Here at Henny Heavy Horses, we await patiently for the arrival of Belle and Queenie’s foals, for the first time we will be foaling on Excel, so I’m excited to see how that gets on with the delivery of a shire foal.
We’ve already had excellent results with the bedding, it stands up well to the getting up and down, they are almost waddling as so heavy in foal, and the girls are finding it more stable footing in comparison to straw for getting up. Angus is a serial roller and the bedding stays firm and we never see the rubber floor.
Last year we were unlucky one of our young Shires (Albert) got grass sickness, he’s now almost 10 months on and with lots of nursing and many nights of worry, I’m hoping that he is well on his way to recovery. I have to say that I was so pleased we were using Excel at the time in the stable we put him in when we bought him out the field. Grass sickness cases are far more common over the border in Scotland than here, and for all the research that has been done, survival rates are low, and every horse is different.
The disease has to be one of the cruellest I’ve seen in my opinion. Frequent bouts of colic, rolling, pawing the bedding in to a mound and standing with the back legs higher than the front, sweating, and restlessness. The diarrhoea and the high acid content in the faeces will burn skin in hours, is hard work and a very emotional roller coaster. What we found with the bedding was he always had a good covering on the floor he could mould it into the set up he found comfortable for laying on, and if he passed poo, it was covered with a layer of bedding or sunk below the surface with all his stable activity and helped to stop a lot of burning to his skin overnight. I found it very easy to pick up his wrapped flat packed poo and to keep the stable clean, where we ended up with large amounts of fluid excrement, the bed stayed dry and it wasn’t mixed up with the rest of the bed.
I can say that had I been trying to deal with a straw bed Albert wouldn’t have been as comfortable and likely would have had a lot more burn skin that he did. The fragrance in the bedding not only stopped the eye watering smell, it also made cleaning the bed a much more pleasant experience. I haven’t yet used more than one bale a week for top up in any of the stables. The next test for the bedding we hope will be a much happier occasion with the arrival of a foal.
We have a few outings planned for this year with the team, we haven’t got many shows in the pipe line but we hope Angus will compete in some of the Ridden Heavy Horse HOYS class with myself riding him, the first entered is at Stonleigh Park towards the end of May, then the others are mid June onwards.
Some of the Team are headed to Heavy Horse Camp which is hosted by the Shire Horse Society, they will be attending as loan horses for those who wish to get hands on experience and training with Heavy Horses, campers can also bring their own horses, the event is great fun and runs over 3 days, our evening entertainment consists of long reining around obstacles and one of the obstacles is Bed-Down bales.
We also have a demo to attend in July where we will take a few of the team to show case the Shire Horse and its versatility and a couple will also enter the showing classes. Usually our summer were filled with Demos and events to attend but with everything being put to a stop last year and things just slowly starting to happen its going to be another quite year, but really its needed to help Albert make his recovery from grass sickness and the team to get some home training in as we’ve two young members that we hope to have out ridden next season and taking part in events and demos.
