Recent content by khalswitz

I usually try to avoid commenting on anything related to PSSM2/MFM, but just wanted to agree that it’s not only amongst vets - there are no published academic experts in neuromuscular disease/equine genetics that I’m aware of who recommend these tests either. Mainly because there is no evidence...

Very much agree. All this jumping to banning inner city horse keeping ignores that the next shift in focus will be to horses hacking on roads elsewhere. Furthermore, inner city riding schools and RDA facilities are so important. As someone who teaches vet students, many first year students’...

At 23 I wouldn’t risk it. There was a lovely horse on my yard when I was younger that had a serious heart murmur, and he was ridden ride up til he died - but I witnessed him drop dead from the heart murmur when we were bringing the horses in one morning and they had been galloping about. It...

It’s the using both for one event that makes it look malicious. Having two profiles could be an error - I know that if I were to rejoin BD now ten years since my last membership, I wouldn’t know my details, and my name, address and email have all changed since then. And if I was a bit dopey, I...

An update - left her with them all day yesterday, just fed her in the field. Today, I went in the afternoon and groomed her in the field, put her bridle on, and then took her out on a lunge line with a schooling whip and a pocketful of treats. Took her for a ten minute walk up the lane and back...

Yeah she’s out with two geldings, and they’re out 24/7, so the issue is getting her to come in and settle at all for grooming/riding. The feeding her seperately is currently not working well! Going to wait a couple more days and then bridle her in the field and take her out in hand up the lane...

Ding ding ding, went up this morning and her legs are a total mess. Here’s hoping it settles!

Well, it’s getting worse at the moment. I tried just taking her the other side of the gate into the barn, so that her new friends were literally touchable, with her feed bucket tonight, and she was stamping and shouting and very cross. I’ve not managed to groom her or change her rug in 48 hours...

Yeah absolutely. How closely related genetically are other breeds that you can ‘open’ the studbook too? That’ll vary a lot. At a population level it’s definitely some interesting decision making.

They aren’t, you’re right. But when dealing with small population and rare breeds, the decision to open those populations can be effectively the same as a decision to end the breed, or alter it beyond recognition. It’s not an easy population management decision to decide whether or when to...

I’ve only once seen blood in a horse’s mouth when riding and it was from a horse that had bitten through a happy mouth bit and the sharp metal underneath cut its mouth. Ie, a bad situation. This shouldn’t be normal.

The thing not captured in this chat though is the effect that excluding horses who are carriers of recessive disease alleles from breeding has at a population level especially in small effective population size populations. Its fine to say stop breeding Warmbloods with FFS (it’s been found in...

This is the key bit that I think is causing the argument here - good quality forage that isn’t deficient in any key vitamins and minerals, and yes I agree a horse doesn’t need a balancer. But for a lot (even arguably a majority?) their forage isn’t going to be perfectly balanced. I used to live...

A month seems quite a lot for a horse that has been in regular work? When I’ve moved previous horses in work, I’ve ridden them within a day or two at most - and I’ve ridden her this week whilst she’s been on isolation. My worry is just that, as expected, she got quite upset when I tried to...

Hi all. So my new horse has been through her two week quarantine period away from the other horses, and finally got introduced to her new field mates last night over a gate in the barn and this morning in the field. All has gone well, they’re all nice people and no chaos. However. When on...