Sunshine Coast Horse Agistment's Horse Tips with pictures

treat seedy toe
Seedy Toe can be treated by creating a hoof pick with a wire that you can use to dig out the black gunk with, and then fill the hole with Keratex or copper sulphate mixed with Vaseline. Treat 3 times a week. A hill in a paddock is great for your horse's health, and helps prevent foundering and seedy toe. Exercise and not over feeding is the best remedy for seedy toe. Avoid detachable necks/hoods on rugs as they dangerous, and can become loose and cover the horses eyes causing panic.
Saddle sore develope as white hairs showing pressure on the horses wither form an ill fitting saddle Suspected Pin Worm Horse hair can bulid up inside the ears of a horse rug
Pressure sores cause white hairs to grow from an ill fitting saddle. If caught early enough normal hairs will grow back. Change you saddle with the help of a saddle fitter or try a better quality pad. This horse has been rubbing his buttocks but not his tail. We used Dermapred to calm the area down, treating daily for 3 days and then followed up with Filterbac to prevent sunburn. Qld itch horses can be helped with a full face combo cotton summer rug. Beware that the ears should be turned inside out monthly to remove hair build up.
agistment on the Sunshine Coast
Keeping horses in herds enables them to relax, socialise and sleep properly. Horses need shade from the sun and this also provides shelter. Don't over graze paddocks or you will have weed problems. cover eroded areas with sticks tied together and mulch so the soil regenerates.
Shelter and plenty of fresh water is essential. Rugging on wet windy/cold nights is very important, dry cold nights are fine rugless as your horse has his own fur coat. Rugging when wet prevents rain scald. Separate horses at feeding time for their own safety in yards. Give minerals, salt plus Bone Formula where Big Head is possible. Mix it with a scoop of chaff and copra to sweeten and wet down and mix thoroughly
Horses relaxing Farrier at Sunshine coast Agsitment
Companionship makes for happy horses, find a horse your horse enjoys hanging out with. Good paddock mates enable horses to be relaxed enough to get plenty of rest. Trim feet every 6 weeks to avoid problems, or every 4 weeks if following the barefoot trimming regime.
horse itch Horses arrive very thin but we soon bring them back to health Starving horses saved
When this horse arrived she was very itchy, we cured this with a mixture of baby oil, lavender oil, citronella, copper sulphate, and tea tree sprayed on twice a week. Some horses do require rugging, this girl did not and now looks perfect. Many horses arrive to us in appallingly low condition, and this is typical of a Thoroughbred that is in paddock condition, ribs showing and depressed. Thoroughbreds need a lot of feeding. These Arabs were kept on dirt with no grass, on half an acre with 3 other horses and apparently hand fed. They both had rain scald too.
Cancer on a horse's penis Horse being ridden Horses saved at Sunshine Coast Agistment
Grey horses are prone to cancer, before purchase check under the base of the tail for nodules. This guy has a tumour on his penis, very hard to detect unless you were really looking. Here is the same horse as the picture above after proper nutrition and exercise. Here is the same horse as above after 2 months, Feed used was Mitavite breeda, full fat soy and triple blend chaff. After this she was fine on just minerals and good pasture.
Mend horse rug clip abscess horse Watch this space ..............
Some rugs have poor clips that soon fail. To prevent this back up with your own clips. wet weather can cause an abscess. This one has blown through the coronet band. They are very painful until they burst causing severe lameness. A vet is recommended to give your horse pain relief, and sometimes to create a hole for the infection to drain out of which gives instant relief. We will have another new tip soon!

Saddle Fitting

Fitting a saddle is like trying on shoes, only harder because saddle sizes are not standardized in any way. Not every pair of shoes will be comfortable to dance in! And on the same analogy, not every member of your family can wear the same pair of shoes, unless they are same size, same shape, same age, same level of fitness.

Think about saddle fitting as an exercise in physics and geometry. Why have most horse cultures created saddles? To more evenly distribute the weight of the rider on the horse's back, avoiding sharp stress points, like your pelvic "sit" bones. But your "weight equalizer" should not have sharp stress points of its own that make the horse uncomfortable! A tree, whether traditional metal and leather, new composite, or western wooden-- helps equally distribute weight. A tree-less saddle is like a high tech bareback pad-- which can be just fine, depending upon shape of horse, shape of rider, type of work. After all, many traditional cultures spend all day on a horse with no saddle to speak of.

This is a fairly basic guide to saddle fitting, not taking into account a million subtleties of construction, horse asymmetry etc. But it can take you pretty far in getting a saddle that will work for your horse. For now. Four points to evaluate IN THIS ORDER!! 1) Position, 2) Tree size, 3) Balance, 4) Stability (static and dynamic)

1) POSITION: Place saddle where it naturally wants to sit-- this should be with the tree (rivet in English style saddles) two fingers' width behind the hindmost point of the shoulder blade, so it does not interfere with movement. If your saddle tends to slide back, you were placing it too far forward in the first place. The reason for this is not to impede the movement of the scapula (shoulder blades) else the horse will have to hunch and this will cause soreness, short stepping, and girthiness.

2)TREE SIZE: You want the triangle of the front of the tree to closely match the triangle of your horse's withers, so that it is all contacting evenly. You should have 2 inches room between the top of the wither and the pommel for clearance. Once you mount this will reduce, but the saddle must never touch the wither. Look for a clear channel of light through from the back of the saddle along the horse's spine. Flex the horses head around toward you while you have your hand under the side of the saddle in the wither area. If it pinches your hand as you turn the horses head toward you then you know the saddle is too narrow.
If a tree is slightly wide, you can add an extra pad-- like wearing two pairs of socks for slightly large shoes. Make sure pad is not compressible, like most fleece pads. 1/2 inch closed cell foam is best.

3)BALANCE: The lowest point of saddle should fall halfway between pommel and cantle. Put the saddle on horse's back in correct position, after you have established the tree size is appropriate. Let a pencil or biro roll to lowest point in seat. If the pencil stops forward or behind middle of the seat, the balance is off on this horse and will push your balance off. While occasionally you can shore it up with a wedge pad (shims)-- any pad that does not contact your horse over the entire saddle region will create edges that make high pressure. Better to find a saddle that is correct.

4) STABILITY: The main part of the saddle contacts the horse over the panels in and English style saddle. The shape of this part of the saddle will be dependent upon both tree contour and padding in panels. You can change the latter, but not the former. Some horses are quite concave in saddle region, others straight backed. If you put a curved saddle on a straight horse, it will rock. If you put a straight saddle on a curved horse, it will collapse in the middle, or "bridge". This needs to be assessed standing, and if all is good standing, it needs to be assessed while riding. Someone from the ground must watch the saddle as you ride and observe whether it moves around during ridden exercises.

For cutaway or "balloon" or "keyhole" trees, you can't use the finger rule at the pommel. This is good advise for any saddle shopper: go to a craft store and buy a flexible ruler and a sheet of oaktag poster board. You are going to create an outline of your horse's withers and spine to help fit saddle. Fit the flexible rule over your horse's withers right at the place the tree should end: two fingers behind hindmost part of shoulder blade. Carefully bend it to the exact contour of the horse and then carefully take it off and trace it on the oaktag. Now do the same for the middle saddle region and the cantle region. Finally, lay the flexie right along the spine from the withers to the cantle. You now have four tracings that exactly mimic your horse's back contours. You can cut them out (or just use measurements) and take them to the saddlery to find the best few saddles to try. Or fax it to a far off used saddle dealer, and let them find the best fit.

For Western saddles, the blanket takes the place of the saddle panels. So when you evaluate fit without a blanket, look for two fingers width only. A Western tree with the front skirt will cover the shoulder blade, but allow free movement. Be sure that the back skirt is not impeding movement of the stifle. Balance and stability is the same procedure

Good Luck!"
Posted by Karen Gellman, DVM, PhD

 
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