How To Keep A Healthy, Happy Horse

Strong and powerful as horses may be, they need their owners' love and care to stay healthy and happy. Every horse owner should know how to care for his horse and provide everything it needs. This would include ensuring a clean and spacious stable, enough space for grazing and roaming around, and proper nutrition and medication among others.

Here are some basic tips on how to care for your horse:

1. Give your horse a clean and spacious home - a horse needs a safe and secure pasture where he can roam freely and graze on fresh grass or good quality hay. He also should have enough supply of fresh clean drinking water, as well as salt and minerals.

In places where the weather tends to be really hot or cold, there should be provisions for temperature control to keep the horse comfortable. He should have a dry and clean resting place where he can lie down to sleep.

2. Schedule regular health monitoring and vet check-ups - a health checklist should be part of the horses daily routine. You should check for signs of possible illness so you can provide the necessary preventive care, or call a vet for treatment and medication.

You need to know how to take your horses vital signs and recognize common horse diseases like colic, worms, and hoof diseases. Have a horse first aid kit around. You can ask your vet for a list of items to put in your kit.

3. Feed your horse right - the natural choice would be to feed your horse with grass. Grass, however, might not be available all the time. In such cases, you need to rely on hay and other feeds. A note of caution about hay: be careful not to feed your horse with moldy hay. This could give him a respiratory illness.

Likewise, there are plants that could prove to be bad for your horses health too. Finding out what these are will help you ensure that there are no harmful plants growing in your horse's pasture. You can boost your horse's nutritional intake with supplements too.

4. Let your horse "socialize" - just like many other living creatures, horses need companionship too. This will come from you and other people who visit the stable regularly. Your horse also needs to "socialize" with other animals, like another horse or perhaps a goat or even a dog.

5. Learn to groom your horse - your horse can get sick and acquire diseases if he's not properly groomed. Proper hoof care, for instance, will allow you to check for common hoof ailments like thrush. If you cannot do the task yourself, you have to hire someone to do it regularly.

Its a big responsibility to own a horse, but it also gives you great rewards in more ways than one. You'll be a happier and healthier horse owner when your horse is happy and healthy too.