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Liz's Scottish Paddock Paradise
I am a barefoot trimmer living up in North East Scotland. The climate here (like all of Scotland!) is quite wet and the ground easily gets muddy in winter, so I wanted to incorporate a lot of gravel into my paddock paradise. I thought this would provide a good solution to the mud whilst also benefiting the horses' feet. I have 3 horses, 2 are appaloosas and 1 is a warmblood. I also have 2 American minis and 1 falabella : ) | Halo, the appy, and Solo, the warmblood.  |
| Building the yard In October 2008 we were lucky enough to apply for, and get, government funding to create a barefoot rehab yard at the farm. This means we could get help to create our paddock paradise and gravel areas, so visiting horses could come and stay for a while to enjoy the benefits. We decided to create 5 new stables, with gates as central partitions, so it could be used as a large field shelter most of the time but be stabling if needed. My own horses are not stabled, but have access to the shed. We also decided to have a paddock paradise around the horses field, with two sides pea gravel and two sides grass. At the moment the horses only have access to the gravel side of the track, as we have ploughed the field to re-seed it, so the "L" of grass is not yet fenced. I have given them grass in other areas instead for just now (note: none of my 3 big horses have any metabolic conditions). | Here is the top corral (the only one with trees) with my new freedom feeder in it. The net is suspended by double ended trigger clips connected to swing hooks that I screwed into the trees.  |
| Busy Grande Slow Feeder  | I have been experimenting with my slow feeding options. Although my horses can get hay out of the busy bags pretty fast, if I suspend them from trees, it slows them down a fair bit. This is true for both the busy grande, and the snacker. If I could get busy bags or nibble nets with 1" - 1.25" holes, I think that would be ideal, as even hung from trees, the 1.5" - 1.75" holes are still too big. I do have very soft hay this year, and think if it was harder, I could get away with the bigger hole size. The bag is closed at the top with baler twine as a temporary measure, to stop them eating out of the top. I will attach more clips to be able to close the top more efficiently. A double-ended trigger clip suspends the bag to the hanging rope. |
| Golf netting SMHN  | Here is my new 22mm hole SMHN. I bought 2 square metres of netting from The Sports Netting Company, and sewed the sides up to create a SMHN in the style of the Freedom Feeder. The holes are smaller than an inch. and seem to be slowing my horses down pretty well, even without being suspended from trees. The good thing about having so much gravel, is that I can have a lot of SMHNs on the ground without them getting muddy. I'm going to wait a couple weeks to see how durable they are before ordering more, but so far I am very pleased : ) |
LizLamb |
Latest page update: made by LizLamb
, Mar 3 2010, 12:33 PM EST
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