How we care for our horses:

Feed

  Rocky horses tend to be easy keepers but they still need their nutrition. Our herd seems to do best with nutritionally dense food. We have pulled our horses off of all grains and have switched to Chia Seeds, Spirulina, Equi Pride Salt, Pumpkin Seeds and Chaff Hay Alfalfa. It is a more whole foods approach to feeding the horse with little sugar. Sugar is their enemy; the less sugar the better our horses do.

Deworming

  We deworm following the weather. Deworming occurs after the first freeze of the new winter. A sharp change in the weather that suddenly makes dormant grass start growing (a warm spring day or a good rain in the middle of a dry summer) can cause mane itching as the dormant eggs inside the horse have awaken so a quick deworming can hopefully tame that ithcing frenzy. And we also deworm with the 4 seasons of the year. FOLLOW the weather! AND, we try hard to not under dose the horse with the dewormer. For example, we will feed a full tube of dewormer dosed for a 1200 lb horse to a 1000 pound horse.

Fly Predators

  Fly Predators work! We use them!!

Dental Floats

  The dental floats are invaluable in keeping our horses healthy. We highly recommend a dental float every year or so with the first float scheduled just prior to undersaddle training.

Our Stallions

  Nothing has calmed our stallions down as much as letting them graze in a pasture with a mare or two. Our stallions will protect their mare herd (even if it's just one mare) and they will play with the foals. We change out mares in the pasture as the breeding needs change but try to keep the stallion with a mare over the winter months. Running a mare and stallion together in a pasture setting is not a common practice with breeders but it has worked well with our horses.

Hooves

  We do our own hoof trims here at the farm. We like to see the horse walk landing on the heel of the hoof and walking on the hoof wall as opposed to landing toe first and bearing weight on the sole of the hoof. Our horses live in the pasture and each horse comes into its own stall each day for a meal that is loaded with nutrition. It can be a challenge to keep a healthy hoof on the horse. We try.