I will be adding more to this page as I have time.
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Our Facilities
We live in a rural area on ten acres. We have five acres fenced off for pasture. It is partially wooded with a pond. For now they have an overhang for shelter, but we will be building a barn which will have pea gravel floors for drainage and hoof stimulation. We only keep the horses in stalls for feeding or if we need to separate them for training. They are also available in case of any future injuries that might require stall rest. The rest of their time will be spent in a Paddock Paradise system. I will write more about it when I can, but for now you can read about our plan here: http://rdxhorses.blogspot.com/2013/02/paddock-paradise.html
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What We Feed
We are lucky that our horses are easy keepers. We feed grass hay year round. They have a pond for water and always have access to a salt block (which they LOVE!). Right now we are feeding our horses Nature's Essentials 12:12 Mineral Supplement, but eventually I would like to test our hay and see what, if anything, they actually need. For more information on testing your horse's diet check this article out: http://www.hoofrehab.com/diet.htm I use soaked shredded beat pulp or timothy pellets (depending on what I have on hand and if I have time to soak the beet pulp) for feeding the minerals. In the winter if Chrome starts losing weight I feed him plain, whole oats. If I have access to flaxseed I feed it also, because it makes their coats gorgeous and helps keep their hooves healthy. I'll update as I learn more about the equine diet.
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Hoof Care
For more detailed information on our hoof care practices please visit the barefoot trimming page here - http://rdxhorses.blogspot.com/p/barefoot-trimming.html. Simply put, we keep our horses barefoot because we believe their hooves evolved the way they did for a reason and it is the healthiest for them. I'm not 100% anti-shoeing because I'm sure there are cases where they are best, but for now we enjoy staying barefoot. No two horses are alike and no one method works for all horses, so we keep an open mind. We are setting up a Paddock Paradise system to promote movement which improves hoof health, we will be using pea gravel in our barns again, work on various surfaces to make them stronger and healthier, a diet low in sugar and salt water to combat thrush (if required - see recipe on our barefoot page) to keep their hooves healthy. We are definitely learning more everyday and do not claim to be experts of any kind, so don't consider our words or practices to be anything but doing the best we can for our horses. :)
