It's been a quiet week for Buddy after our exciting competition report although it was a bit stressful for me! So I decided to be selfish and treated myself to a trip to Badminton on Sunday which acted as a real inspiration. I am very lucky to have a 4* rider on my team and although he started out as my instructor (8 years ago!) I now consider him a good friend so it was lovely to meet up with him and get the course from a riders point of view (he was on the waitlist for Badders this year but am hoping we'll be luckier next year). I also walked some of the grassroots course and thought it looked great, I would so love to be there one day - if only you could enter it like a normal event! Buddy and I will need to do some work on our dressage to get those elusive scores but maybe if we work hard enough we could qualify....
In the meantime we are just continuing with lots of hacking and I'm just enjoying being with Buddy. Our grazing isn't super rich which has meant Buddy hasn't shown any major signs of being sensitive but its something that is always on my mind. So every time he gimps on a stone I'm wondering if that's because he's feeling his feet and if he has a day where he's a bit ploddy at the beginning of a ride that also makes me think.
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| The latest arrivals at the yard, 5 gorgeous kittens |
His feet are still not as strong as they will be as we still have about half an inch of old growth left and as I'm on livery I cannot be as regimented with his routine as I would like to be so I'm tweaking his diet as best I can and just see if it makes a difference. I've upped his salt again from 25ml to 50ml which he seems to tolerate and it seemed to make a big difference when we hacked on Tuesday as he was striding out and stomping over everything (including an incredibly stoney driveway) leaving his shod companion for dust! I'm also going to start adding 15ml of sodium bicarbonate to see if that makes a difference over those pesky lone stones. I'll let you know if I notice a change.
Interesting and sounds promising. I have upped salt from 10ml to 30ml and mine seem okay with this. I feed 100ml of calmag. Remind me how much MgO you feed (am sure have asked before). I think mine would now eat more salt. What is the logic behind sodium bicarbonate?
ReplyDeleteI'm feeding around 75ml of cal mag as more gave him a dodgy tummy after about a week. The bicarb helps to neutralise the acid in the hind gut - it's thought that spring grass can make it more acidic, so the hind gut doesn't work as well as it could, hence the footiness. I have to say I am really surprised in the difference the salt has made - he is striding out and stomping over everything. This is the third hack so I'm pretty convinced it isn't a fluke now. Will be interesting to see if the bicarb pushes him into rock crunching territory as he did gimp once tonight on a big stone...
ReplyDeleteWell we're now nearly a week into the bicarb and this morning he stomped over the gravel to the stable. Usually he stands and you have to tug him to walk over it. How you have similar success.
ReplyDeleteLyndac, that's interesting. Thanks for your feedback. I'm starting the bicarb tonight as it arrived today so will see how we get on!
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