Skin and bones when we rescued her at 7 months from
an awful confinement in Iowa. Now Miss Mouse is
a beautiful, healthy, happy young lady.
The Kentucky Equine Research Staff reports in a recent EquiNews that confinement weakens bones in horses.
“Bone is a dynamic, living tissue strengthened through use. Impact stress from moderate exercise—whether it’s a structured regime such as daily training or simply roughhousing in a pasture—encourages osteoblasts to lay down osteoid tissue, which is converted into healthy, resilient bone.
“When a horse does not exercise regularly, osteoids grow lazy, refusing to deposit substrate for skeletal renewal, and eventually mature bones will demineralize. Over time, demineralization weakens individual bones, which in turn reduces the strength of the entire skeleton. For maximal skeletal resiliency, horses should exercise daily, be it in a tailored training setting or just cruising in a pasture with friends.”
A horse in the wild will move anywhere from 8 to 20 miles per day. A horse in a stall, by study, will average only 800 steps per day. The equine body and brain are programed to not be confined.
Not only does confinement weaken bones, it causes intense physical and emotional stress that, in turn, produces most health, hoof, and behavior problems. We have 8 horses: a rescued American Saddlebred (Mouse, photo above), three mustangs straight out of the wild, two Arabians, a paint and a quarter horse. And at our farm there are no weakened bones, no colic, no laminitis, no strangles, no insulin resistance, no ulcers, no founder, no navicular issues, no cribbing, pawing, kicking, weaving, pacing, or biting.
How did we accomplish all this? By eliminating confinement. We banished it. Sent it packing. And you can too.
Buy Horses & Stress today at Amazon’s special holiday price of 99 cents for the kindle version, for two days only. This is a really important book. And a #1 Amazon Bestseller with four and a half stars out of five. I promise you will not be sorry you spent 99 cents for this good information.
Posted on Facebook this morning by Yvonne Welz, editor of The Horse’s Hoof Magazine: “Horses & Stress by Joe Camp is one of my all-time favorite books, and should be mandatory reading for all horse owners
Joe,
A friend of mine gives me his Western Horseman magazines when hes done with them – In the April 2016 issue there is an article on Texas A & M University’s management program – which resembles your former pasture set up in California. Even a barefoot program! It’s at Parson Mounted Cavalry.
Possibly you already knew this – but optimistically – your ideas are catching hold!
Wow. Really? I did NOT know that. Kudos for A&M. If you have a scanner could you send me a copy. We’re having breakfast with Pete and Ivy Ramey on Monday and I’d love to give it to them.