Howling Wind Farms

12/13/2024

This.

12/08/2024

YEEEEESSSSSSS!!!!

Some pondering on teaching riders, and the difference between a lesson program and a riding school -

I think one of the biggest issues with current riding instruction is we teach people how to control the horse before we teach them to FEEL and RIDE the horse. These are very different skill sets leading to very different outcomes.

Generally, a beginner horse is one who is safe enough to be ridden by a beginner. And often, they are stiff, likely halfway lame, and dull. So if you put these two together- a newbie rider, and a stiff and tolerant horse, people learn to over aid, squeeze, pull, and “make” horses do things. It’s pretty hard to learn subtle feelings and find the horses body underneath you when you have to kick to make them go and pull to make them turn.

Add to that normalizing the feeling of stiffness and half-lameness to riders, and they will really struggle to learn what a horse SHOULD feel like.

In clinics, I am often faced with the dilemma of teaching a rider and horse pair who have 99 problems but a seat ain’t one : I have to decide the most urgent problem- out of control horse brought to safety, or teaching a seat. If we had real riding SCHOOLS, riders could be taught a seat BEFORE learning how to control the out of control horse, and later, the seat would be one of those tools to help guide the horse with much more ease and significantly much less pulling, kicking, and bending horses heads up their butts to stop out of control forward motion.

What would a riding school look like?

It would have straight, supple well-trained horses for students of all levels to ride on

It would prioritize FEEL and the seat, giving students lessons in finding their seat until they could manage solo - then teach them AIDS.

It would not cater to the students wants or desires but instead stick to an understood progression of developing skill.

This reduces wear and tear on lesson horses dramatically, with no pulling and kicking on tolerant saints of lesson horses, while an instructor guides the horse to move well on the lunge for the student to memorize this feel. Of course, instructors would be riding them to maintain their fitness and responsiveness to aids, but these horses would not be repeatedly degraded for the sake of teaching beginners.

What’s the downside ? Who has a string of supple, straight horses for students to ride?
And who can afford to open this school?
And who has a list of clients begging to learn the hard way and get no immediate gratification who will stick to learning long enough to produce skill?

This may be an imaginary pipe dream anymore

11/20/2024

This is something that comes up often! In our modern world, being connected to another is not something that is a priority, and our horses only highlight our need to improve upon it.

Folks often complain about their horse’s attention wandering, or the horse disconnecting from the rider.
More often than not, the rider’s attention left first, or wasn’t steady in the first place. People often don’t notice their own attention has wandered until it manifests in the display of unwanted behavior from their horse.

For a horse to be connected to a rider, a rider must have the capacity to connect to the horse and to provide steady, quiet guidance, step for step.

10/29/2024

Thank you to OHJA Sponsor Liz Martin

10/23/2024

Absolutely 😎

Confidence is not thinking you know everything or are good at everything. Confidence is believing you have everything you need within yourself to meet your goals. Confidence is the ability to look honestly at your flaws and the willingness to work on what you are not yet good at.
It is the knowing that you can achieve, in time, and settling into the work.

Confidence is built day but day in little steps - it’s built by doing hard things and seeing all that you are capable of.

10/21/2024

Who is interested?

Would love to get a group of us to get out there. I need to take Noble and maybe some new under saddle ponies!

10/21/2024

Pastures, nonstructural carbohydrates, and frost 🌱🍂❄️

Because it is that season, I want to discuss horse pastures and nonstructural carbohydrates, specifically as they relate to the beginning and end of a grazing season. Let’s begin by breaking this down by each topic before we add them all together:

Nonstructural carbohydrates, often abbreviated as NSCs, are comprised of water soluble carbohydrates (simple sugars and fructans) and starch. This class of carbohydrates is an important source of energy for the horse and they are digested and absorbed in the foregut, leading to an increase in blood glucose and insulin. As a result, high levels of NSCs in the diet can be an issue for horses with metabolic concerns specifically related to insulin dysregulation such as equine metabolic syndrome (EMS), Cushing’s (PPID), and laminitis/founder. While NSCs can be more consistent and documented in manufactured concentrates, more variation is observed in pasture or hay due to outside factors such as plant maturity, time of day, and weather conditions.

In pasture plants, NSCs are produced via photosynthesis, a process in which sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide generate glucose and oxygen. A separate but complementary process known as respiration is responsible for breaking down the glucose created during photosynthesis and releasing that energy for cellular use. As a result, increased photosynthesis leads to an accumulation of NSCs and increased cellular respiration leads to a decrease of NSCs. There are many weather conditions that can alter the balance between these processes in plants.

So how are these two factors connected to frost and the swing in temperatures observed in the spring and fall when horses are either being introduced to or removed from pasture? Well, when temperatures fall below 40°F, the enzymes involved in cellular respiration become significantly less active. And when temperatures fall below freezing, the enzymes can become denatured, stopping respiration altogether. This means low temperatures can lead to an accumulation of NSCs in the forage which can be problematic for grazing horses.

As a result, it is important to look at the nightly lows, and if these temperatures are sustained for more than a few hours, change your management practices accordingly, especially for glucose-sensitive horses. Furthermore, a hard frost occurs when temperatures drop below 28°F for more than four consecutive hours and will not only result in NSC accumulation but also marks the end of the growing season. While current recommendations allow grazing to resume 7 days following a hard frost, pastures require a minimum height of 3” to 4” going into the winter to support pasture productivity the following grazing season. Since grasses will no longer grow after a hard frost, continuing to graze can put undue stress on the pasture.

Additionally, sudden changes in the diet that would occur from removing horses from pasture abruptly, keeping horses on dried forage for 7 days, and then reintroducing horses to pasture, could lead to digestive upset or other health problems and the process will be time intensive for owners. When shifting the diet, even between different forages, it is critical to plan intentional transitions that allow the gut microbiota to sufficiently adapt. While the transition back to pasture can be accelerated in the fall compared to beginning grazing in the spring, it should still be done with care.

I hope this information is helpful as you make decisions on horse management and grazing this season!

- Dr. DeBoer