then tell me what the prognosis is.
As she's SO much better-hardly lame at all we're hoping that some corrective shoeing will resolve the lameness-we think that part of it might be psychological as she's probably been struggling with it for months and months.
If all goes well I just have to hope that I can ride her-but at at least 16 hands she's bigger than my old horse and whilst not a cart horse, is a chunkier stamp of a horse and I'm shall we say not particularly tall! I just hope she knows I'm on top and can feel my legs!
Anyway, we're hoping to book her into the vets in early Feb so watch this space!

While the cat's away the ponies will play

So, like everyone else it seems, I have been struggling with a VERY nasty cold over the last 3 weeks which has made me feel sans umph which is most unlike me. (Don't really get the opportunity with 4 ponies, 3 horses, cat dog hubby and 2 children!).
I'm afraid I've let me normal pony regime slip somewhat ie they've been allowed to stay out 24/7 rather than being under enforced stable curfew at night! This simply meant I didn't have to muck out all the stables!
What a bad idea-one particularly clever pony is able to get into my heavily guarded hay shed and either spends all day in there muching and mess-making OR her latest trick is to pull a bale of hay (weighing around 25KGs) through the barricade and into the field where she can munch outdoors.
Well, you may think that this is a help to me. NO NO NO. All it means is that the little monsters eat far too much hay than is good for them!
Well I'm almost back to what is normal for me! and ready to tackle those munchers. That's their belated Christmas over indulgence done for the year, now time to return to their diet regime!
Watch out ponies, I'm back!!

Pony care in winter part 2

Well there's no let up in this cold weather which means we have to keep on top of watering and feeding the ponies.
As the grass is frozen the ponies aren't too keen plus if they do eat too much of it, it can cause stomach problems. That means having to feed hay, which is simply grass which has been allowed to grow tall, then cut by the farmers in the summer and baled.
My years of looking after ponies and horses gives me a rough idea of how much hay they need. My 5 small ponies munch through around 1 bale of hay a day, half during the day and half in their stables at night. Some of my big horses are eating nearly a bale a day each!
Equines are used to grazing ie moving around to find tasty pieces of grass. Generally hay is put out for them in piles, one for each horse which means that they not mooching around as much and can get bored. So as well as filling them up, the hay needs to keep them occupied during the day. Just as in children, boredom leads to allsorts of unwanted behaviours-escaping from fields, running round and injuring themselves etc.
My big horses also have a feed at night to give them additional nutrients. There is discussion over whether ponies should have a small feed to ensure they're receiving all their required nutrients, however, my ponies are all native breeds, used to foraging on mountains and moorland for their food and my current view is that whilst they're looking fat and healthy I don't consider anything other than grass and what other vegetation they find in the hedgerows etc is necessary.
How do I know if the ponies are healthy?
Coats, eyes fat and behaviour.
Ponies coats should be lovely and shiny. If they are dull it's usually a sign they're not feeling great. This is the same with their eyes which should be nice and bright.
All equines usually start the winter carrying some degree of fat (some more than others-note Jinny and Maisie!)That's how it's meant to be in nature. So we expect them to drop some weight through winter. You can tell if a horse is underweight-it's hip and shoulder bones will stick out just a bit more and you'll start to see it's ribs. (Just be aware that horses in top competition work will look extremely lean but they should have very good muscle definition. Also some horses, like humans, just really struggle to keep weight on).
A regular feel of a horse or pony's rib area will quickly tell you if it is too thin-if you can feel it's ribs it's probably too thin. You wouldn't even feel any ribs on most of our ponies!!! I do actually wonder if I'm feeding mine too much hay!
The more scientific way to monitor their weight is to use a measuring tape and measure their tummy about a big hand behind their front legs. Done regularly this will give you a good feel of what a horse's weight is doing and I think is a good idea at the moment as it's not normal for some horses and ponies to be just eating hay.
As with people, if the horses are behaving unusually they may be unwell, feeling hungry. This may show as them standing with their heads hung low-just looking unhappy, moving awkwardly or just being awkward. They're just trying to tell you-they just can't speak!
Water is the other real problem at the moment as pipes, taps and hosepipes are frozen so it's a case of ferrying buckets of water from the house to fill the stables water and provide sufficient water outside. Additionally, as they're eating dry hay their water requirement increases.
I spoke about telling whether or not a pony is warm in a previous post.

What can YOU learn from horses?

I've been very fortunate be have been around horses, bred, trained, driven, competed in dressage and cross-country (very scarey) from the age of 6. My parents knew nothing of horses and we looked after all our horses and ponies ourselves and learnt (sometimes the hard way) as we went along. This has taught me so much about communication (that's non-verbal!) and getting along with people, including;

It doesn't matter how hard you pull or push, you can’t physically move a horse-you have to encourage it to want to do move (or do something).

Sometimes things go wrong which can be frustrating. To move on you need to be calm and either try again with clear signals or take a different course of action.

Just like people they're all different and need treating differently.

When teaching a horse you need to stack the odds in your favour-if the horse doesn’t do whatever you wanted, you need to take responsibility and realise you’ve’ probably missed out a bit of the jigsaw.

Sometimes its just not worth the fight! Come back another day and try again!-you need to understand you and your horse to know when you're going to lose the fight!

When my horse and I are connected, it’s just an amazing feeling and I can sometimes ride by thinking, hardly using any signals.

It's great when they see you, whinny and come over for some contact.
I know all my horses pretty well and for each, know their favoured spot for massaging.

Don’t bother if your in a hurry-they know and play you up!

Would you/your business benefit from experiencing great team building or communication or leadership from the equine experts? If so contact us for more information on a very refreshing and effective coaching method in beautiful surroundings in the heart of Cheshire.

Can any of the above techniques help YOU in your job/business/family life?

Pony care in Winter

Ok so you might think the ponies get cold in winter-those of you who have visited us will know that they grow a thick coat in winter which plumps up when it's cold so MOST of the time they're warm enough.
How do we know if they're warm enough? We feel their ears and behind their front legs-if those 2 places are warm the ponies are warm enough-if not they're probably a little cold.
Jinny, our black Shetland pony has been seen with a white frost coating so she's obviously been happy to remain outside in very chilly conditions!
The weather that does makes them cold is heavy rain with a strong wind as the wind drives the rain into the coat and down to the skin. Occassionally they will then be found shivering from ear to tail so it's a quick fit of a rug and preferably a move to a stable for a while.
Having said all that our 2 Welsh Mountain ponies do tend to need rugs on when it's cold-just like humans some feel the cold more than others! Very occassionally Poppy also needs a coat. Our big horses all have coats on, sometimes 2 in the winter as they're not bred to live out and so don't grow such thick coats.
We are very kind to our ponies as they can all go into stables at night for some respite from the weather.
Hard frozen ground also causes problems-firstly they struggle to walk on it so there's a risk of damaging one of their delicate legs and secondly they really aren't keen on frozen grass! That means that we have to put out hay for them to eat which can get rather costly!
Cold also causes their water to freeze over and usually our taps. EVERY day we have to break the ice for them to be able to access drinking water-it's a horrid job as you have to take your gloves off to get the ice out. If taps have frozen we have to carry water from the house to wherever the ponies are.
Ice on the ground is extremely dangerous for horses, as, just like humans, they can slip on it and break a leg, however if horses break a leg they usually have to be put down. If it's essential for them to cross ice we have put hay over it which gives the ponies some grip but often people keep their horses in the stables if there is ice on the ground-last year some horses didn't go out at all for 3 weeks! Wherever possible it is far better for them to go and stretch their legs, even if just for a short while, otherwise they're like cooped up children-they go mad inside and then are completely mad when you let them out-with the possibility of another leg injury! You can't win sometimes!
Snow is another problem- again they need extra hay to eat as there's no grass but also the snow compacts in their hooves and for the ponies it's like walking on 4 balls-or for us teetering on extremely high stilleto heels! We've tried allsorts but haven't found any way of really resolving the hooves issue-we just hope they don't run around and hurt themselves!
If you'd like to learn more, or have just bought or are thinking of buying a pony and would like to attend one of our practical pony care courses specially for new owners please get in touch.