'On The Right Track' - Horses living in paddock paradise 

Thank you so much María ♥!! Your words mean the world to me, as you feel and understand this video exactly the way I hoped it to be :-)!

TrickleCreekFarm Thank you for your lovely compliments! It has been my pleasure to make and show this film. I hope it will give many horse owners new ideas about keeping horses and taking care them.

Thank you for your compliments!

My pleasure 😉👍!

Thanks Megan. Nice to know that my video inspired you!

Thank you!

Thank you for your kind compliment ❤️.

Thank you for your kind words!

looks lovely. one question: when introducing a new horse and not risk injury because of fighting how do you manage that? Especially those of us who have a variety of rescued equines with behavioral challenges do need a way to manage introductions wisely and cautiously, rather than let mother nature sort it out, which can easily lead to compound fractures, nasty bite wounds and other injuries and thus costs.

+Nora Koch Thank you Nora :-)!

Elissa Bent You're welcome :-)! Thanks for your comment.

You're welcome Elaine - good luck with making your PP track :-)!

Thank you for your kind words

How big is the land it covers?

+remedyfarm Thanks for your lovely words :-)!

Thank you!

For two horses that would absolutely be enough space. Have fun designing ;-)!

You’re welcome! Lots of luck with setting up your paddock paradise!

Thank you for your kind compliment :-). Actually I should make a new film because the PP has become twice as big and includes a 250 metre woodtrack now!

Thank you :-)!

Thanks for the compliment and lots of success with bringing your creative ideas into practice ;-)!

+Mary Barrett Hi Mary! Thank you :-)!

+Leigh Cowden Thanks for the lovely comment and good luck with your PP!

+Gydjulind I'm sure I'll be back here over and over as I put mine together. Your horses look so happy. All horses should have a life like this.

miluc v Thank you! And yes, that is my objective with this video: to show what PP can do for horses :-).

Thanks for the compliment :-)!

Thank you, Ursula!

+xDoornroos Thanks for your comment :-). Yes, it has been quite some work, but the nice thing about a paddock paradise is that it 'grows organically' over the years. You keep seeing new possibilities and opportunities to improve the PP and it's a lot of fun to see it grow that way and to offer the horses more and more pleasure.

+Gydjulind Very cool! Your horses are very pretty and fun to watch. How do you prevent the tracks from getting super muddy? Paddock sand? It rains here quite a lot. I'm already fantasizing about my own PP, but I have limited space. Do you think it will work to have a water bucket at a dead end of a track or would that feel 'unsafe' to them?

+xDoornroos I am blessed with a very dry lot, with natural sand; I didn't add any sand anywhere. It can get just a bit muddy in some spots in the paddocks but especially the longest tracks are superdry! Just an occasional puddle here and there. In which country are you? I'm in Holland (and I guess you might be too, considering your name), which is usually very wet, so I realize I have quite an exceptional situation here. As to the dead end: I would never do that, as it is the principle of a PP that a horse can always escape if it wants to, so I would either make a circular route, or let the track end in a paddock with sufficient space for the horses to turn around, even at high speed, and without the risk of getting trapped by a dominant horse.

Elisa Livingston Thank you Elisa :-). Your comment is exactly the reason I made this film: to give people ideas on how to improve the lives of their horses. I would love to see how your PP turns out!

You're welcome Andréa :-)!

Yolanda Timmermans Dankjewel Yolanda :-)!

Thank you Lacey, and good luck with building your own paddock Paradise :-)!

Stina Herberg Thanks Stina :-)!

Fair Horsemanship Thank you!

Thank you for your compliments 🙂. I’d like to say something about blankets: you don’t see any of my horses wearing one in this video, because they were all healthy at the time. I do not agree with your statement that blankets are stupid though. One of the horses in this video (the red chestnut) eventually died at the age of almost 41. During his last years he started suffering from cold, wet weather, which made him shiver and tremble, have rain rot patches on his skin and lose weight quickly. So we gave him a waterproof blanket, which gave him visible relief. My opinion about blankets: when a horse doesn’t need them, don’t use them, but when they suffer from cold and rain, a blanket can relieve their suffering tremendously. I call that good love and care ❤. Nothing is just black or white, it all depends and there’s a time and place for everything. Best wishes, Mai

Thanks Joyce. We are blessed with a very dry piece of ground here, so I don't have anything to tell about mud ;-).

Gydjulind Ohh, lucky you!!! How big is the PP?

Joyce MROZIELSKI This PP is 2.5 acres, and then we have another PP at the end of our street, which is approx. 3.2 acres. We usually take the horses there for summer, as in winter it's too wet and muddy there (so yes, we do have mud over there ;-)). The rest of the year we keep them in the high, dry PP at home.

They were eating duckweed. Thanks for letting me know how much you enjoy my video 🙂.

Thanks Ann :-). You mean really flooded, or 'just' very muddy? In the latter case you could try and apply paddock tiles or something (don't know what it's called in English, I mean something like this: www.paddockplatten.org/unsere-platten-produkte/die-paddockplatte/ ). That's what I'm planning on doing in my other track system, which is a lot wetter than the one in the video. Good luck with your plans!

+Gydjulind yeah I mean a river through the paddock type flooding. We had water through in Feb and had to pull all the pickets and electric tape cause they would've washed away.

Wow... little to be done about that I guess....

+ritzydoodle Hi Ritzy (is that what you are actually called, or is it Ritambhara?). I'm happy to hear that it made you feel so peaceful! Please could you send me your email address through a Facebook PM?

Thanks for the compliment :-)! I can't give you advice on which posts to use, that's all a matter of your own preference. I only have experience with the wooden posts, but I'm in Holland where the ground is usually very soft. I can imagine that with e.g. rocky ground it's a totally different story ;-). Clearing along the fence line: just keep an eye on it. Sometimes horses will clear it, sometimes they won't, also depending on the plants growing there. Track width is also a matter of preference; my track is between 6.5 - 8.5 ft, but some people find this far too narrow. For my ponies it's perfect, but for a big horse or very wild youngsters it may not be. Just follow your own gut feeling ;-).

Anne-Marie GARCIA Thanks for your comment :-). I know a lot of people share your concern about sand ingestion as it's said to cause sand colic. I don't have the knowledge to say what the exact cause of sand colic is. The only thing I know is that my horses have been nibbling the short grass off the dirt ever since I started keeping horses, which was 25 years ago, and they never suffered from sand colic or laminitis. It's said that feeding enough fibres is necessary to transport any sand through the intestines, so I think feeding hay is important, even during the pasture season. I hope you'll find the right solution for your pony :-).

Gydjulind Thanks for answering. Sand in the intestine accumulates from horses eating on sandy ground. I have thought about it and I will say since your horses are getting hay from haynets not fed on the ground, sand ingested would be minimal. An easy way to know if they are eating sand is to have their manure checked :) If you horses are kept like you do, they have minimal chances to get laminitis. The problem is managing a horse/pony that has already got it before. Once they have had it they are more prone to it. Your horses are happy and move more and less bored than in a paddock. May I suggest to add salt lick blocks in different places so they move to get feed, then salt and more movement for water :) Good job. Thanks for sharing.

Anne-Marie GARCIA Yes, I know about the manure check. I believe there will always be a certain amount of sand in a horse's intestines, as it's very natural for a horse to 'graze the dirt' for edible things, and even with grazing in a pasture they will ingest grass roots and hence sand now and then. I think it's like with worms; a horse is never wormfree, but it's a matter of balance; a small amount is only natural and doesn't hurt the horse. An interesting thing is that there is a certain spot on the bank of my waterhole, where the soil looks kind of clay-ish, where my entire herd loves to lick the ground and even eat mouths full of soil during a period in spring. There must be something in that soil during that period that they love and crave. I trust their instincts and always just let them; I've never seen any negative side effects of it (b.t.w. they do get their mineral and vitamin supplements ;-) ). I believe that all kinds of excessive behaviour, e.g. ingesting lots of sand, often come from boredom and can be very hard to 'un-learn' once they have become ingrained patterns.As to the laminitis, which I believe is related to other metabolic diseases like insulin resistance, summer itch etc.: I'm a true believer of 'less is more'. I have a gelding who suffered from severe summer itch in the past (he used to be covered with bloody spots during summer). It was clear that something was wrong with his metabolism as he was also permanently overweight and nothing I did made him lose weight. Until I found out that fresh, green grass triggered his itch a lot! With the help of a book on solving summer itch with feeding, I took him off the grass for one whole year and fed him only hay. This completely reset his metabolism; he lost a lot of weight (and never got overweight again after that) and his summer itch decreased with about 80%. After that year I slowly re-introduced grass and found out that two hours of grazing a day is his limit to keep his itch under control. He lives mainly on good hay now and is a lot healthier and happier.I don't mean to tell you that this would work for your pony too, because I can not know that as each horse is a unique individual, but just to illustrate how well an approach of 'less rich food' worked out for my horse. And the nice thing of a paddock paradise is that I can always feed him hay on the track, closest to the part of the pasture where his herd mates are grazing (you can see him eat his hay on the track at 6:10 ) so they're still 'together' :-).Funny that you mentioned the salt blocks; I do have one in their run-in shed, but I was planning to add a few more in different places around the track, perhaps embedded in a pile of rocks or something :-).

@Gydjulind

Thank you for the compliment :-). We have never had problems with excessive amounts of insects around the waterhole, and it's only 10 metres or so from our bedroom window. We do have lots of barn swallows in spring and summer, so they probably help a lot to keep insects down.

Thanks for your comment. The combination horses-goats sounds great! We clean the tracks and paddocks twice a day, by hand scooping, and I use an electric wheelbarrow (Zallys Dumper Jet) to spare my back. Lots of luck with setting up your track!

@@Gydjulind - That's great! Sounds like you guys keep it maintained well! Are you in a warm climate? Where I am it gets -40 so manure quickly freezes to the ground. During the spring we collect all of the manure that's piled up over winter, then keep up during the months that don't freeze- usually scooping twice per week. We have a dump cart on our riding mower which is also a God send! Haha

@@renewyourmind1815 I'm in Holland, where we have a quite rainy, damp climate, not particularly warm, but not extremely cold either.

Hi Lisa, I kept the gates very simple; just electric cord, grips and connectors. Grips like this one: 554cb3b75ce1cd4b4840-9d380db976cd044c222698ed983c0846.ssl.cf3.rackcdn.com/Universelepoortgreepzwart.JPG ----- and the connectors to connect the grips to the wire: postmagauw.nl/images/content/large/span/poortgreepankers-4st.jpg

Thank you the first link would not open but the second did. Now I get the idea but have never seen the insulator before Can you tell me where you got that?

Here you can see both the handle and the connecting insulator in one picture (if you can open it that is ;-) ) : l7.alamy.com/zooms/1afca9f96c664700925393f759617d9e/handle-on-electric-fence-to-allow-safe-disconection-for-stock-management-b5kn7j.jpg . I'm not familiar with the English terms for these parts as I'm Dutch, but perhaps you know the Gallagher company? They have everything for fences, so I'm sure you should be able to find these parts there. Good luck!

You are Dutch, de Kramer is suppose to be Dutch. How about that. Yes I do know the Gallagher company I will look for those insulators. I have the gate handles. Thank you so much

Hi Lisa, yes I had noticed your name, which is definitely Dutch! However I reckoned you were not Dutch yourself, from your perfect English ;-). I wish you lots of luck with your PP!

Sure, no problem! The more this idea is shared, the better :-). Good luck with building your PP!

Gravel and rock is a great addition to the track system to keep feet strong and used to rocky conditions:)

Jo Heritage First we drilled a small hole in the dryest time of year (august/september) to see how deep the groundwater level was. Then I drew a plan with the depth of the waterhole about 80 cm lower than the groundwater level (so that the waterhole would never dry up), a steep bank on one side and a very gradual one on the other side. If you search for 'poel 9 september 2011' here on RU-vid, you'll find the video that shows how our waterhole was dug.

Thank you :-)

Hi Laura, thanks for your compliments :-)! Yes, it is in fact as simple as throwing ground on the spot you have in mind for your hill ;-). In our case the hill was made the same day as the pool was dug, so it was made from the ground that came out the poolhole. Of course it takes time for the hill to set and get firm, but that happens naturally over time and of course the horses also help by climbing it and walking on it. In the case of the hill in this video, the digging machine drove over it once or twice after it was made, to make it a bit firmer, but it isn't really necessary. We had another pool dug and hill created just two weeks ago (in another part of our PP that is not in the above video). It is a much smaller and lower hill than the first one (because the ground was also used for other purposes) - towards the end of this video you can see how it was made: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-5bwr4BfOqEM.html

Hi! Thank you for the quick reply! I can't wait to get started now! :-) You really inspired me! Thank you again and all the best to you and your horses!

I understand your concern, but no, no stress at all from the electric wires in the shed 👍. They are there to prevent the horses from pushing their butt against the shed walls 😉.

@@Gydjulind yes, I see the benefit of not leaning a ponies buts against the wall- still , if it is narrow in there and may be crowded, someone might easily touch the whire - anyway it is up to you what you do on your property. However someone who sees the video might copy the idea, witch I still think is not so nice. I feel standing that near to a loadet whire is not relaxing and maybe more sensible horse doesn't dare to seek shelter in there.

@@discoshepard well… reality shows that it has never been a problem here, for 25 years. And people should never copy someone else mindlessly, right 😉? Every situation and every horse is different. I don’t pretend to be THE expert, I just share what I do and what works for me and my horses ❤.

Hi Claire, I can reply ‘yes’ to all of your questions, but it all depends on the horse, the amount of available pasture surface, the season, the weather, etc. etc. This video is a few years old and meanwhile we have doubled the size of our paddock paradise, which means we now have enough pasture to both let our horses graze and to make hay in summer as well. At the moment we have a herd of five; three 30+ aged horses, who get as much grazing turn out as possible year round because they need it, and two 20 yr old mares, who are both of the insulin resistant type (one of them even laminitis prone), who have very little pasture turn out, actually none at all during the past year since they were both quite overweight (Icelandic horses can be quite difficult to manage food-wise). After a year of feeding these two a limited amount of hay they are both in perfect condition now. We’ll have to see how to go from here with them; perhaps with a little bit of grazing time this coming spring/summer, with some added hay, we don’t know yet. It’s a matter of always keeping an eye on the individual needs of each horse. The BIG advantage of the paddock paradise system is that even when they are not allowed to graze, they are still able to roam around the tracks, find some hay and other little bits to eat here and there and have a good time. Much better than feeling bored in a small paddock! You can also find videos of the later addition to my PP on my channel. Best wishes, Mai

@Gydjulind thank you so much for your reply - I'll def look at the other video. I hear you re Icelandics - their breeding enables them to live through an Icelandic winter - I swear they thrive on lava rock, lichen and tree bark ! I used to work at an Icelandic Horse yard and rode a British Champion ! Used to make me laugh how the fouler the weather, the more game and forward going they would become. Seemed to particularly enjoy horizontal sleet ! Such fantastic horses, but yes, ridiculously 'good doers' to a fault !

Hoi Linsey, leuk om te horen dat je zoveel aan de film hebt 👍. De berg in de video is ca. 45 m lang en ca. 10 m breed (onderaan). Een paar jaar geleden heb ik de berg wat speelser laten maken, met afwisselend hogere en lagere gedeeltes. Ik vond dat rechte, platte te saai 😁.

Oh en de hoogte (zoals in de film, dus vóór de aanpassing) is ca. 2 m.

Maya Raza Thank you Maya :-). Yes, I think I can say that my horses are happy horses. You're right, the soil is very sandy and it's the natural soil, we didn't put anything else on top of it.

Thanks for the compliment Pat. No I don't take the inner fence down in winter; during winter our pastures are not used, as they also need rest and also there's hardly any grass left in winter, so the horses would only ruin the pasture.I can't remember ever having had what you describe: rain, then frost and then snow on top of it. It doesn't snow very much in winter around here, sometimes there's no snow at all. And frost not that much either, although it varies from year to year. Anyway, usually I just give them the opportunity to find out for themselves whether they can walk the tracks or not during any circumstances.

Hi Meg, I hope paddock Paradise will be able to solve your horse's problem. Just a bit of advice: make sure you install the lowest electric wire of the fence around the pasture close enough to the ground, so that your horse won't be able to still snatch the grassy edges. This is something horses in paddock Paradise often get very clever at and keep themselves busy with for hours. You don't want them to eat a lot of grass this way after all ;-).

It looks like a hood to prevent it from rubbing its mane on stuff and rubbing it out...

Sure you can ask ;-). To be precise, our whole lot is 2,81 acres (1,1374 hectares), included our house and yard. Without those - so the actual 'horse territory' as shown at 0:30 - it's approx. 2.5 acres. A few years ago we were able to add a second PP of 3.2 acres, connected to the first PP through a 250 metres long wood track, which you can see in several of my other videos. So now it's a total of 5.7 acres (almost 2.5 hectares). Thanks for the compliment!

@@Gydjulind ,the best set up I have seen yet as a retired studfarm manager I am still always thinking of how things can be improving for horses that are not involved in breeding. Looking forward to seeing the rest of your videos

Bonnies Mondra Thanks for the compliment :-).No, the waterhole wasn't there at first, we had it dug in September 2011, and then the hill was made with the ground from the waterhole. You could see a waterhole as a kind of 'organism' and when it's big enough (and this one is) then it should be able to keep itself biologically clean. But it can take a few years before it reaches that balance. Over the years we have seen the water gradually becoming cleaner. At first it had a lot of algae on the surface and one summer we had weird pink flakes in the water which turned out to be some kind of bacterial pollution, but it disappeared and didn't come back. Last year there were no algae and instead we saw a lot of duckweed (which the horses loved!). So I guess the waterhole is going through all kinds of phases and slowly coming into a more balanced state now. B.t.w. the horses always have a free choice between drinking from the waterhole or tapwater from a tub. They usually prefer the waterhole.

Gydjulind Thank you for the quick answer :-)Did the horses drink the water even with the bacterial pollution or did they drink the tab-water then? And if they drank it, did it harm them in any way? Sorry for all the questions, but we are thinking of creating one too and experiences concerning that are very valuable! Greetings :-)

Bonnies Mondra While the pink flakes were in the waterhole we closed off the area for the horses, so they couldn't drink there, just to be sure. This is what the pink stuff looked like: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-y0BfL_9D1gIG.htmlood luck with creating your waterhole :-)!

Gydjulind Something went wrong with the link, this is what it should be: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-y0BfL_9D1gI.html

Jo Heritage You mean the horses' hooves sinking into the ground? We didn't do that and I never thought of it either ;-). I wouldn't know if it's necessary with certain types of soil, I only have experience with our own waterhole.Not every ground water is clean enough to drink I guess; my horses can choose between the waterhole and a trough with tap water and they use both. I trust their instincts on this.

+Melissa Franco Thanks Melissa! If a pond is big enough it is self sustaining, so I don't do anything to the water to keep it clean. It is a living organism though, and I could clearly see my pool go through different phases from the moment it was dug.

+francine aubort If I'm right you're asking me about the time it took me to organize this place? (My French is not that good ;-) ). I really can't answer that question since a PP is kind of an 'organism' that changes and grows over the years. I can only say that I started it about 7 or 8 years ago I guess (not even sure).

+Gydjulind thank you for your answer. I'll start small , I think it will take me 10 years. I have a plot of 16'000m2 , c is not much but I'll try . what surface you ?

+francine aubort 16,000 m2 is great; I know lots of people who only have about 2,500 or 3,500 m2 and manage to build a PP. We just have natural sand here and put nothing else on the tracks.

+Maureen Starks Hi Maureen, I'm not sure what you mean by following my lead with gravel, as I don't have gravel anywhere in my PP (yet), although I plan to have it some day. I'm sorry, I don't have a DVD; the videos on this channel are all I have to show ;-). Good luck with your riding program, sounds awesome!

For this film I used windows live movie maker. For the strip grazing animation part I edited my pictures in a software program called paint.net (downloadable for free from the internet). B.t.w. it’s NOT the same as windows paint! (Sorry for the late reply; I only found your question today...)

I noticed paint . net turned into a link, but that’s the wrong website. You can download the free paint (dot) net software from getpaint.net .

@@Gydjulind ok great.. thank you!

They’re certainly not too small to be ridden and they all have been ridden in the past, but we don’t ride them anymore, so the horses are retired 🙂.