Following on from the in 24/7 thread

DD

DD

Well-Known Member
Joined
12 August 2015
Messages
2,306
Location
Albion
Visit site
Were horses kept in better ways years ago? I think most were better off personally when they had a job to do and a value.
 
Depends on which horses, and when, and better off in what way? It's easy to be nostalgic about the past.

kept in stalls? we never see those any more, it's looseboxes all the way. Used like tools until they were worn out? basic veterinary treatments available? That's before you get started on the advancements in tack and feeding etc.

I would be quite happy to be reincarnated as one of my horses by comparison.
 
Horses for courses, horses suit all different lives. Is it ideal to keep a horse in a stable 24/7 on a yard with no arena and lights so it can't be worked or turned out? Probably not fair no.

Is it fair to keep horses like mine in? Do mine count as 'having value and purpose' but in this day and age as they are show-jumpers? They are kept in big clean airy stables with ad lib haylage, get to go on a walker or get rode or some form of exercise every night, have massage pads on, contact with horses in the stables next door? I don't see it as cruel. Other people might not think it's right but the only alternative is them standing at the gate in the cold and rain or ruining their fields as they just aren't dry enough I don't think it's a bad alternative. They are fit horses and they are still content and vice free, so I don't think it is cruel to the horses at all.
 
A lot of working horses were kept in stalls 24:7 until the end of their working life - unless they got a summer break in a field.

I definitely wouldn't have wanted to be one of the pit ponies my great grandfather worked with!
 
i worked with horses in the 80s, the set up then was so different from how my own horses are kept now.
The hunters were in all winter , they were usually given a day off after a hunting day and maybe if they were at all lucky half an hours turnout in a tiny paddock. Most of them were fired and/or on bute. At the end of the season they were hoyed out to make room for the first brood mares to come in. The stalions spent their entire life in stalion boxes, and had maybe a couple of days individual turnout in an old walled garden.
My own horses are kept out 24/7 and behave like trapped animals if brought in overnight, my old boy was recently in for a spell of box rest and was weaving after just one day.
I allways thought at the time years ago we were doing the best for the horses, but i would love to bring some of the ones i loved back now and give them the life my own horses have now.
further back than my own memory to when horses were really needed for transport i suppose it would be pure chance wether a horse has a decent owner or not. Its horrible to think that some horses and ponies would never evan see daylight never mind a field.
 
I think it's very easy to think that in the days of yore horses only ever worked and weren't kept as pets or leisure animals, when this just isn't the case. My mum had a pony in the 50s and I certainly do a lot more with mine than she ever did with hers! She grew up in a very similar sort of village to the one I grew up in and nearly every kid had a pony then whereas I was definitely the exception when I grew up. They'd get ridden at weekends and chucked in the fields the rest of the time and very few of them bothered to come to check on them daily.
 
annagain said:
I think it's very easy to think that in the days of yore horses only ever worked and weren't kept as pets or leisure animals, when this just isn't the case. My mum had a pony in the 50s and I certainly do a lot more with mine than she ever did with hers! She grew up in a very similar sort of village to the one I grew up in and nearly every kid had a pony then whereas I was definitely the exception when I grew up. They'd get ridden at weekends and chucked in the fields the rest of the time and very few of them bothered to come to check on them daily.
Click to expand...

It was like that with the horse where i worked, the shoes come off, they stopped the bute and the horses hobbled around on the fells all summer. Maybe if we were on our way past for something we would now and again do a head count but that was about it.
 
I always find it amazing how much things have moved on in just the 30 years I've been around and had horses.

I remember a girl getting a regular physio out to her competition horse in the 80s, and she was the only one on a huge livery yard to ever do so. I remember a few of us peeking over the door to watch. Now my horses see a physio every 6 months, even the ones who have been out of work.

I do certainly see a lot more obese animals today than I did then. A sign of the way feeding/feeds have changed? A lack of education? Or simply that we don't work horses like we used to?

I certainly think most things have moved on for the better.
 
yep completely agree. people panic if they can see the outline of ribs now. there are so many posts up here, where people post pics worrying their horses have dropped condition, and the horses actually still look fat.
 
No, in most ways horses are much better off now than in the days when they were working animals (ref Black Beauty, again). In terms of advances in veterinary medicine most certainly so. However.....keeping horses fat, under exercised, unmannerly and improperly trained is not really an improvement.

In the historical past horses were frequently overworked, worked in pain, killed in war, often (but not always) very roughly trained with little or no compassion. But when your very existance depends on horses/mules/donkeys being able to work, making sure the horse was adequately fed, shod and harnessed was vital. If a horse was lame or otherwise unable to work it was slaughtered, so standards of care had to be at least competant. Todays world is vastly different, but I am not convinced that the modern horse-as-pet is actually happier for it.
 
Last edited:
Horses are in the main far better off now one or two things have made their lives more difficult
1 cheapness it is now cheaper to keep a horse than go to a riding school so many suffer due to ignorance
2 lack of work resulting in lots of problems with mental and physical health
3 over fed now due to the rise in compound feeds many of which are unsuitable for the horses work level
4 no hands on support system for novice owners
5 inappropriate rugging
What has made horses live longer have been huge improvements in veterinary care and the internet
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top