Paddock Paradise: The Perfect Setup For Domesticated Horses?
I first stumbled across a paddock paradise when I was transitioning our horses to barefoot. Horse owners across the world have utilized this “track system” to keep horses active and foraging like they would be in the wild.
It’s an excellent way to keep horses off of lush grass, encourage movement, and condition their bodies naturally.
Here are the pros and cons I have observed over time with those who utilize the paddock paradise setup:
PROS
For the insulin resistant, metabolic and overweight horses, you can really dictate how much they move through their day.
You can easily maintain horses on a low sugar diet without keeping them in a stall all day (which leads to lack of movement) and/or they can still have access to forage you choose (such as hay in a hay bag or net, that is also low in NSC).
The track system is excellent at promoting movement, which is important for all systems in the horse, but particularly important for their feet.
The horses have assistance in self-trimming their hooves. This is especially true if you are able to add a variety of footing (rocks, gravels and stones) among your track, so that their feet are challenged instead of always walking on sand or mud.
When you have performance horses, by encouraging them to move more frequently, you are establishing a really good basic conditioning program for your horse.
You can really turn your paddock paradise in to an absolute dream - adorned with trees, hills, bridges, hedges, you name it! The possibilities are endless when it comes to the design!
There is far less wear and tear on your lush pastures, because the horses are on the track more often. This gives you time to rest your fields and prevent overgrazing, which is so important! It also enables you to keep your horses off of the grass, while still have adequate turnout and movement, during the peak seasons when sugar in grass is at its highest.
For the older horses, it’s an excellent way to maintain body condition through exercise and good foraging.
The paddock paradise setup is super ideal for horses with a lack of topline that need a low intensity workout in order to get back in to full work in the future.
Probably the most important - barefoot performance horses are some of the hardest to maintain, because everything has to be just right with their body condition and nutrition in order for their feet to be functional and sound. The ability to change your horse’s lifestyle in a moment’s notice is perhaps my favorite reason to set up a paddock paradise. If they are thriving in work and can utilize the extra calories - give them increased access to the lush field. If they are being impacted by the sugar levels in the grass and are coming up slightly foot sore, keep them on the track with hay nets until they return to homeostasis.
CONS
You need to stay on top of maintaining your tracks, and make sure that they are wide enough, so your horses don’t over-wear the track and create muddy areas. This can be a feat in wet climates.
In order to prevent the horses from going on the grass in the middle, one option is to use hot wire fencing. This means that when the horses are on the track, they will always be between electric fencing (unless you use an alternative solution), which can cause subtle stress and apprehension. It’s important to keep this in mind and make your track wide enough so that the horses feel very relaxed while on the track.
Unless you can come up with an automatic gate situation, you will manually have to turn your horses out on to the larger pasture in the middle. However, this may not be a big deal as most of us take our horses to and from their field each day, unless they are on 24/7 turnout.
Do you have a paddock paradise? What have you learned from the experience so far?
Photos taken by Ashley Harrison of
Serendipity Photography
