winter to spring

[dcp]

Hi how do you prepare for spring? When do your horses go into their summer fields? When will you start cutting down feed and will you be feeding your horse anything during the summer. How does your horse cope do they suffer from insect bites etc?

I am going to give my boy a feed once a day which will just have a little chaff his balancer garlic and cider vinager as I heard it's good for putting flies off. I did this last year and he did very well. He is TB.

My horse will be going from a stubble field with haylage into a lovely green field will he be ok can I just put him out or will it need to be done over time?

:)

[Jessey]

Unfortunatly we don't have the pleasure of a winter and summer field, just the one they are in year round.
I would want to move them onto the grass slowly, I will be doing this with my filly as she has been away and not had grass since mid november. I will start for about an hour a day in a couple of weeks time and will gradually increase that over about a month when she will be out for 8-10 hours, by then I hope spring will be sufficently through that I will be able to think about them going out full time.
As I increase the turnout/access to good grass I begin to decrease the hard feed proportionally. When they first go out full time (and for about a month after) they will be getting a tiny bit of grub with any supplements etc but by about april they won't be getting anything, they will have a pasture salt/mineral block out.
We get loads of flies at our place, we have 2 rivers running through (its called Watermill Farm) and weirs etc, the flies are bad, the normal annoying ones don't bother them too much but we also get 100's of horse flys, they cause lots of trouble, least of all for me as I am allergic to the sting, I think my filly is too, the swelling reaction she has is much worse than the boys. I didn't find a fly rug helped and most insect repellants don't seem to work either, I use fly masks to keep them out of the eyes but other than that don't worry too much, if we get a really bad day (normally the still, hot, muggy ones) I use superdrug fly spray for kids (seems to be the only one that works for us :D) and maybe bring them in for a few hours.

J x