Why do people think that....

[wade3504]

I guess what I am trying to say is that not all minis need to be kept on dry lots as many automatically believe.

Here is an example of a horse who can handle pasture 12 hours a day and hay in stall when put up.

Amanda

 

[Gracie]

I totally understand the dry lot for SHOW HORSES,

but on the other hand I am a firm believer in allowing ANY ANIMAL the Maximum space possible and allowing them to live as closely to natural as possible. that said my minis and large horses are pastured ( seperately) with access to shelter at there discretion and I do not blanket and yes all 6 of my minis are BUTTERBALLS<

the vet recently asked if they were all pregnant I said no we are just preparing for winter, lol

so there fat and warm and very happy,

If ya show i do understand the dry lot in the show season though, ya want them looking good, And from the FAT pics ya have posted I must say mine are extremely obese, lol and NO Ive never had any founder issues or colics,

EXCEPT our stallion who colics if he even looks at alfalfa.

 

[nluszcz]

Several reasons.

1) Land is expensive

2) Minis are like potato chips, once you have one, you can't stop getting them.

3) Hay is expensive

4) Minis are FAT in general and can't tolerate constant foraging with little to no work.

 

[Shari]

My horses do not go out in the spring at all in the main pasture(other than their 3/4 and 2 acre pastures). Here in NW Oregon the grass is very,, very rich...and on this farm grass is super rich. To put any horse...even ones that have lived on pasture year round..you put them out in my hay fields and you are going to founder the horses period.

Will not do that to my horses.

Now I am down horses...there is a good chance I am going to have to mow the 2 acre pasture this spring to help keep the grass short so they will not over eat.

Another reason mine are not out at night...is because of the predators....lets just say if the mini's were out all night... they would be dead and eaten by morning. If people live in a perfect world with no worries..that is great but in my case its not.

Each has to do what they think are best for their horses.

 

[Fred]

Yes SOME horses can live and not be fat on pasture but some DO have to be dry lotted. Some horses that have metabolic issues HAVE to be dry lotted [not to mention some with mental issues as well]. I can also tell you I have seen MANY MANY MANY morbidly obese horses that are kept on nothing but pasture and then the owner wonders why they founder. Believe me I see far more than you realize on a daily basis. They can't tell the horse is fat they just think its plump and they can't tell its obese. The owner needs to be educated. This happens so much more frequently than you may think. Yes management is the key, and Jane it seems that you have managed to have the pasture work for you and I applaud you for this but it will not work for just everyone. Not every person is capable of monitoring whether or not their horse is getting what it needs and some owners are just too busy or plain lazy or just don't have an eye for it. This happens not only in the USA but in MANY countries including merrie old England. THIS IS NOT JUST A MINI ISSUE. I used to work for a farm that claimed it never had a horse founder on grass HAH!!!! Every single mare had laminitic issues. Those owners were in total denial. The vet and I are working on something right now that involves the metabolic problems that a lot of horses that came from this particular farm have come up with and we believe it is due partly to being on their pastures.

 

[Relic]

Round bales and pastures are available 24/7 all year to all the minis except for the stallions who are handfed. No one has ever exploded and none have a need to stuff once they learned the food is available all the time. When we have bought minis and they have been handfed it takes about a week for them to switch over to not pigging out..which means they can leave the bale once in a while and poop eleswhere and maybe don't have that need to stand beside the thing sleeping and join the others away from it for naps... we have been very lucky all the ones living here have adjusted as l know we did sell of a few who just didn't fit in with the feeding the way it was set up without heading for trouble down the road..

 

[maplegum]

I don't know, is the short answer- no-one here uses dry lots so I guess all English grass is not rich??

I don't think so

My horses are out 24/7 on grass- good, grass.

They are not grain fed at all- only the weaned foals and the stallions and Rabbit get feed- Rabbit has to have it as he has no teeth!!!

He is still out on grass and would be really unhappy if he wasn't.

I understand the need to dry lot in some areas.

Having grass and dry lotting makes no sense to me at all, and I have never had fat show horses either- that takes a bit of work, it is true, but it does not take dry lots!!

And Yes, I do think all the colic and ulcers etc is directly related to the stress put on the digestive system by the unnatural diet.

Horses, any horse, any sort of horse- still a horse wild feral or man made, STILL just a horse- needs fibre 22 o/o 24 hours a day, take it away and you get trouble, simple as that.

Providing fibre that does not make you horse fat is fairly simple- I use chaff (straw and grass chop) to limit my show horses digestible feed intake whilst they are in their stalls but there is no time when they stand with nothing to eat.

I have NO idea where the myth that Minis need to be fed differently started but it is firmly entrenched now.

Ditto.

 

[HGFarm]

Amanda, horses are meant to eat all day, but when you figure the horses in the wild are getting less than prime feed quality through much of the year, they need to.

I would say horses do not need to eat all day when it jeapardizes their health and they become obese or too fat. Because domesticated horses are usually stuffed with grains, supplements and all sorts of other things folks think they need, on top of the top quality hay they get, they dont really need to eat all day.

 

[Minimor]

We've had some of ours out on pasture--good pasture-- 24/7 and they stayed in nice shape--how? Because they were always moving around--walking, grazing, racing around. Ours pretty much have feed in front of them all the time--pasture for some (and those also get hay once the pasture gets chewed down too much) and the ones on dry lot have hay all of the time. The young ones have free choice alfalfa/grass mix, the older ones get limited amounts of alfalfa mix and more grass...we're also feeding oat straw this winter. We don't put it out as feed, really, but it's nice green straw & we put it in their sheds knowing they will eat what they want & sleep on the rest.

By late next spring we hope to have almost all the horses out on pasture--we'll have our side pasture fenced by then and so more horses can go out. Up until this fall most have been on dry lot just because we didn't have the pastures suitably fenced.

I do believe that horses need roughage--something to nibble on as they please--if not pasture (and certainly there are those horses, Minis as well as bigs, that cannot handle lush grass 24/7) then some sort of hay or feed straw...I believe that a big part of the problem with colic & ulcers is the grain-heavy diets that so many horses are on.

I think a major problem in Minis is that so many people are afraid to feed them. Everyone cautions new owners against feeding too much, and as a result many feed too little. I have a friend that was this way the first year she had Minis. She had major colic problems with her colt. She was giving him tiny amounts of grain & hay & he was getting impaction colic. I kept telling her to increase both grain and hay and she would add only the tiniest amount to his ration. The following year she had more horses & was feeding them more hay and had them out on pastures and all her colic problems went away. She hasn't had problems since, and she has since commented to me that she realizes now that she was underfeeding her horses that first year. She said she'd been warned so often not to over feed that she was scared to feed them ENOUGH. She also says that she sees now that underfeeding was the root of her colic issues that first year.

 

[miniwhinny]

99% of America's wild horse herds live in the Northern Great Basin. Oregon has some of the finest HMA's, starting just an hour from where I live. It's High Desert. Very, very arrid (we get 8 inches of rain a year) We have desert bunch grass, rabbitbrush, sage and juniper. In the late sprng it's green from the snow melt and spring rains for about a month. Before that and after that it's dry, course and brown. I've studied the wild horse herds, owned wild horses and just last week was at the wild horse corrals for the weekend. What you have to rememebr is this...if you take a wild horse and place them on fertilized, irrigated, seeded green pasture 24/7 they will have the same chance of foundering as our mini's. They are very easy keepers and require very little to sustain them. My mini's are out 24/7 continual grazing because I live where the wild horses live, no horse could get fat or founder on the vegitation we have here. It's a continual grazing lifestyle. I couldn't, and wouldn't, be able to leave them on lush irrigated pasture without risking their health. More power to people like rabbitsfizz who can but I wouldn't risk it. So we have to simulate what a horse was designed for internally (constant grazing) while remembering exactly what goes in and how rich it is. They weren't designed to graze on lush pasture..it just doesn't exist where "most" wild horses thrive. Wayyyy to much sugar

 

[Fred]

Miniwhinny you are so right. I live on the east coast where grass can become very very rich. I see so much founder its not funny. Not every horse can live on pasture and just because you haven't had one founder yet doesn't mean you might not have one founder in the future. Some horses can handle being fat and some just can't. I would much rather see a horse a little thin [note I said a little] than have them founder. Founder is not pretty and it can eventually kill a horse. I live on an acre so I have to dry lot my horses but in the past when I lived with my aunt we had over 40 acres of grass and the big guys had free range with no problem. However, they were worked [and worked hard] on a daily basis. What I am saying is MOST people can''t tell if their horse is fat or thin [and they certainly can't tell what obese is]. They have to learn and train their eye. They have to learn the difference what is winter hair and what is fat. I know vets and other professionals that can't tell either and they will tell an owner that their horse is fat when it really is malnourished with a winter coat and big belly and no meat on its bones. I have clients right now that have horses on a fifty acre pasture that should not be out there. One horse is cushings and another is a prime canidate for founder but some owners won't listen until something happens. By the way my minis DO get a lot of hay and they are fed in a group [except for a couple of brats] and I have no problem so far as it is just local grass hay.

 

[miniwhinny]

One other completely off topic thing about the wild horses is this...there were about 4 hundred wild horses in the Oregon corrals. Almost every two year old was pregnant, a couple had foals already on them. That means they were bred at a year old. Most are still producing well into their mid 20's. Just some useless information

 

[rabbitsfizz]

The point is that horses should graze long periods of time- if you put them on dairy cow pasture then you are likely to have trouble, yes, but that does not mean you shove them on a dry lot and give them nothing.

This is what horses management is about- making sure the animal has a routine that suits it and suits it's digestive tract.

Having rich pasture that you consider too good for your horse does not mean the only alternative is to allow it access for two hours a day and shut it on a dry lot with nothing the rest of the time.

You can do many, many things to limit grass- mowing it is one of the things you can do if your pasture is too lush- just mow small areas and strip graze.

It is a matter of wanting too, which I think a lot of people do not.

A lot of people wish to justify preventing their animals by any means whatsoever from living a normal life- I do not have fat show horses- the only people who think my show horses are fat are those whose horses are so thin I would be ashamed to own them- and I beat them in the ring!!

I understand about grass, I really do, what I d NOT understand is how people can have grass and deny the animals access to it- I see the looks on their faces as they gaze through the fence at the green stuff whilst they stand on dirt- this is not natural and it is not kind.

It does not, as I said earlier, matter to the horse WHAT they are eating, so intake can be limited by supplying them with chopped oat straw or somesuch.

The important bit is that they are eating.

If they are not they are unhappy, it has nothing to do with "greed" and everything to do with instinct.

I have no problem with all my horses being as fat as small Yaks at this time of year- preventing founder is just part of routine management.

 

[ChrystalPaths]

Yup, this is what I did. Split it up into small paddocks and let them graze it down to nubbins, then open another. I mow pastures every week at 2" just like a lawn. I did have a founder and lost my Treasure over a year ago but I'm SO careful. My furkids are in today because it is pouring rain and they'll melt you see...and it pains me to leave them inside all day but they get hay every 4-5 hours to keep them busy.

 

[HGFarm]

Wish we had that problem to worry about here... grass that is. But, we have plenty of rocks.

 

[Jill]

Wish we had that problem to worry about here... grass that is. But, we have plenty of rocks.

That's funny and hits close to home! H and I do a rock harvest about every 6mos or so!!!!

 

[Cathy_H]

Having rich pasture that you consider too good for your horse does not mean the only alternative is to allow it access for two hours a day and shut it on a dry lot with nothing the rest of the time.

............................. Our horses get 2-3 or 4 hours of pasture a day and they STILL get hay 3-4 times a day............... My opinion, if all the grass/hay a horse is getting is a few hours of grazing one time a day then to me that is not enough, especially in cold weather.......... Even with us feeding a complete feed two times a day I still give ours hay several times a day .

 

[Indian*R*A*I*N*Dance]

My colt gets hay all the time, we spread it all over his paddock. At first we were told to only feed him 1/4 flake 3 times a day and we relized that he would eat all the leaves and sometimes the shavings so we emailed a breeder that we met and she said he might not survive the winter. So we changes his feeding. He also gets 4 cups of grain a day.

 

[Warpony]

Yup, this is what I did. Split it up into small paddocks and let them graze it down to nubbins, then open another. I mow pastures every week at 2" just like a lawn.

Only I actually do that ON the lawn, too! It doubles my pasture space and saves gas, lol.