King's Park Equine

12/04/2023

Artwork by Jean Luc Cornille

05/04/2023

Kings Park resident Tommy trying out the Hidez compression hood. Applies pressure to acupuncture points, TMJ and endorphin release points to head and poll. Helps with anxiety, focus and behavioural issues. Thank you Horseland Mornington

04/04/2023

It's that season....

04/04/2023

Fab course to improve your communication and understanding of equine body language. Can't recommend Steph Bolgie enough.

📣🦄CLINIC ANNOUNCEMENT! 🦄📣
Is My Horse Happy? Behaviour clinic for young horse owners (8-18y.o) 21st April, held at King's Park Equine in Moorooduc VIC

I will be running an interactive clinic on how to recognise your horses behaviour to tell if they are happy or not. Understanding behaviour is so important from a safety perspective ⚠️, early recognition of something not being right with your horse 🤒, as well as developing a better relationship with them 🥰

I have put together an easy to understand, fun and practical clinic mixed with some interactive theory and practical exercises for young horses owners to improve their skills. Parents are also welcome to attend. Prices and further information can be found in the event listed on my page.

Feel free to message me with any questions.

03/04/2023

Bot Flies scarring in the stomach.

Scars on the stomach wall due to botfly larvae.

03/04/2023

CAN WRINKLES ABOVE THE EYE TELL US HOW A HORSE IS FEELING?

Horses communicate primarily using body language and they display a number of facial expressions.

Their eyes, in particular, can be very expressive and are thought to reveal how a horse is feeling. Many equine behaviourists and horse owners believe the wrinkles above a horse’s eye may be associated with discomfort, fear, stress or anxiety – they are often called ‘worry lines’. However, until recently, there has never been any scientific study researching the links between these facial expressions and the horse’s emotional state.

A team of researchers from Switzerland, the UK and the USA set out to examine whether eye wrinkles are caused by negative emotional states in the horse, or whether it was simply a case of humans interpreting these wrinkles as they would for themselves.

The wrinkles studied appear above the upper eyelid are a result of the contraction of the underlying inner eyebrow raiser muscles. These eye wrinkles are commonly seen, but may differ in shape, number and severity in different individual horses.

The team placed 16 horses at the Swiss National Stud Farm into two ‘positive’ situations:
* Anticipation of a food reward;
* Being stroked.

And into two ‘negative’ situations:
* Competing for food;
* Having a plastic bag waved nearby.

These four test conditions were chosen as they were situations the horses were reasonably likely to encounter in their day-to-day management.

Photos of the horses’ eyes were taken while they were tested and the images analysed based on overall impression, shape of the eyelid, eye whites, number of wrinkles, markedness and angle.

In the situations presumed to be positive, the researchers found that while stroking did reduce the expression of eye wrinkles, wrinkles were sometimes seen when food was present. This may have been as a result of the horses being frustrated around food. The negative situations did increase the likelihood of the eye wrinkles occurring.

The researchers found the angle of the wrinkles changed, depending on the situation. The angle was wider in negative situations, compared to positive, due to a stronger contraction of the inner eyebrow raiser. More eye white was seen in negative situations.

The number and depth of wrinkles and how much white of the eye was shown revealed that some characteristics of eye wrinkling were affected by different emotional states.

Researchers concluded that a horse’s emotional state could be linked with their eye wrinkle expression and therefore this could be a potential indicator of horse welfare. However, the team indicated that further research was needed.

Research team: Sara Hintze (University of Bern and Agroscope, Swiss National Stud Farm, Switzerland); Samantha Smith (University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom); Antonia Patt (University of Maryland, United States); Iris Bachmann (Agroscope, Switzerland); Hanno Würbel (University of Bern, Switzerland).

30/03/2023

Rugging & Temp: The ambient temperature range in which a healthy unclipped adult horse can easily maintain their body temp is between 5 & 25 degrees C, which is a lot wider than humans!

29/03/2023

Right now, I’m focussed on Chilli’s mane. When she got sick last year, it started falling out in handfuls. It’s still on the thin side and has rubbed in parts. I spend a lot of time worried about if there’s something I can add to her diet. Meanwhile, that diet has been balanced by a nutritionist, making sure all her nutritional requirements are met. That’s after spending more in one shop on products for her than I spend on my hair in a year. And let’s not even start on what my diet looks like.

Chilli has a therapist coming out tomorrow to see her and Nuggie, because, you know, I don’t want them to be sore. That’s on top of joint supplements. Meanwhile I’m over here, creaking and groaning, telling myself, I’ll warm up and the kinks will disappear.

I think I want to come back as one of my horses, meanwhile, I'm going self medicate with chocolate and cocktails

28/03/2023

There should be not compromise on this. It is an honour to ride a horse and we have a duty of care to do so without causing pain and trauma.

28/03/2023

📣🦄CLINIC ANNOUNCEMENT! 🦄📣
Is My Horse Happy? Behaviour clinic for young horse owners (8-18y.o) 21st April, held at King's Park Equine in Moorooduc VIC

I will be running an interactive clinic on how to recognise your horses behaviour to tell if they are happy or not. Understanding behaviour is so important from a safety perspective ⚠️, early recognition of something not being right with your horse 🤒, as well as developing a better relationship with them 🥰

I have put together an easy to understand, fun and practical clinic mixed with some interactive theory and practical exercises for young horses owners to improve their skills. Parents are also welcome to attend. Prices and further information can be found in the event listed on my page.

Feel free to message me with any questions.

23/03/2023

The average circulation time for blood to circulate through a horse's body is approximately 25-30 seconds. This means that it takes about 25-30 seconds for blood to travel from the heart to all the organs and tissues in the body and return back to the heart. Average speed of circulation can vary depending on factors such as the horse's age, health, and activity level.

*Heart image provided by Horse Community Journals Inc. with reprint permission.

Helping horses of all disciplines improve performance and stay sounder and happier longer.

*Contact me today to schedule a Massage for your horse.

Koper Equine, LLC
Equine Massage and Bodywork
Happy, healthy horses.

Top Line Rocking Exercises - Equine Massage Therapy
https://youtu.be/dbKoe62nByY

Simple ways to Improve Straightness, Swing and Bend
https://youtu.be/LaleULdKt_k

*Ask your Vet if Massage could help your horse.

22/03/2023

The slow insidious demise of the worlds best equine institute started 20 yrs ago when the Austrian Government brought in private non horse personnel to make profit. Enough horses world wide are treated as commodities to fulfil human greed. Tragic that it is happening here. So much respect for the riders who have walked and stood by their principles.

Andras Hausberger, chief rider at the Spanish Riding School in Vienna, has been fired effective immediately after forty years of service on 7 March 2023.

21/03/2023

Resident junior staff learning to give injections and dental. Blessed to have equine dental vet extraordinaire Paul Owen on our team

08/03/2023

02/03/2023

Sound advice

Apparently it’s March... already!?
Our wonderful, tidy calendar says it’s autumn now too. And so here is my annual “It’s not actually autumn yet – don’t deworm your horses straight away!” spiel.

Autumn is the No. 1 time of year to worm your horses, because it ties in best with breaking the bot-fly life cycle. A bot fly’s lifecycle is 12 months, so treating just once a year will break that lifecycle (and overtime decrease bot fly populations). By mid-autumn/early winter, the entire population of bot flies will be inside your horse, which means you can target all the bots on your property with a single dosage of a boticide dewormer (ivermectin, abamectin, moxidectin).

If you deworm your horses too early in autumn, you will not be targeting all the bot flies as they are often present well into autumn, laying eggs on your horses coat. If you deworm on the 1st of March, there will be bot flies, and subsequently bot eggs and larvae that come after the treatment and will remain within your horse for the year.

Therefore, hold off on the autumn deworming a little longer, if your horses are in good condition. Wait until the nights cool down and the bot flies disappear before deworming – and make sure that the dewormer you purchase is active against bots, otherwise it will all be in vain. If your horses need to be treated now, do so, but make sure you target bot flies again in early winter.

So that’s my bot-fly spiel. Normally I write about strongyles (my favourite), and so I shall of course make a mention of them here too.

I always recommend a mid-late autumn deworming for ALL HORSES because it a) cleans out any bots and b) all horses really should have a strongyle clean out once a year as well. I may be against deworming for the sake of deworming, however that is only if you are doing it 3 or 4 or more times a year.

Strongyles can have a lifecycle of as little as 6 weeks. In addition, at any one point, about 90% of the strongyle population is living on the pasture, not in the horse. Therefore, the concept of using chemical dewormers inside the horse to break the lifecycle of strongyles would not work. At all. So, we chose our annual deworming-clean-out to line up with as many other parasites as possible.

All boticide dewormers are also effective against strongyles so deworming in autumn is a 2 for 1 type deal. You should also consider using a dewormer that also contains praziquantel to treat for tapeworms to get a complete clean out, just in case tapeworms are present. If your horses are only being treated once a year, it is good to do as complete a treatment as possible.

Lastly… wait, second lastly.. this is a topic to complex to get into here, but: this time of year is key for larval cyathostomins, where encysted larvae have mass emergences from the intestine wall, in response to changes in weather (eg in VIC as it cools and becomes wetter again). Deworming and removing adult populations of worms can act as a trigger for larval re-emergence, which is also why I often baulk at deworming horses now. The larvae may slowly re-emerge coming into the cooler weather and treating in mid-late autumn may be a safer bet to remove adults and emerged larvae. The research on this is sketchy as best, however these are patterns shown in cattle and hypothetically should translate over into horses.
And lastly (pat on the back for reading this far): just because I’m recommending deworming all horses does not mean I am not recommending FECs in autumn. A FEC will tell you important things about your horses health, and pick up anything odd that may be happening (eg tapeworm you didn’t know about). It will also allow you to test drug efficacy. Autumn should be a key time for everyone to do a FECRT (faecal egg count reduction test), where you get FECs done before and after deworming to make sure that it worked. If you only deworm once a year, then you’ve only got one chance for a FECRT, and you cannot, I repeat, you CANNOT do a FECRT without a FEC before to compare to.

If you’d like to organise FECs and FECRTs for your horses this autumn, check out the website (link on the FB page) for postal submission and drop off points/events.

01/03/2023

Feeling the pain of this right now.

Apparently it’s March... already!?
Our wonderful, tidy calendar says it’s autumn now too. And so here is my annual “It’s not actually autumn yet – don’t deworm your horses straight away!” spiel.

Autumn is the No. 1 time of year to worm your horses, because it ties in best with breaking the bot-fly life cycle. A bot fly’s lifecycle is 12 months, so treating just once a year will break that lifecycle (and overtime decrease bot fly populations). By mid-autumn/early winter, the entire population of bot flies will be inside your horse, which means you can target all the bots on your property with a single dosage of a boticide dewormer (ivermectin, abamectin, moxidectin).

If you deworm your horses too early in autumn, you will not be targeting all the bot flies as they are often present well into autumn, laying eggs on your horses coat. If you deworm on the 1st of March, there will be bot flies, and subsequently bot eggs and larvae that come after the treatment and will remain within your horse for the year.

Therefore, hold off on the autumn deworming a little longer, if your horses are in good condition. Wait until the nights cool down and the bot flies disappear before deworming – and make sure that the dewormer you purchase is active against bots, otherwise it will all be in vain. If your horses need to be treated now, do so, but make sure you target bot flies again in early winter.

So that’s my bot-fly spiel. Normally I write about strongyles (my favourite), and so I shall of course make a mention of them here too.

I always recommend a mid-late autumn deworming for ALL HORSES because it a) cleans out any bots and b) all horses really should have a strongyle clean out once a year as well. I may be against deworming for the sake of deworming, however that is only if you are doing it 3 or 4 or more times a year.

Strongyles can have a lifecycle of as little as 6 weeks. In addition, at any one point, about 90% of the strongyle population is living on the pasture, not in the horse. Therefore, the concept of using chemical dewormers inside the horse to break the lifecycle of strongyles would not work. At all. So, we chose our annual deworming-clean-out to line up with as many other parasites as possible.

All boticide dewormers are also effective against strongyles so deworming in autumn is a 2 for 1 type deal. You should also consider using a dewormer that also contains praziquantel to treat for tapeworms to get a complete clean out, just in case tapeworms are present. If your horses are only being treated once a year, it is good to do as complete a treatment as possible.

Lastly… wait, second lastly.. this is a topic to complex to get into here, but: this time of year is key for larval cyathostomins, where encysted larvae have mass emergences from the intestine wall, in response to changes in weather (eg in VIC as it cools and becomes wetter again). Deworming and removing adult populations of worms can act as a trigger for larval re-emergence, which is also why I often baulk at deworming horses now. The larvae may slowly re-emerge coming into the cooler weather and treating in mid-late autumn may be a safer bet to remove adults and emerged larvae. The research on this is sketchy as best, however these are patterns shown in cattle and hypothetically should translate over into horses.
And lastly (pat on the back for reading this far): just because I’m recommending deworming all horses does not mean I am not recommending FECs in autumn. A FEC will tell you important things about your horses health, and pick up anything odd that may be happening (eg tapeworm you didn’t know about). It will also allow you to test drug efficacy. Autumn should be a key time for everyone to do a FECRT (faecal egg count reduction test), where you get FECs done before and after deworming to make sure that it worked. If you only deworm once a year, then you’ve only got one chance for a FECRT, and you cannot, I repeat, you CANNOT do a FECRT without a FEC before to compare to.

If you’d like to organise FECs and FECRTs for your horses this autumn, check out the website (link on the FB page) for postal submission and drop off points/events.

18/02/2023

Little bit of farrier trivia.

17/02/2023

Who doesn't love a good horse race.

15/02/2023

Fab day with Steph's Equine Muscle Therapy indulging in some research. Not all just spelling and equine cuddles here at King's Park Equine

Another day collecting data! This time at the wonderful King's Park Equine run by Sharon Thomson Bush. I am very thankful to have access to these awesome facilities. For those who don't know King's Park Equine offers 5 star spelling services, located in Moorooduc, Sharon offers the best quality care and treats all the horses as her own. I highly recommend her if you are looking for spelling. Thank you again for your help today and the use of your lovely fur kids!

12/02/2023

King’s Park resident Tommy the Pillock was not co-operative today but this gentle giant of a baby race horse made up for it with the giving of cuddles

11/02/2023

Cooling of the youngsters on a hot day. Loving our

10/02/2023

: Yes, they do! Did you know that several studies have shown that horses prefer country music over rock or jazz? The slower tempo and major key seem to result in more restful behaviors in horses and more time spent eating.

So if you’re looking to relax your equine friends with music, pay attention to what you are playing in your barn!

10/02/2023

Ever hear the joke about the nuclear medicine practitioner and the landscape gardener? Well no, because there isn’t one. But there is a story about how two men with these rather differing backgrounds came together in an endeavour that is helping the modern thoroughbred to stay sounder, healthier and happier.

Chris Cowcher and Pete Tually, whose wives had been friends for years, are co-founders of TeleMedVET, an Ascot based group that provides diagnostic services whilst also undertaking a number of very interesting and very exciting research projects. Click below to read The Practitioner & the Gardener, written by Kristen Manning and published in the MMWA Magazine.

https://issuu.com/magicmillions/docs/mag3329_2023_perth_magazine_final_xlr/s/18363116

06/02/2023

03/02/2023

Nothing worse than finding a beautiful tail rubbed away

Tail-rubbing: is it worms? The most common symptom people report to me when getting a FEC is “rubbing their tail”. However, contrary to popular belief, tail-rubbing is not a symptom of strongyle or other worm-infections, except for pinworms. If a horse is rubbing their tail in response to a pinw...

03/02/2023

They are around in the multitudes at the moment :(

Summer is Bot Fly Season.

As a parasite, while bot flies do not cause significant disease (in most cases) they are a very visible parasite, one that both us and our horses can see, and be irritated by.

*Gasterophilus intestinalis is the most common bot fly species, and the female flies will spend their measly one week of adult life trying their hardest to lay small, yellow eggs on your horse’s coat – usually their legs or neck. Once ingested, eggs will hatch inside the horse’s mouth and small larvae migrate through the gums before being swallowed. In the stomach they burrow into the stomach lining and slowly grow, before being passed out in the faeces and pupating into adults the following summer.

Adult bot flies recognise adult horses via sight. Therefore, fly sprays and other chemical deterrents will not work. Rugging horses will prevent eggs being laid on their body, however they will still likely end up with eggs on their legs. The best preventative measure for horses, is to have somewhere undercover to go. Most horses will instinctively run for cover when a bot fly appears, and while there is no published evidence on the effectiveness of cover, it is theorised that when undercover, the flies have more trouble identifying horses. Anecdotally, it is the best method available to prevent the irritation caused by bot flies. Here are four of my ponies, enjoying their new shed that was put up after those hot days between Christmas and New Year when the first bot flies started to emerge. The cost of building the shelter not as high as a vet bill would have been for a pony that had given itself heat-stroke galloping laps to escape the bots.

If your horse does have bot eggs on their coat, make sure to remove as many as possible to prevent infection. Bot eggs are extremely tough and along with being ‘glued’ to the hair, it makes them quite difficult to remove with any ‘quick-fixes’. Often the best method is to just use a bot knife and some elbow grease. Wiping down with chemicals (alcohols, insecticides) will likely not achieve anything. To allow these chemicals to pe*****te the egg, hot/warm water is also needed to stimulate hatching.

If bot flies were present on your property over summer, it is always wise to treat your horses for bot larvae after the bot season has ended with a boticide wormer (late autumn/early winter). Bot flies are flies – insects, not worms – and so only the avermectins will work, as these are insecticides as well. “Rotational” (benzimidazole) wormers will have no effect on bot larvae. Unless all horse owners in an area appropriately drench each year, bot flies will always come back each year.

Enjoy the rest of your summer, and may the bot flies at your place not be too bad. From me and my ponies who love their shed.
PS – the young grey is for sale (2nd from left)… anyone want a yearling Connemara gelding? Just a bit of shameless cross-promotion.