Heartwood Equine Services

12/08/2024

🙌😂

08/07/2024

What a bitter sweet morning. Heartwood Tullamore Dew walked onto the truck and off to her new home without a worry in the world.

Tully was the last of her line here with me so it was a hard goodbye but I hope she has an absolutely amazing life where she gets the attention she deserves instead of the limited time I have available.

28/04/2024

Horse memorial
$30 plus postage.

Please print the order form and post along with the hair sample and a photo of your horse (if you want the colour matched as close as possible.) to:
Heartwood Equine Services
PO Box 1228
Murray Bridge SA 5253

13/04/2024

How cool is it to be able to do comparison photos!!! Maggie when I got her compared to Maggie today. I love this horse.
She’s soft and relaxed and ever so chunky

07/04/2024

My naughty niece (who is a lot like me with school work) has left her homework assignment to the last minute. To save my sister selling her pony (god forbid), can people please complete this short survey to help her out?

this is for an assignment

11/03/2024

How beautiful is this little memorial statue, made for my daughter to remember a pony she loved dearly.
These are now available to order at an introductory price of $25 plus postage.

Each piece is custom made to your colours and name.

21/02/2024

We have a small number of individual yards available. Located 10 minutes out of Murray Bridge.

We don’t advertise a lot and are quite fussy about who we will take on for agistment.

If you’re polite, respectful of the property owners, take care of your horse, pay on time and are looking for a relaxed and friendly place to keep your horse or pony, please send us a message.

If you thrive on drama, think your agistment pays for property rights and don’t take daily care of your horse, please save us both the time.

$30 per horse a week self care.

09/02/2024

Selling my little Connemara x thoroughbred as a broodmare / project.

8 years old, green broken. Super easy to handle with a lot of ground work. Needs more miles. Lazy and not a lot of forward under saddle.

Does need to be monitored for sugar levels as has had laminitis in the past.

By Clare Downs Allegiance (hwsd NA)
Out of a thoroughbred mare (babele / foxhound).

Registered part bred cpbs and apsb and branded.

$1500. Home is the most important thing here as I hate seeing her standing around without anything to do but I love this little horse.

08/02/2024

So a few weeks ago my beautiful mare Maggie kicked out through a fence and cut her leg quite badly. It was obviously very painful and as a result, she absolutely refused to let me bandage it without a vet administering as much sedation as they were willing to give her. Even then, she didn’t want to let us touch it.

This has never happened to me before. I’ve been bandaging legs since I was 16 and I’ve never had a horse I couldn’t convince to let me try. Maggie was my sleepless night challenge.

I thought surely there was a solution, but hours of google searching found nothing. So I got creative and reached out to NC Equine with a request to make me custom made cotton pockets for stable wraps they had in stock.

NC Equine listened to what I wanted, worked through my ideas and helped me create the solution in my video below.

The result? A boot I can change on my own and a much happier horse!

05/02/2024

I’ve never seen a photo represent a pony’s personality more than this photo captured by my good friend Adele of Clare Downs Allegiance.

29/01/2024

Who do people purchase their equine crushes from in South Australia?

Something like this or similar

21/01/2024

Trust me on this one. It’s 100% true.

If the universe sends you a message you are supposed to hear , and you don’t listen, it will send you a bigger one…

14/01/2024

Paddock change and a round bale for the paddock pets today.

Can’t believe how green it is for a South Australian summer!!

13/01/2024

I love love love this post by Stable-Ised Equine!!!

🌱 𝗨𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘄𝗲𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗛𝗼𝗿𝘀𝗲 𝗪𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗨𝗻𝗹𝗶𝗺𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗚𝗿𝗮𝘀𝘀?

🐴 It’s easy to get complacent about how much fibre and energy your horse is intaking when they have unlimited access to pasture. If they continually graze, how could they possibly lose weight or be unable to gain and maintain weight?

🌾 There is a considerable variation in the nutritive value of different forages and obviously some options are going to provide more energy and nutrients than others, but for the sake of keeping this article of a healthy length, today we are just going to focus on the quantity of forage a horse should be intaking on a daily basis.

🐎 Let’s start out by looking at how much forage a 500kg horse needs to intake on a daily basis.

• 1.5% (7.5kg) of body weight in dry matter per day would allow some horses to maintain weight, but would see other horses with a quicker metabolism or poorer digestive/immune health lose weight.

• 2% (10kg) of body weight in dry matter per day should allow most horses to maintain condition unless their health is challenged due to illness, disease, age etc.

• 2.5-3% (12.5-15kg) of body weight in dry matter per day may result in some horses becoming overweight, but may be adequate for other horses who are harder keepers due to any number of reasons.

💧 It’s important to remember that these percentages are based on dry weight values, which essentially means the weight of the forage once the moisture content has been removed. 1kg of pasture with a moisture content of 20% is only going to provide 800g of dry matter.

⚖️ Now I want you to imagine yourself in a paddock of grass that is overgrazed or less than 10cm in height. Grab a pair of scissors and walk around this paddock until you have collected yourself 12.5kg of grass (12.5kg - 20% moisture content = 10kg dry matter).

⏰ You only have 16 hours in a 24 hour period to achieve this because you need the other 5 hours in your day for other essentials such as drinking, sleeping, interacting with your friends, and digesting your food.

🌿 Is it going to be possible for you to achieve this task? Possibly. But it’s going to take you a lot of time and energy moving around to make sure you can collect enough grass in your allocated time slot. Wouldn’t it be easier and less energy-consuming if someone gave you 5kg of hay (moisture content already taken care of) to fulfill 50% of your requirement?

🌱 Overgrazed or short pasture can make it rather difficult for some horses to fullfill their forage requirements if they are challenged with a fast metabolism, digestive upset or immune issues that reduce their ability to digest and utilise dietary nutrients, age, dental health, and so on.

💠 Horses are a large animal and they need a lot of roughage to sustain themselves and maintain a healthy gastrointestinal tract - they don’t have a giant fermentation vat inside them for no reason!

03/01/2024

We’ve all been there

We know it so well 😅
credits: Pinterest

31/12/2023

I’ve got no core strength or balance left but I managed to sneak in a ride for 2023.

Good girl Maggie and thanks Matt for coming to supervise our first ride together.

Getting strong again is my goal for 2024

17/12/2023

Got to love a horse that lets you multitask! Maggie’s mowing the grass while I water the garden.

25/11/2023

Between our kids basketball and dance commitments, I’ve not had a lot of time for my horses the last few months. So today I at least found time for Maggie.

I’m so happy with the condition she’s put on and the way she’s letting down. Maggie was very loved where she came from but a traumatic foaling experience meant she was holding a lot of tension in her body. I feel like she’s letting go of that now

09/11/2023

A few weeks out paddock chilling has done Maggie the world of good. Back in for round two now.

03/09/2023

Maggie had a little disagreement with the fence so while she heals we are focusing purely on finding a place of rest.
This is a process of teaching Maggie to find relaxation with a low head position (rest) when she experiences tension. The flag creates tension but when Maggie drops her head, the tension (and flag) go away.

It’s like reprogramming her to look for a soft safe place when she’s worried instead of the natural “I’m outta here!” Response.

19/08/2023

Some more groundwork and a graze for Maggie today. What did you all get up to with your horses?

21/07/2023

Just taking our time, building our fitness, balance and trust in each other… together.

This horse just makes me smile.

16/07/2023

What a gorgeous day it was today. Perfect for some groundwork, a bath and a green pick.

I’m currently working on developing Maggie’s ability to find relaxation in a variety of situations. Shes going to be a super cool mare

10/07/2023

It was blowing a gale but I’m having too much fun not to still grab an opportunity to work with Maggie. Red isn’t her colour…. Guess I’ll have to buy new boots….

10/07/2023

The joys of getting a new horse…. Well she needs her own collection as well!!

😂😂😂

23/06/2023

Welcome to Heartwood Maggie….

Maggie made the trip over from Ballarat yesterday in horrible weather and unloaded like she’s been here all her life.

Really excited about our journey together.

Thanks to Patchwork Park Equine Services for the opportunity to purchase this lovely mare and to Champions Horse Transport for a smooth process picking her up and delivering her safe and sound.

17/02/2023

I’m loving playing with Shadow (Heartwood white shadows), doing lots of ground work to see how she comes back from a long break.