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Horse Health Tips For Students includes information for our students about common horse health care issues. These posts are to bring awareness to horse welfare issues - always ask your veterinarian for advice and treatment protocols for your own horse!
This year we decided to make our own home-made fly spray! Typically in the summer we go through 1.5 to 2, 4-L jugs of fly spray each week. At a cost of $60 to $90 per jug, we decided that this was the year we needed to do something different. So we researched a few different recipes and made our own from a combination of a few recipes we found. We were surprised to learn that in-fact apple cider vinegar should not be used for fly spray as it attracts flies! Here is our recipe: Ingredients: - 2 litres of vinegar - 1 litre of Pinesol (regular scent) - 2 tablespoons dishsoap - 25 to 30 drops of eucalyptus essential oil (or can substitute for lemon scented essential oil) - approx. 1 litre of water Directions: In an empty 4-L jug, mix the first 4 ingredients. Add water to fill the rest of the jug. Put into a fly spray bottle or wipe on horses with a rag. Avoid getting spray in or around their eyes. So how did it work? I think it actually worked quite well at repelling flies for the horses for the short-term anyway. To be honest, I couldn't tell much difference between using our home-made version and store bought fly spray. It worked well enough for farriers, vets and students to get relief from flies on the horses while working with them and riding. How long it lasted out in the field I couldn't say, but I didn't feel the horses were overly bothered by flies this summer. Maybe the most important part is that is cost less than $10/week to supply fly spray for 25 horses. We will definitely use it again next year.
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Chronicles of a Stable Owner are real-life stories about caring for horses and their people
Written by Dr. Gwen Donohoe, Owner/Manager at Sagehill Stables What is it about horse girls? If you've ever met one, you know that they seem really obsessed with being at the barn! In fact, I get told by parents on almost a weekly basis that their daughter would like to just live at the barn if she could! They don't have to be riding, they just want to be there. They clean up poop, they walk for hours leading others for pony rides, they help others catch and clean their horse, they feed horses, they do whatever is needed, and all with a smile on their face. In fact, there are many adults at the barn that are still like this, helping clean-up and secretly filling our first-aid and horse care supplies or bathroom toiletries when I'm not looking. Parents that come and want to sweep or help muck stalls while their kids ride. It is an environment where everyone can see that there is always work to be done and they want to be part of it. They want to help the horses and the staff and they want to be part of the barn community. And that's what it is, a barn community. It's something that just happens when you get a group of people with the same passion together. And it's now been included as a part of the reason why horses and being around horses can have such a therapeutic effect on people. Chronicles of a Stable Owner are real-life stories about caring for horses and their people
Written by Dr. Gwen Donohoe, Owner/Manager at Sagehill Stables This story is about a pony named Dixie, one of our leased lesson horses that we take care of here at Sagehill Stables. First I want to give some background on ponies before we start the story. Ponies in general often have a bad reputation in the equestrian world for being naughty, and there is some truth to it. There are a few different reasons this might be. First, they are smaller than most horses and often live together with horses that are much bigger than them. This must cause some issues in the social pecking order, as much of their pecking order is based on dominance and the ability to protect the herd. As a pony, they would constantly have to be challenged for their place in the pecking order and as a smaller horse likely have to try twice as hard to make it up the ladder against horses that are bigger and stronger than them. In our experience, when ponies are in pens together, they often buddy up and it can be seen that they are obviously friends, so size does matter. Secondly, ponies... |
AuthorGwendolyn Donohoe, PhD, is the owner/manager at Sagehill Stables. Read more here Archives
March 2024
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