Marie's Everything Equine

Caring for Horses

 

Topics:

 

1. Feeding & Watering

2. Vaccinations

3. Worming

4. Farriers

5. Cleaning Up

6. When Should I Call A Vet?

7. Basic First Aid & How to give Medications?

8. Grooming

 

FEEDING & WATERING:

 

    Feeding a horse is one of the easiest things to do. Horses can eat hay, salt blocks, mineral blocks, oats, sweet feed, apples, carrots, regular horse treats, and lots of grass. Typically throughout the summer if you have the recommended amount of land (2acres per horse), then you do not need to feed hay. You can give treats, mineral blocks, aapples, carrots (long big carrots, the little ones are loaded in sugar), salt blocks, and mineral blocks. Some horses will require some sweetfeed/oat mixes, but other horses would gain too much weight. Talk to your vet to find out their recommendation on your horses feeding schedule.

 

     How often should you feed a horse?

Use this 4 week test to find out your horses preferences.

 

Week 1- feed him his entire ration once a day

Week 2- feed him twice a day at twelve hour intervals, such as 6am, and 6pm.

Week 3- feed him three times a day at 8 hour intervals such as 6am, 2pm, and 10pm

Week 4- feed him four times a day at 5-6 hour intervals such as 6am, Noon, 5pm, and 10pm

 

Note these questions each day, of each week, and compare the results at the end of the 4 weeks.

1. How long did he take to eat? Ideally a horse will eat his rations in 1-2hours

2. Did he finish all the feed in one session? Was it wasted, or did he come back and finish it? If there is feed left at the next session. the feed is bad or he is being fed too much. If a horse eats half his ration, walks over and drinks some water, rests for a while, then continues eating.. That's perfectly normal

3. How eager (noisy, pawing, pushy) was he to be fed the next time he saw you? A horse that is aggressive at feeding time is either being fed too little, too infrequently, or considers you below him in the pecking order.

4. Rate your horses overall contentment on a scale of 1 to 10 for each feeding frequency. The method with the highest score will tell you which feeding frequency your horse prefers.

 

Talking with an equine nutritionist may be beneficial is you suspect that your horse has digestion problems, or other feeding problems.

 

Horses should have access to fresh clean cool water at all times.. Creeks, ponds, strems, water troughs, or buckets of water are exceptable.

 

Vaccinations or Worming:

 

Horses should be vaccinated yearly for Potomac Horse Fever, Rhino, Rabies, West Nile Virus, Tetnus, Eastern & Western Enchephalitis. Horses should be tested for worms every 90 days, and wormed if necessary.

 

Farriers:

 

Horses do require their hooves trimmed, mud and junk picked out of their hooves, and some horses requires shoes. It depends on each horse, and each use of a horse. If your horse's hooves grow quickly, I recommend every 4-8 weeks. If they grow really slow I recommend a long wait. Talk to your farrier about a trimming schedule, and to decide if your horses need shoed or not.

 

Cleaning Up:

 

Horse barns needs mucked out (the poop scooped out), and fresh bedding needs laid down. You use a shovel or scoop and shovel it out of the barn. Stalls needs it mucked out as well.

 

When Should You Call A Vet?

 

You should consult a vet if your horse has a fever, gets diarehea, gets down and can't get back up, profuse bleeding that don't stop, high pulses, swelling, panting, wheezing, chest rattling, high respiration, sudden lameness, seizures, severe changes in attitude or activity level, colic, a cut tear or scrape that exposes the underlying tissuse, eye problems, extreme lameness or stiffness, profuse sweating, signs of distress, inability to stand, straining to produce manure or urine, skin pinch tests indicate severe dehydration, coffee colored urine, difficulty foaling, abcesses, any puncture wound, etc. NEVER WAIT AND SEE WHAT WILL HAPPEN!! CONTACT A VET IMMEDIATLY IF YOU ARE THE SLIGHTEST CONCERNED ABOUT YOUR HORSES HEALTH! IT MAY BE SERIOUS, OR IT COULD BE SOMETHING MINOR, BUT NEVER PLAY WITH YOUR HORSES HEALTH!!

 

Basic First Aid & How to Give Medications?

 

Powdered medications you can mix into grain, or you can mix into applesauce or something like that and syringe feed it to them. Pills you can crush and mix into applesauce or grain.

 

For basic first aid, you need to know how to clean wounds, put ointments on the wounds, bandage wounds, and remove bandages. Your vet will explain to you how to do these things if you had to have to come out. But it's always good to be prepared. The first thing you should know is that you should have someone with you. One person to hold onto the horse's lead, and the other person to do the work. To clean a wound, you need a sponge, water, and some antibacterial soap. Put the soap in a bucket of water, and soak the sponge in it. Sponge clean around the wound, and on top of the wound. Cold hosing the wound with a water hose also works well. Putting ointments on a wound is simple too.. You apply some ointment on the wound and rub it al over the wound. To bandage the wound you just put gauze or cotton rolls on the baze of the wounds, and use vetrap to secere it. Elastic tape around the edges of the bandage will help to secure it into place. Removing the bandage is simple. You use bandage scissors and you cut through the bandage careful not to cut the horse.

 

Warning!! Some horses do not like bandages, or wounds being cleaned. Be calm and patient. If you don't feel comfortable doing it, or you can't do it. Have your vet or another horse owner do it. Also remember that the person holding the lead should stand on the same side of the horse as the person who is doing the bandage. They should hold the horses head sort of angled towards that side. This is a safety precaussion so the horse don't kick you.

 

Grooming:

Horses love to be groomed out. There's several different brushes, and scrapers. Each one of them has their own special use and purpose. The hoof pick is to pick mud and debris out of the horses hooves. The sweat scraper is to be used up and down the horse to scrape the horse. The mane and tail brush is to brush the mane and tail. Face curry comb is to curry the face. Coars curry comb is to curry the horses back, sides, etc. The mane and tail comb is to comb the mane and tail comb. The stiff grooming brush is to brush things out of their coats. The horse hair finishing brush, and the soft finishing brush is to put a final touch on grooming!