I'm in Lexington, Kentucky! Horsekeeping is different here.
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- Опубликовано: 28 авг 2024
- On a recent trip to visit family in Lexington, Kentucky, I share some observations about how having a horse seems different in the "Horse Capital of the World," versus the San Francisco Bay Area.
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What's unique about horse keeping where you live? I'm curious to know 👀
Lol I live in North Carolina, and it’s kinda the opposite all the barns in my area are all western and I can’t find one that’s English 😂 we need some diversity up in here 😂
I would not have guessed that! Too funny 😂
I live in the Southwest. It's easy to find cheap large pasture, but you need to add hay and minerals because the 'pastures' are pretty dry. Either way, happy to have room for them to self exercise all day.
Thank you for this video. It's so nice to see you, again. Enjoy Lexington, it is beautiful. As I've traveled around the United States, I have observed how different equine care and usage differs from region to region, and sometimes even within a state. I live in Idaho, where you see a lot of traditional western ranching. We would often leave halters on our horses, especially if they were going to be used again soon. And we never had an issue. But if they were going to be out in the pasture for days we usually took them off just so they didn't get so beat up. And like California, good tack stores are few and far between. But back east, they seem to be everywhere. As is the frequency of English riding and keeping horses inside. It is much more like Europe, which makes sense from a historical perspective. If you get a chance to go over into Tennessee, you will see one method of keeping horses in the mountains, and another on the open spaces (like around Franklin).
Wow so interesting! Appreciate you sharing. I’m surprised Idaho doesn’t have more tack shops! What a shame. That makes sense about the European influence on the east coast…and old money seems to gravitate toward English riding too…I’ve been told that Californians can be a bit overprotective when it comes to blanketing too so it doesn’t surprise me we are worried about halters in turnout 😂 I would love to see Tennessee someday.
Here in the north of Quebec, horses deal with extreme cold and snow. People ride in their trails in the woods even with snow. :) When too cold, horses are kept inside and have blankets on.
I'm in northwestern Colorado which is basically cattle ranch country, so very little english riding here! Everyone here tends to keep their horses on pasture all the time, even in a harsh winter, though we tend to have several run in sheds where they can get out of the snow/rain/wind. They are also allowed to grow their winter coats for this purpose. All rope halters here and we don't keep them on. Halter on means it's time to work.
Interesting! All that pasture and freedom must be great for them. Lots of rope halters out here too. I like the association of a halter with work for them. 👍🏼 thanks for sharing!
Grew up in North Idaho and my dad did some horse logging with Belgiums. Small scale stuff. I'd love to steal Fame and ride him in our Clearwater and Selway areas.
I'm from Oregon and in a wetter area of it. Horses arent super common in my area but there are some. Almost all have enclosed barns, dont wear halters in pasture and many are actually in a pasture with other animals such as cows, sheep and donkeys. There is no trail riding once the first frost hits as then we get a ton of rain and there can be flooding. It makes areas dangerous. There is also not a lot of flat land. Hoofrot is a big issue and I've only known two people who had draft horses in this area.
Interesting! Thanks for sharing all those details. 😃
i live in the louisville area, nearby churchill downs, and i’m so surprised that as close as lexington it’s mostly english! up here ive only ever seen western!at the fairs and also just trail riding is almost entirely western. the only time i’ve seen english is the KY state fair when they had saddlebred shows.
I live in the state of Washington, and I love all the green forestry and all the trails. We go up to capital forest, as well as Lewis and Clark and then again I also ride on private trails as well. My son lives in Stanford ,Kentucky.
I hear WA has gorgeous trails 😍 I would love to ride there someday. I looked up Stanford - so close to Lex! How fun you get to visit family there too 😃
Hey, I'm from Germany too and looking for stables here can be very tiring.
Especially here in rural areas, normal box stalls are still very common.
I have a wild horse from Dülmen, I also like to call him German Mustang, and I've been looking for a stable for a long time.
we are lucky enough to be in a paddock trail, it is permanently outside with shelter and hay freely available.
Is a jumping stable and the jumping horses have boxes with paddocks and daily grazing. Unfortunately not a matter of course.
Our terrain isn't that great for that, but that's not so bad.
But the attitude and the training opportunities are right.
When it comes to keeping horses, Germany is not as great as you might think. For this we have 2 large companies for equestrian sports equipment and they have shops all over Germany. Or just Amazon. 😂😂
Thanks for the video! It's interesting that you say horses are stalled all the time potentially because of the colder climate, and they likely don't ride outside all year long as well for this reason. I live in Ontario, Canada and we always keep our horses outside all year long. Even in the -30 degree Celsius temps we get during the winter. And we certainly ride outside as well. Some years we do have ice or freezing rain that means the trails we ride on or the rings we school in require some more initial maintenance before we are allowed in them. My horse loves being outside, he's a gigantic warmblood and would definitely protest being inside because of cold weather.
That’s fantastic you ride year round! Perhaps that’s my perception about the weather - maybe the stalling is more a tradition than anything else 🤷🏻♀️ it’s great to know weather doesn’t have to stop you from riding 👍🏼
I live in Norway and here we ride all year round in all kinds of weather. I've been training endurance horses (arabians) in the middle of winter on ice and snow. Most horses wear ice studs or boots with studs (google scootboots for example) during winter for this exact reason. And I would say that 50% of all horses here live on a turnout year round - with a shed and 24/7 low energy hay. :) Most riders in norway ride english.
never leave halter on. It's only practice to leave it on is for owners who can't catch their horse. Which says a lot to their relationship to it. Leaving halters on is frowned upon in eastern canada.
Here in Maryland it’s about 50/50 as far as English and Western riding. Near my barn we have at least 7 or more Western stables dedicated to reining and roping and at least that many or more English barns dedicated to fox hunting or cross country/dressage/hunter competition. As for halters, we require breakaways as a safety precaution and unless a horse has a known issue most halters stay on when out in the field. We have had very little issue despite the fact that horses are accident prone due to their curious nature. We get very wet and icy winters here and our barn is primarily retirees or layups with medical requirements, so each horse has a stall for turn in time depending on the schedule and weather that month. Several barns in higher elevations and with a healthier population have full turn out 24/7. We aim for at least 12-14 hours for our herd on pasture and have multiple large fields on 50 acres. We have several tack shops and at least 2-4 or more horse rescues in our area that also have tack shops. During Fall right now there are multiple scheduled cross country rides that criss cross the counties, some open and others by invitation. Participating land owners either have trails or fields with a variety of obstacles both man made and natural for all levels of riding. The group that rides thru the woods near my house usually has a good mix of all shapes and sizes of horses, but I believe they are also an open group that many riders can signup for to see how they like riding after the hounds.
Equestrians around the state are encouraged to help maintain the trails and sometimes work groups are organized to target certain areas where the trails have been overgrown or had a lot of tree fall. If you get a chance check out the map of the Maryland Patuxent Reserve, which has a wide range of horse trails throughout. I live outside a town called Frederick and some Equestrians have ridden all the way to DC on back paths and trails from out here. It is amazing how much park or reserve land Maryland has and that connects to the states surrounding it.
Wow Maryland sounds like an amazing place to be an equestrian! So much space for the horses and a large community to be a part of. 😍 How cool people can ride to DC?! Appreciate you sharing!
@@HappieronaHorse I watch your rides and wish that we had parks like the ones near you. I used to live in Mountain View East of San Francisco, but I am not sure if those parks were as extensive then as they are now. My folks would take me north towards Tahoe to several places for trail rides, but they were never long enough in my opinion.🤠 Granted this was all before my horse ownership days. However, if you get a chance since your are in the neighborhood, drive out a little ways from Lexington and you will get a chance to see more of the diversity of equines in Kentucky. The Kentucky Mountain horses are whole experience in their own. Especially down towards the Kentucky-Tennessee border between Corbin and Jellico.
To blow some people's mind. Horse cant survive in the wild in my area (eastern Canada). No food in winter for them. So 100% fed from humans. Another funny thing is our shires will willingly step and on ice, which ive rarely seen in the stables I used to ride. The cold makes it a danger to keep your horse in, sweating, then pulling it out in the cold. The sweat then conduct the rain all the way to the skin. So we avoid pulling them inside for too long during the coldest days.
Here in alaska, a lot like Canada the cold just really limits us. The super rich build indoor arenas and practice all year and in the spring are leaps and bounds ahead in the show ring. You pretty much can’t even compete if you don’t have an indoor. The bears, the moose, coyotes, you name it, it’s on my trail ride. Snows early October and finishes melting in mid may, that really sucks. And for some reason, every year more and more ignorant people make it dangerous to ride up here with their driving around horses. But I’m sure that’s in most areas😂
Omg I can’t even with the bears and moose on trail 😦 Appreciate you sharing. You have a lot of challenges to deal with for sure!
winter in eastern canada and usa is when the draft horses are used even more. The frozen ground allows to skid bigger logs easier :) And you definitely need to go north for a sleigh ride with drafts
I am from Germany and I sometimes see horses turned out with halters here as well, mostly in barns with sport horses. But many people, if not most, don't put halters on their turned out horses. Never, ever will I put a halter on my turned out horses. 4 weeks ago I was at a friends barn helping out in the mornings. I found a 6 year old mare with her face cut open on both sides. One cut was about 5cm, but on the other side her face was cut open from her mouth to her cheeckbone, roughly 20cm or more and you could fit an entire hand in there. I could see her tongue and her teeth. She survived, barely, and had to stay at a vetenary hospital for 3 weeks, because the stitches burst and the wounds got infected. Last week she returned to the barn. How did it happen? She wore a halter and that got caught on the latch of a gate. I found blood on the gate and the latch, so we know that it happend this way.
In Germany you'll find different styles of keeping horses. Some people will keep their horses in a barn with stables and turn them out daily, but sadly not all horses get turned out or just not enough. Free roam barns have become quite popular in Germany over the last years. My two horses (a Paint Horse and a Noriker, which is a popular draft breed here) live in my own free roam barn, with two other horses as a group of four. Essentially it is a barn building used as a huge shelter, with free hay, water and space to lie down in, with a huge attached outside paddock. The horses can move around freely in the barn and paddock. Some free roam barns have attached pastures, but that wasn't possible at my barn. But our horses will go into pasture from april/may to october/november full time 24/7. We will only fetch them back to the barn in extreme weather conditions.
Also becoming quite popular are free roam barns with an attached, fenced in walking trail for the horses, usually around the barn building or the pastures. The horses can/have to walk quite some distance every day to different hay and water stations.
We also have so called "Aktivställe" or active barns (in Englisch) - they are a step up from free roam barns, because everyting is computerized. Horses wear a micro chip in their mane which stores their weight, height, age, etc. so a computer knows how much hay and grain the horses are allowed to eat, how much pasture time they get, etc. The hay stations, the grain stations and all the gates are computer operated and open and close for the individual horses, if they are allowed in or out.
I’m so glad that horse is ok 😢 Im with you, I wouldn’t leave a halter on my horse unattended.
Ok so I got so excited about so many things - first, you have a Noriker!!! I love rare breeds - at least it’s rare here. What color is yours? What kind of riding do you do together?
Aktivställes sound insanely amazing. What a wonderful use of technology. Free roam barns also sound wonderful. Germany sounds very invested in quality care for their horses. ❤
@@HappieronaHorse Don't get too exited, there are still enough horses in stables 3x3 meters (don't know what it is in your length system, but I would assume it is roughly the same as 12x12) which don't get turned out at all or only 2 to 3 hours a day. I find that disgusting and would love to put the owners in their own bathroom for a whole day and only let them out for 2 hours, so they can appriciate what those horses experience every day.
But luckily free roam-barns or similar barns are on the rise here. Many (not all) of those "bad" barns are part of the equine sports industry (dressage, show jumping, horse racing, ...). You will also find these kind of barns in densely populated cities, because they just lack the space for pastures and paddocks.
I wouldn't buy a horse, if I had to put it in that kind of a barn. Never! That is animal cruelty.
I had my horses at a professional free roam -barn until I got my own barn with a friend. My old Paint Horse has his own stable part of time, because he is old and sometimes sickly. The other horses are picking on him sometimes and he would get ulcers. A free roam barn doesn't work for every horse. But since he got his own stable inside the barn for the night, we are doing fine.
Norikers are really common around here. I bought mine from a breeder. He was a licensed stallion, but now he is gelded. It is totally unneccessary and cruel to keep a stallion, if one has no intentions to breed.
He will turn 8 in April 2023, he is 16.3 hands tall and could still be growing, but he hasn't grown these last two years. So, who knows? Usually Norikers aren't this tall. He is jet black with really long mane on both sides. If I try and braid it, it takes me half an hour for each side, ough. And he destroys the braids in a day, the little shit.
I bought him at 3.5 years and started him in horsemanship immidiately. When he turned 4, I started with in hand-work/ground work (shoulder-in, quarter in, etc.) and sat on him a few times. When he turned 4.5, I orderd a custom saddle and started riding him in the arena and did some very short trail rides (10/15 minutes) with a reliable older horse as a companion. We increased the work load ever since in small increments. In the arena I practise the "Academic Art of Riding" by Bent Branderup and have a baroque kind of saddle. For trail rides I have a regular old western saddle, because it is more comfortable.
We have the added difficulty that we don't have an inside arena and our outside arena isn't really usuable from November/ December till April, because it is so muddy. Sometimes we could only work for 6 to 7 months and then had to stop for several months. And since he was so young and underworked during those months, he would get really excited on trail rides and I got too afraid to ride him in the winter. So we went on walks or did horsemanship excercises. This year seems to be the first year we can keep going on trail rides during winter time. So keep your fingers crossed. We also recently started preparing him for driving a carriage. I got all the equipment and he already pulled some small tree stumps for practise.
He is quiet the character. He is not an easy horse, because he tests everyone and you have to be very straight forward with him and set clear bounderies, otherwise he will take over control. And with his size and weight (1600lbs) that should not happen.
I can't show you any pictures of him here, but there is a video of his sire on youtube, just search for "Zollfeld Schaunitz". My boy just looks like his daddy, albeit with a slightly smaller crest, because he is gelded now. And his father just has mane on one side, whereas Ari (that is my Norikers name) has mane on both sides. There are some pictures of him on facebook as well. They were shot on the day he got licensed as a stallion as a three year old. I could find the link for you.
Sorry for any spelling errors, English is not my native language.
I would love to go ride in Kentucky with you. I think it would be a blast. I’ve been to Kentucky to see my son and it is absolutely gorgeous there.
That would be fun! 🤠
I'm in SE VA. Here's it pretty evenly split English to western. We have quite a few tack shops in the area. There's a few big sprawling farms but most are in the 10-25 ac size.
Interesting! Sounds like the best of both worlds. 10-25 acres sounds idyllic 🤩 I’ve been to Lynchburg - fondly remember all the beautiful, dense trees. Thanks for sharing!
@@HappieronaHorse but I don't see too many draft horses... I love my big boy Spike
If you go to my channel you can see what fences and paddocks look like up here in the mountains in NW Montana where I live. I have a quick video documenting some fence repair from the big wind storm we had come through and then rain/snow mix which has turned my horses into little mud pies because they insist on rolling in the mud. But from the video you can garner a little of what stuff looks like horse wise up here. It is very different from the wide open of the eastern part of Montana as well.
Wow those TREES…amazing! Your horses are such characters 😂 trying to help out.
@@HappieronaHorse when I cleared this place to put in the road and the house etc. I took out five and half log truck loads of trees to the local mill and still had log decks of short logs that I didn't sell to the mill. If I remember right we felled around 350 trees in five days. Thankfully my whole place is not that heavily timbered so there are some open spaces that grow grass where the horses can graze. And yes, that one chestnut quarter horse in the middle whose barn name is "King" is a HUGE pain when you are trying to get anything done because he has to play with everything you bring into his paddock to work with as far as tools go. I have other horses but their paddocks weren't affected by the storm so the video only shows three of them.
350 trees?! Dang. Must be so nice to carve out the property to your liking tho. Haha sounds like King enjoys himself!
❤
Years ago, I read that it wasn't safe for horses to wear halters in turn-out, so I have wondered about that as well. I am from Texas but have minimal exposure to riding; trail riding and some Western lessons, that's it.
BTW, I love your short haircut! Very cute!
Aww thanks! Short hair makes mom life and horse life easier 😂 yeah it seems like one of those things some people do, some people don’t 🤷🏻♀️
I always thought the double fencing was to try to prevent the public from feeding the horses or just from anyone that may harm the horses.
I think it helps with that too. I was also told that if someone veers off the road and crashes their car the hope is that they only make it through one fence and the horses don’t get loose 😬
@@HappieronaHorse never even thought about cars crashing in a fence.
I’m in Minnesota and people ride in the winter all of the time. Just have to be smart about where and speed.
Thats great to hear! 👍🏼😃