After being home for the holidays, I thought it would be interesting to share how my horse lives and how I set up his home. Unlike a dog or cat, horses require a little more pre-planning when it comes to designing and setting up an ideal habitat for them. Some of the most basic reasons for the increased complexity is their pure size as well as their natural behaviors. A large dog is on the order of about 100 pounds where as a horse is approximately ten times this size. That is quite a big increase in size meaning they need that much more of just about everything. This includes food, yard space or technically called pasture, exercise, water, and shelter just to name a few of their basic needs. The biggest behavioral issue that you must consider when designing a horse’s home is their need for companionship. In the wild, horses live in herds of up to 20 individuals where they are constantly communicating, standing guarding, grazing, and grooming each other. One horse absolutely cannot live alone in a long-term situation or their mental health will rapidly deteriorate. 

With this need for company comes even larger space requirements. You thought your 100-pound dog needed a big yard, imagine how big the pasture of two 1000-pound horses will need to be. One horse requires at least one acre to live on, but this estimation is far too small if this horse’s only source of nutrients is this land. While no one has the perfect “horse-to-pasture ratio” there are some good approximations out there, but they depend on how the horse is being fed, what kind of shelter is available to the horse, and how much exercise they receive on a regular basis. 

For example, imagine there are three horses with a four-acre field and a barn. These horses are fed hay year-round and at least twice a day. These horses are also in regular work meaning they are being ridden between three and four times per week. This set up would work well barring certain situation like living in a region that has excessive amounts of rain. This could make the field a mud sty leading to health problems for these horses. Other issues that would require more pasture space would be steep hills. If these four acres have a very inclined pitched, then the land will be more prone to unsustainable practices. 

Now that you have a little more background on the basics of how land can be set-up, let me tell you my story in next week’s blog post.