Swiwi Farming & Equestrian

23/02/2025

Another Weetbix triathlon done and dusted. Despite the rain, everyone was in a good mood with some good fun and pre-race silliness 😜

22/02/2025

Ready - set - go…. Early bedtime tonight! 🏊‍♀️🚴🏃😎

23/01/2025

☀️ it’s that time of the year again…. Hay-days ☀️

Each year we make a small batch of loose hay by hand. I often get teased and ridiculed for it but I . The aim of this hay is not so much to have feed for the animals but more so to teach my kids that are going out of fashion.

is , watching the grass growth, waiting for the right weather window, making use of the wind. It takes patience and working hard when the time is right.

It means pulling grass lumps apart, waiting for the sun to dry up the dew in the morning, turning and fluffing up the hay so the wind can go through and raking it into rows for the night.

Once dry, it needs to be collected and brought in the shed.

Involving our children teaches them to touch the grass, feeling how it turns to hay, how the smell changes, how you can feel the moisture content change. It allows them to grow the understanding of what good hay should look, smell and feel like. They understand the fire risk of staking wet hay as they can feel the heat forming.

But besides the hay-making skills they also learn a whole lot more…. To endure the heat, working through the pain of prickles, working together as a team, to keep going even when one is tired, sore and over it all.

And at the end, when the hay is in the shed, it’s a celebration of the work. Feeling proud of what we have achieved. Feeling thankful for the weather to hold up just long enough. Feeling a sense of accomplishment and calm as hay in the shed means being ready for the next winter. It’s a literal translation of the saying ‘making hay while the sun is shining’. A lesson in making the most during good times to getting prepared for the winters of life.

It’s only a few days a year but it’s an important time for our kids and us as a family. Here’s to another great hay-summer ☀️

06/12/2024

☀️ what better way to spend a hot sunny afternoon than playing together with your ponies in your oversized sandpit ☀️

🏰☀️😎

05/12/2024

☀️ Desi update ☀️

After my last post I had a few people asking questions about Desi. I hope I can answer a few of them here…

🐴 no Desi was not overweight, in fact she is on the lighter side
🦄 yes she was on regular mineral mix including selenium
🐴 no Desi had no sudden changes in feed and always has ad lib access to fibre like straw and hay
🦄 yes Desi had regular trims by a great farrier

But it is also true that…
🐴 yes she was exposed to a change in the composition of nutrition due to two frost nights out on a paddock
🐴 yes her trims had been less frequent over winter as we were away which contributed to an unbalanced hoof
🐴yes she has not taken the last two years and has therefore been retired from breeding. This could have been a telltale sign of internal changes.

👉 so what did we do?

- Took her off grass immediately to stop the trigger. This meant harrowing our round pen to create a grass-free and softer surface. We later even added some sand which encourages her to lay down and rest her feet. (And it also makes a mean sandpit for the kids 😅)
- Contacted vet immediately, took bloods, FEC and x-rays to get a good understanding of her condition.
- Offered ad lib soaked hay, salt and mineral lick to encourage a better mineral balance.
- Increase minerals given, especially magnesium and salt. We used GrazeEasy and AlluviateGold as well as our standard Selamin Gold and added plain salt.
- Had her on Bute painkillers to start off and slowly weaned her as she improved.
- Cooled her hooves multiple times a day to help with her pain.
- Working on rebalancing her hooves to hopefully improve the alignment of her internal structure and ensure she will stay pain free in the future
- Giving her Arnica drops (homeopathic) to support the body’s own healing process.
- Sarted her on half a Prascend as we suspect she has underlying Cushings contributing to her situation.

💖 we now hope to be able to fit her some hoof boots after her next trim to make her a bit more comfortable and encourage her walking around
💖 she’s hopefully than able to join the bigger group of horses back on the track system

02/12/2024

Sure I can get them off the trailer by myself…. 💪

…No one with half a brain ever said.😅

So now I am training my fine-motor-skills with my left hand. Who would have thought wiping 🧻 can be that hard!!!! 🤣

29/11/2024

🩷 appreciation post continued… 🩷

What did we do?

As the owner and guardian of our horses it is my duty to cast a wide net to gather the required knowledge and to make the necessary changes to improve the quality of life for my horses.

❗️I am extremely grateful to have been able to have a range of amazing people supporting us over the past weeks and guiding us on the journey. ❗️Here’s a massive shout out to them:

✅ Our vet Lillian Bonner from Balanced Beings who cared for Desi (and me) with her knowledge, time and dedication. She conducted visits to check on Desi, took blood tests and guided us every step of the way and through all the changes with her knowledge as a holistic vet.

✅ Jenny from supported us with her rehabilitation knowledge and reinforced our initial approach of taking Desi off grass, reducing any environmental and feed triggers to the inflammation and encouraged us to dive deeper into the hoof care side of things. Jenny made time to be there in person and through messages.

✅ Jen from with her incredible insight into microbiology and feed related health. She too made time for us in her busy day to support and encourage me and helped Desi to get her minerals better balanced.

✅ Matt from who took great x-rays and the time to explain them in details.

✅ Thorsten vom Institut for Barefoot Equine Management who shared his amazing insights on the hoof mechanism and offered guidance on Desi’s trim going forward to support her ongoing healing process

The collaboration with all these outstanding professionals are what can and will bring the lasting impact and changes. It is the combined knowledge that is so important!
I will be forever grateful to them for sharing it and making time for us. It is now on me to continue the journey back to health for Desi 💛

28/11/2024

🩷 appreciation post 🩷

Just under a month ago our beautiful Desi came down with an acute bout of laminitis. What followed were a few weeks of despair, self-blame, soul searching, and a hectic gathering of all the knowledge available.

How could this have happened!!??

After all I consider myself as very knowledgeable, having always been on the forefront of emerging knowledge, having utilized track systems, barefoot care and feeding microbiology knowledge for the past 25 years… and yet still it happened.

So why?

What stood out for me again in the past few weeks was the importance of seeing a living being (may it be horse, human,…) in its entirety and context. There are many people out there who doing way better posts on this than I do, but here are the main aspects:

🗝️ Nutrition: Imbalances in the minerals, salts, fibre and sugars can cause inflammation. This can happen because of many factors, again it’s the whole situation and systemic factors, but in our case two frosty nights on a new paddock triggered the acute inflammation (laminitis).

🗝️ Hormones: May it be sudden changes or gradual changes, hormones can impact on our entire health system and are often causing chain reactions. A disregulation of insulin, too much cortisol as a result of stress, it can all feed or reduce an inflammation. Ongoing stress on Desi’s system might have impacted on her recovery.

🗝️ Anatomy, aka hoof care: Although the acute laminitis brought on the lameness, the real culprit is the foundering process that has occurred over a prolonged period of time. This caused changes in the hoof structure that are now hindering the recovery of the inflammation. X-rays gave us clarity on how to proceed forward.

So what did we do…?

(See next post)

17/11/2024

Introducing fluffy Fafnir to the girls paddock. He caused quite a stir 😂🥰

16/11/2024

Slow morning watching the seeds drifting around like snowflakes ❄️ ☀️.

16/11/2024

😍

13/11/2024

👉 Weaning 👈

At we wean our youngsters in a staged process. This has proven to be as calm, stress free and natural as as possible in our setting.

Our mares first spend a few hours away from their foals (yearlings) while they are right next door and busy playing with their friends.

We than slowly extend the time they are separated, soon having them apart for either the day or the night (depending on what suits the mare/foal the best). After a while this becomes natural and the new normal.

We then let the mare and foal only together once in the morning and evening for a short period of time, which the foal normally uses to have a good feed.

After another few days/week the mare’s milk supply has decreased and the duo is ready to reduce to meeting only once a day and soon not at all.

During this whole process the mare and foal are close to each other and part of the wider herd. This means there is no crying out or running around scared or screaming for each other but rather just a gradual change in attachment.

After weaning is complete, we run the mare and yearling as part of two different herds so the foal doesn’t start back up with feeding off the mare. The yearling spends the time playing with the other youngsters and is too busy to miss mum.

Although we stage the process, some mares have an incredible amount of milk and they get very sore. In this case we often hand milk them a tiny bit to ease the pressure but not so much to stimulate more milk production.

To see how our first time mum ‘piglet Heitha’ is going, I gave her a wee milk this morning and she was an absolute pleasure, gently nickering at me as if I was her new foal 😂🥰

So who wants to try some horse milk in their tea ☕️?

05/11/2024

Newest farm member 🐄

27/10/2024

Interesting article for all of us owners of breeds that have a higher risk to get EMS.

We keep learning, knowledge is everything evolving with new medication and we need to keep monitoring long-term impacts on the whole of a ‘patient’

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/5KF3VjCrBcmW2Vg9/

Reports from the world of equine science

19/10/2024

When the round pen has the lushest grass on the whole property 😅

Fafnir doesn’t mind it 💞

18/10/2024

I wonder if the tooth 🦷 fairy 🧚 also comes for horses? And what will she end up bringing 🧐😄

Busy day today: De-fluffing our furball Fafnir, de-beaning him and getting teeth done on the next group of our wee herd 🦄