Turnout

[CarolineR]

At the risk of started a huge debate on the subject, how much turn out does your horse get?

We have a TB (age 8) and a normal healthy cob (age 5), who had a mild dose of laminitis (founder) 1 month ago, no problems since box rested 2 weeks.

We have over the past couple of weeks being turning them out 24/7. The cob has his Best Friend Muzzle on during the day and off at night to avoid his overeating on the spring grass. They are kept at home with us on a 7 acre paddock. 2 Acres have been stripped grazed for this summer's paddock, have built an outside grass school 40 x 20, with the remaining land making our own hay for the next winter season.

The cob does not have any rugs on anymore as still got a lot of winter coat, and this will also helps his weight, the TB is rugged up on cold nights. They are checked over twice a day, the field is poo picked twice a day and they are brought in for daily grooming check over and evening feed (mainly their vitamins and feed balancers etc). They are in very light work at the moment, but will be built up over the coming months, however we will continue to ride them off the grass.

Both horses appear to be very happy being allowed out all the time and are very calm and responsive to training. The youngster does have to lie down and have his morning nap at about 9.30 each day, but other than that they are contentedly grazing or dozing or grooming each other.

We are proposing to continue this routine all summer, up to September/October time when the wet winter will arrive again.

What do you all do with yours, and do you have any constructive critisim of our routine?

[judyl]

We have 2 cobs and ours get a maximum of 6 hours turnout a day. If they had more than this, they'd both be the size of a house. When my horse was around 6, I used to turn her out overnight and in during the day but she was very fat and luckily I had brought her in overnight (turnout of about 4 / 5 hours) and when the farrier came, he said he could see the beginnings of laminitis and I needed to change her routine. Maybe you're lucky that yours can take all that grazing but our 2 can't. Ours are also worked six days a week with one day off (then turnout is about 7 hours). They get about 10lbs of hay overnight and 4lbs ish for the morning. We will start to reduce this as the grass comes through more but their turnout won't increase. We're also strip grazing and will continue to strip graze through the summer.

I don't have any criticisms constructive or otherwise of your regime. All we can do is what suits your horse the best.

Good luck.

Judy

[Bebe]

My horse is out 24/7 on 43 acres in a herd of 22. There's plenty of grass in the field but it wasn't rested last year so it isn't particularly lush so laminitis isn't too big a worry just yet, although the 10hh pony is wearing a bucket muzzle during the day as he's an incredibly good doer.

Bebe wears a Rhino Lite on cold/wet nights, nothing during the day or when it's mild at night. Her summer coat has 99% come through but she seems happy enough to go naked.

I've just brought her back into work over the last 3 weeks. She's hacking 5-6 days a week for 1 hour 15 mins. We've just introduced short spells of trotting and the duration of the trot sessions will be increased over this next week. Even so she's still in light work really.

She's just right weight wise but is still getting an evening feed (very runny sugar beet to damp the feed, handful of mollichop, 1kg alfa-easy mix and benevit). She also comes in for an hour or so every evening and has a small haynet.

I don't have any criticism of your routine as it's pretty similar to mine. Through trial and error I've found that Bebe is by far the happiest when she's allowed out full-time. She doesn't seem to mind being in at night during the worst of winter but she's definitely happier to be out for as long as possible.

Amanda