Here at MBHT we strive to exceed the needs of our horses’ health ensuring each horse is cared for on an individual needs basis, some horses require extra feed, some extra cuddles, and some need a bit more training and time to make sure they are happy, confident and safe for our customers.
Horses are an expensive business that’s for sure! With many costs and lots of time involved to ensure the best practices in horse care are available to our herd should they need them at any time, we are committed to our horses and their needs, they are very important members of our family, even if this means we need to sleep with them in the stables to ensure they are ok during the dreaded guy fawkes celebrations ….. And this actually happens but it’s ok we rather like living our own little saddle club nights!
We believe that a happy healthy horse at work is a safe horse for our customers, here’s a few ways we keep on top of our beasties and their health.
Personal Fitted Gear
That’s right each of our horses has their own saddle and gear fitted to them and we check these regularly with our saddle fitter from horselands, they also stock lots of horsey gear, have a look @ www.horselands.co.nz
The horses can change shape throughout the seasons or when we feed them too much haylage! Like we said Horses are expensive!
Dentistry
Our horses are all on a maintenance schedule with our horse dentist and receive regular checks and treatments, this ensures they are comfortable with a bit in their mouth if they need one (a lot of our horses wear bitless bridles) and are chewing and digesting their food well. It also means they have a beautiful smile and nice smelling breath too!
Vet Treatments and Health Checks
MBHT has a long standing relationship with our local Vets North Team, and they provide us with all the horse health care we need, anything from scanning pregnant mares, checking on our foals, treating abscesses during winter and checking our horses are always in tip top shape. Check them out @ www.vetsnorth.co.nz
Physio & Bodywork
Just like people, the horses can get tight from time to time so we have some awesome tools like a massage gun that we use to make sure we keep their muscles soft, strong and supple, coupled with carrot stretches, flatwork, groundwork and other body work.
We also work closely with Kath Long from Equine Physio NZ, she treats all our horses when needed with Physio, Massage, Osteo and Acupuncture. Check her out @ www.equinephysionz.com
Hoof Care
Barefoot trimming is our way here at MBHT, our horses’ feet are examined and trimmed specifically to their needs by our wonderful and experienced trimmer Sarah, she’s even been kind enough to teach a few of our team members how to trim, under her supervision of course.
Grooming and Maintenance
All our grooming and maintenance is all looked after by our team of guides/Instructors, we have schedules in place for each horse so we can make sure we don’t forget anything,
This includes anything from doing summer clips and plaiting manes through to administering medications or treatments, regular daily feeding for our horses that need a bit of extra protein or just giving the horses some one on one love.
Diet and Horse Supplies
They say that beauty starts within right? Same thing for our horses, our horses are feed on a mostly grass and haylage diet that is managed by our farmhands, it’s a pretty busy business growing grass and cutting haylage, the team needs to make sure the paddocks are grazed well, fertilized, cut a at the right time and stored well for winter.
On top of all this the MBHT horses are given extra special hardfeeds to make sure they all get the nutrients, vitamins, minerals they need to have full happy bellies, keep nice weight on and maintain the strength of their muscles. Our team here spends lots of time making sure each horse’s dietary requirements are tended to and changed as needed.
Mental Health
The mental health of our horses is just as important to us as our own mental health. Horses are incredibly expressive and as long as we find ways to understand their silent language we can figure out what they need.
Sometimes our horses just need a mini break just like you and me, so you guessed it they all get time off throughout the year.
It might be that a few during spring time are feeling energetic and so we head off to the woodhill forest for some fun, fast , different trails and scenery. We have a couple keen jumpers too so off we head for some jumping, hunting.
MBHT also believes in providing our horses with non riding fun too and we spend time with our herd in the round pen practicing and playing with liberty and ground work exercises.
Like humans, horses can become stale and bored and even depressed if tasks with the same routine day in day out so it’s important that we provide ample opportunities for them to have different activities and outings as well as downtime and not to mention lots and lots of affection and cuddles.
