I have a B.S. in Animal Science from VA Tech but more importantly, I have been studying the care and training of horses for 35 years.
Sound management is based on:
Friends: Your horse will always be turned out with other horses. Typically, all the horses are out together, free to find out" who they are" within a healthy functioning herd. Even if a horse is convalescing, I hope to turn them out with some old friends.
Forage: Your horse will have free choice grass and/or hay 24/7. It is old news that forage and water are the necessities in horse's diet so we start there. Forage keeps their guts healthy and their minds calm. We don’t use round bales; we spread the hay around the pasture area to give each individual plenty of room to relax and eat, and to encourage them to move around.
Freedom: Your horse will have access to large (40 acres) pastures 24/7. The horses come in twice a day to be "fed" and then they are turned out again. Our pasture is arranged in a big horse shoe shape so the horses have to walk farther to get from one side of the farm to the other. There is pond at the “toe of the shoe” and most of the horses utilize the pond in the warmer months for swimming. The pasture areas have lots of trees and a small wooded area with a trail through it. When we set up the farm, the goal was to have as much variety as possible in their environment.
Find out more on the Horse Care Program page.
“Horses have given me my livelihood and I am indebted to them for that. They have also given me some of the most challenging, frustrating moments of my life and consequently some of the most rewarding, illuminating, inspiring moments of my life, and I am indebted to them for that. It is this debt that compels me to plead their case, in hopes that someone might heed it and rethink their stabling practices, open their mind to a whole new stabling model and ‘open the gate’.
I wish that we could find a way to accept them for what they are and though we will ask them to carry us through our lives, perhaps we could allow them the luxury of silence and weather, and the smell and the taste of grass.”
Gwynn Weaver
I wish that we could find a way to accept them for what they are and though we will ask them to carry us through our lives, perhaps we could allow them the luxury of silence and weather, and the smell and the taste of grass.”
Gwynn Weaver