Travelling horses! Stop over or not?

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clopper

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How long can you/would you have your horse in wagon?

Do you stop over night get them out stretch legs -obv not at side of road! or just feed and water then in the truck? or just offer water?

I have a 10hr journey ahead and just wonder beat plan for welfare or horse.
 
I travelled my old mare for 4 hours in the lorry. We stopped at the services to have a wee and gave my horse water e.t.c and she had a wee too! I left her in the lorry though. Don't think a horse walking around the services carpark was a good idea!

My friend regularly used to travel from Scotland to Portsmouth in the trailer and had regular stops on the way down to give water e.t.c. but never unloaded.

I am potentially doing a long journey soon, so would be interested to see other peoples responses.
 
Hmm. Thats a long journey. I've never done one that far. I don't like doing over five or six hours, but I am quite soft! You'd surely at the least have to get them out half way for a leg stretch?

Would it be worth contacting a horse transport sevice to see what they say. You could pretend that you were interested in having your horse transported and ask how they'd look after it.

There is a thread on here by someone who is bringing their horse back from Cyprus (could be in comp/stable yard) who may have some tips..
 
I have had several horses imported from the continent (not Franch, hasten to add :D), I've tried transporters with different approaches and have to say:
The ones that have not been unloaded and spent the night on the lorry parked up have arrived tired but relaxed and recovered quickly.
The ones that had a stopover in yards along the way arrived fairly fresh, but very stressed out and it took them longer to settle.

On a 10 hr journey in a lorry, I would be stopping a couple of times but would definitely not unload, just feed and water on the lorry.
 
I regularly go 4/5hrs no probs but this will be double that and just feel it's too long - though easiest stop over stable offered(friends beside mway) don't have horses anymore so horse may get upset so wonder if better just kept going - oh what to do!


lol -wasn't planning on trotting her up and down hard shoulder to stretch legs!x
 
i have done 5-6 hrs without stopping, i am never on my own so someone will nip through to make sure they are not too hot/cold change rugs if needed & top up haylage nets and offer them a drink - one wont drink when travelling so i make up sloppy sugar beet for him and he has a good slurp of that. they never look stressed or tired after that journey - a few weeks back i did about 5.5 hrs got to the venue put them in stables for an hour then got 1 ready for dressage and he was wired to the moon - i thought he would be nice and calm after the journey but bounced about like a raving lunitic after being worked (inc 2 tests) for an hour he jogged back to his stable
i think i would do up to 8 hrs then i would want to stop overnight and let them have a proper sleep and rest.
 
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