episode #2 main pillars

The main pillars of the track system for horses are herd living, minimal or no grass with adequate hay, freedom of choice, being barefoot, and having a natural balanced diet. These pillars are important for the mental and physical health of horses. It is crucial for horses to have companionship, eat low-sugar hay, have freedom to move and choose where to eat and rest, have their hooves trimmed by a natural barefoot trimmer, and have a diet that is low in sugar and starch and high in fiber and balanced vitamins and minerals. It is recommended to consult professionals and do further research to understand what is best for your horses in your specific area. Welcome to TrackTalk, a podcast on horse track systems. I'm Tama and I'm excited to learn and share everything track with you. Yeah, I thought the second episode would be good to talk about the main pillars of the track system. Yeah, without each of those pillars, the track can't provide full benefits possible. So the first pillar is herd living, it's really important for horses to have mates with them and especially on a track, it's very important because they keep each other moving. So yeah, they follow the lead horse or they play, one horse might start running around and the others follow, but it's really important for mental health anyway, for grooming, just to feel the safety in a herd. Horses are herd animals and it's really important for their mental health, even without having a track set up, it is very important that horses live in a herd and not just to see each other, but actually to touch and yeah, to be able to groom and so on and so forth. So herd living is the big, big main pillar of the track system and in a horse's life, I would say. And the next one is minimal or no grass and adequate hay. So yeah, on a track we want to provide minimal or even no grass at all. That is based on the observations Jamie Jackson has made when he followed the wild horses in the US Great Basin, is that the healthy horses he saw in the US Great Basin that don't have any hoof issues, they have no laminitis, they have no hoof separation, they have no sensitivities on their feet, they have pretty much no luscious grass available. They do come across some grass fields at some point, but they are just open fields and there are lots of cougars around, so horses just pretty much eat grass and just want to go real quick. So they don't have much fresh grass available and it contributes the healthy feet to the low sugar diet pretty much they have, so yeah, luscious grass, very high sugar. And what the horses in the US Great Basin eat is just dried shrubs and dried grass like plants and bark and leaves and yeah, stuff like that and yeah, hardly any grass at all. And yeah, the pillar says minimal or no grass and ad-lib hay, so the hay is just what we have available in our domesticated environment for our horses. So the hay has less sugar, of course you need to choose the right hay, you cannot provide them 24-7 with lucerne hay. Yeah, really grassy, low sugar hay, low starch hay, which they have available to them to eat at all times, all day, all night, 24-7, whenever they want to, they should have that available, preferably in hay nets. So we simulate a little bit that picking of leaves in different heights, but yeah, also on loose piles on the ground, to have the nice head down position obviously, yeah, just in different variations, that's what I do. I have different hay nets with different sized holes, going from 2cm to 6cm, knotted, knotless, yeah, loose hay piles, I offer hay in trees or all sorts of places I can find to put hay, to just have the natural range of movement for our horses. And they seem to really like it, they actually seem to sometimes enjoy the hay more out of the hay nets rather than the loose stuff on the ground, which is interesting to see, but yeah, they do like both. The next pillar is freedom of choice, so we should provide them with freedom of choice to where to eat, when to eat, where to sleep, when to sleep, where to play, when they want to seek shelter from rain or sun or whatever weather event, yeah, when they want to rest. So we don't go and take them into the stable just because we think it's cold, just because we think it's too wet or too muddy or too hot or too many flies or whatever, we humans think we're doing our horses a favour by putting them in the stable, we actually most likely probably don't, because one of the things that horses want is having friends available to always touch and be able to feel safe within their friends, within their herd. They want to have food and they want to be able to move and they need the movement to be healthy as well, so if we take them away because we think it's too muddy outside, if we take away their freedom of choice to be out or to be in, then we just stick them in and take away their ability to move and we should probably increase the possibility of certain issues that can come up, I thought, yeah, so we should have some sort of shelter or even, I mean, if you have a stable already, just leave it open instead of locking them in and if there is big rain events, then yeah, you offer hay in there but also offer hay outside so then they can choose if they want to eat outside or inside, yeah, so we should give them more the choice to do what they want to do rather than what they think they might want to do or rather, or we choose based on our human thoughts pretty much, because their needs are much different to ours. The next pillar is barefoot and yeah, they should be trimmed by a natural barefoot trimmer or podiatrist for that reason that, yeah, a barefoot trimmer or podiatrist usually only trims to what they would usually walk off in the wild pretty much, so again, Jamie has found that the horses in the wild have a certain shape of their feet, which they naturally wear that way and that trim is based on that, so pretty much just take what nature would normally take but obviously, it's a bit hard in a domesticated environment, I mean, in saying that, if you do set up your track in a certain way with good surfaces, you can actually get there, you can actually have them self-trim if you have, yeah, good rock available where they can do self-trimming and you get their movement right, you actually can get there where you can even, yeah, don't even need to trim them anymore, but yeah, in general, it takes a little bit to get there, I'm not there, that's for sure, so yeah, I do need still a barefoot trimmer who just takes what nature would usually take, because if you go get a barefoot trim by a farrier, usually what they do, they just trim the foot to put a shoe on, but then don't put a shoe on if that makes sense, that's the idea behind that, and the next pillar is natural balanced diet, so yeah, you want to diet in low sugar and starch and high in fiber and provide them with balanced vitamins and minerals, I provide my horses with two bucket feeds a day, really small, as small as I can get them to eat their minerals, their powdered minerals, even if you can, even just, I don't know, chaff and just have their vitamins in that or whatever you want to feed your horses, it's usually also a good choice, but yeah, we want to make sure that it's not with molasses, it's not high in iron or any sort of pellet form, yeah, we want it to be high in fiber, beet pulp for example, yeah, and a good balanced vitamin and mineral supplement, again, none with iron in it, yeah, so that was the main pillars of the track system, in the next episode I will interview someone with a private track, and yeah, we just get into everything track really, you'll see where the conversation goes, but yeah, that's the plan, so if you can listen to the first episode and then you have listened to this one, and you haven't known anything about track before, that means then you will sort of understand what we're talking about I think, because I don't want to talk too much about just basic basics with the people I interview, and yeah, I hope that made sense to you, and I will, I'll talk to you next time, bye. So at the end here, I thought I will just quickly clarify a couple things, just listening back to it, obviously many things just apply to my sort of soil and hay in Australia on the Sunshine Coast, I have to remember that this is obviously, hopefully going to be listened to all over the world, so yeah, definitely consult your nutritionist and consult your professional, I am not a professional, I'm just sharing stuff, but I do also want to interview professionals to back me up pretty much, or maybe not, maybe I will learn something new, I'm open to that too, so yeah, please keep listening and look out for those episodes, yeah, nutritionist ones, and move specialists, I don't know, maybe even other holistic professionals, yeah, but don't just take my word for it, I hope you don't, please, yeah, do your research, and if it was just the first time you heard of anything like that, what I said, yeah, definitely do your research, what's true in your area and for your horses and stuff like that, but yeah, I always think it goes without saying, but that's because I'm so inexperienced in the internet world yet, but yeah, I'm sure I'll learn quickly, anyway, yeah, so look out for those episodes and I will talk to you soon, thanks, bye.