Learn Stable Management for personal use, professional development, or as a step toward working with horses
It is not always practical to keep a horse solely at grass depending on the individual horses needs and the type of work the horse is required to do. A horse may need to be kept stabled, either periodically or on a more permanent basis, due to the facilities available, quality and availability of grazing, injury or illness, for convenience or for a variety of other reasons.
Horses that are kept confined in a stable for excessively long periods of time can become bored and consequently may become difficult to handle or may develop unwanted ‘stereotypical’ behaviours.
To prevent this happening, it is advisable to allow a horse access to pasture for a number of hours each day. The horse will then have the opportunity to fulfill its natural behaviours of constantly moving around and eating small amounts of food regularly, and socializing with other horses.
If turn out is not available then exercise in hand or under saddle is vitally important. Splitting up exercise periods to two or more sessions in a day is better than just one longer session. This will greatly help to prevent boredom and instances of challenging behavior occurring in the stabled horse. |
