Keeping horses is spain.... seems strange to me...

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I've just been to visit a friend in Spain (Costa Blanca), she has been there a few weeks and has taken her horse with her.

There is no grass, so no hay, and she is feeding him on some kind of grass substitute hard feed and then alf alfa and STRAW on his haynet??

I'm not convinced. She thinks it's better than "muddy England" but I'm not sure...??
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Sounds like Argentina. We don't have grass for most of the year. Horses get oats and alfalfa. I used to keep my horses out 24/7 and things here took some getting used to. Just because things are different and they're not what you're accustomed to doesn't make them 'worse'.
 
When we emigrated, because of our love for inland Spain, we did consider moving there ... however the lack of grazing was a major consideration, and one which we were not prepared to compromise on. I didn't want to be bound by feeding constraints. Yes fair enough you might not want mud, but I do want my horses on grass for at least part of the year ... hence we chose Canada - still no mud, but lots of yummy grass in summer, and this makes lots of yummy hay for winter.
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Sounds like Argentina. We don't have grass for most of the year. Horses get oats and alfalfa. I used to keep my horses out 24/7 and things here took some getting used to. Just because things are different and they're not what you're accustomed to doesn't make them 'worse'.


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I think she got my back up a bit saying "Well it's better than being stood in a stable or a muddy field in England!" (her horse was in a small pen with nothing in it, not much bigger than a stable). He looked "ok" but nothing like your horses PF.
 
Where they were there was no grass at all really. I love my friend but I wouldn't want my horse there.
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Not how she kept hers anyway.
 
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Sounds like Argentina. We don't have grass for most of the year. Horses get oats and alfalfa. I used to keep my horses out 24/7 and things here took some getting used to. Just because things are different and they're not what you're accustomed to doesn't make them 'worse'.


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I think she got my back up a bit saying "Well it's better than being stood in a stable or a muddy field in England!" (her horse was in a small pen with nothing in it, not much bigger than a stable). He looked "ok" but nothing like your horses PF.

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Hmmm... well, it doesn't sound ideal but horses cope incredibly well in the most diverse of situations.
Weezy will know all about keeping horses in Spain.
 
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Hmmm... well, it doesn't sound ideal but horses cope incredibly well in the most diverse of situations.
Weezy will know all about keeping horses in Spain.

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Oh I'm sure he'll be fine.
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I guess its true what you say, when things are different they seem odd. She feeds him a million times a day so he won't starve!
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Did you say yours have oats?? I'm wondering if that might help? (He's a bit of a loon though!
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Hm, I suppose the Spanish must be doing something right though seeing they have been breeding some of the finest horses for hundreds of years ...?
The ones we see in Andalusia certainly are no welfare cases.
 
I went to visit a friend in Marbella last year, her horse was kept permanently indoors and worked in the school or lunging pen. There was no turn out at all and not any nice hacking, the area was a real dump very untidy with orange builders plastic fencing everywhere and hundreds of advertising billboards along the roads, it was even cold & rained hard for the four days I was there - why anyone would want to keep horses in that part of Spain is a mystery to me!
 
Strokes for folks, i always find it amazing how horses cope in differing climates etc. Personally I adore muddy, beautiful, green, hilly Wales
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and wouldn't swap it for anything.
 
We live in a rather arid area....to our west is the Nullabour Plain to our North is the Gawler Ranges then Lake Gairdner and Lake Eyre (which are massive dry salt lakes 19 years out of 20) and the Simpson Desert.... We get a little grazing on sown cereals for a short time each year other than that it's hay and straw all year round....mainly hay, but straws lower calories helps keep the weight off some of the chubbers while keeping the fibre volume up to prevent sand colics...

Different is not bad....it's just, well, different! ...and one look at our horses and the foals we are producing will show you it works! Hell I think in some cases our feeding practices make for better management than relying on pasture...we have a constant nutritional input with no seasonal fluctuations...ideal for growing youngsters to avoid growth and joint issues! Nothing worse than "yoyo" feeding to create problems!

http://www.cmsporthorses.com/WhereAreWe.html will show you where we are...quite remote and as i said, rather arid....you'd have to go past Spain and into North Africa for comparable conditions..today is over 50*C...yesterday 45+ and will be over 40 for the rest of the week! Ugh!

http://www.cmsporthorses.com/2008Foals6.html ...if you look at these pics you can see our red, bare, dusty, dry dirt...as it is 8 or 9 months of the year! ...but you can also see the fat shiney healthy mares and good looking happy healty foals!

Like I said, different is different, but not always bad! Hell, we don't have frozen water pipes and fields to winge about! Our gateways don't get poached, you can ride in a t shirt all year round and it's still warm enough to take the horses to the beach in winter! ....now if we just had an airconditioned indoor so we could ride during the day in summer (although riding in the evenings is just great! (I often head out for a ride around town about 10pm and occasionally after midnight) and some extra green for a bit longer each year would be easy on the eyes!
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Feeding straw isn't that unusual. I can remember having to feed it (many many years ago!) one winter as we had a fire and lost our hay. I must have been about 6 or 7 so .............very early 80's! Didn't do the horses any harm. I've also got a friend who fed his daughters laminitic pony on wheat straw as it had a lower feeding value, never had lammi. Somewhere in the back of my head I remember being told you could easily feed good quality wheat straw but to avoid barley sraw as it was too long and was not easily digested.
 
Nope, Oaten, Wheaten, Barley and Triticale straw are all fine... horses eat em all fine...once they get past the snotty looks and the "what the Hell is this @#$% ? Where is the HAY you stupid human?????" reactions... havn't had one go on a hunger stike yet! .....but being mainly CB's their stomach rules their actions!
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Our horses were given straw bales to "play" with or eat as they wanted when stuck in because of extreme weather conditions at my old yard. Never did them any harm and we used to laugh our heads off watching them toss the sections in the air, etc. !!
 
Well, we never fed straw, just alfalfa, and until recently it was straights only, nuts and oats, although Purina brought out a mix about 15 years ago, though I very much doubt any true Spanish horse owners bother with that, and most of them DO feed straw, which is very good quality compared to a lot of the dusty rubbish we have here.

No turn out is the absolute norm, and the horses do get very used to it. No, there is no grass, but there is scrub and shrub that the horses eat. At my first yard we did have turn out paddocks, but they were seldom used, at San Roque we had one sand turn out area, that again was seldom used.

One thing I will say is that our horses always looked superb, the Spanish and the imported ones.

As for hacking, if you get yourself away from the coast the hacking in Spain is second to none. I used to hack for days, and you seldom encounter land you cannot pass.

I far preferred having horses in Spain than England!
 
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