This message is from: "Beaver Dam Farm" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Hello from Carol Naveta Rivoire at Beaver Dam Farm in Nova Scotia -- A long time ago, 20+ years, when we were getting going with Fjordhorses, I kind of bragged to Bob van Bon, Chief Inspector of Fjords for Holland, that we'd never had a serious injury or illness. -- He said to me . . . . "That's because you don't have many horses yet." -- What he was saying, of course, is that if you have enough horses, even if they're given the best of care, things do happen. -- Or, as Murphy's Law has it . . . "If anything can go wrong it will" and I've always thought this "Law" applied even more so with horses. And believing strongly in Murphy's Law as we do at Beaver Dam Farm, we do everything in our power to keep our horses healthy and safe. -- This involves a huge amount of effort and an extremely conservative attitude. -- Some may think our way of doing things is overly fussy, overly conservative. Maybe so, but the result in 27 years of raising, training, and selling Fjords is that we've only had two major problems. -- One was with BDF Malcolm Locke when he broke a hind leg at 2 weeks old. We think one of the other broodmares in the broodmare band stepped on Malcolm while he was stretched out sleeping. That's just a theory. It could have happened some other way. -- That year we had five or six foals. I can't remember off the top of my head. -- Malcolm was a late foal, and it was August and the flies were bad. The mares were forever stamping to get rid of them. -- We think one of them, his dam maybe, stamped and broke his leg. -- And we think it happened in the run-in shed where the mares and foals gather to escape the flies. -- -- So now, under the same conditions, we don't keep so many mares and foals together thinking this tactic will lesson the chance of a repeat. Malcolm's broken leg was set, and after two marathon surgeries he did OK. -- We kept him a stallion, and sold him to a breeding home where he proceeded to sire some of the most beautiful Fjords in America. -- Malcolm is now at another breeding farm in CA. The other serious incident we had was the imported yearling filly with the abscess that got into her spine. She had to be put down. I talked about this a week or so ago. As to colic in winter, our thoughts are that we must get as much water in the horses as we possibly can. -- To do this we have heaters in alll the outside tanks. -- We feed huge amounts of soaked (really soaked until soupy) beetpulp, and we put a lot of salt into each bucket. The salt makes them thirsty and the tepid water invites them to drink. We monitor the tanks and buckets very carefully to be 100% sure they're drinking a lot. We think the soupy,. salty beetpulp is the best insurance we can have against impaction colic. -- The horses need wet stuff in the winter because all they're eating is dry hay. -- They need lots and lots of water, and some of them will not drink enough water unless "forced" to by salt induced thirst. In 27 years with Fjords we have never had a colic surgery. We've had a few colics, but never (knock on wood) one serious enough for surgery. Actually, it seems to me that we've had fewer winter colic incidents than in the summer, and this tells me that our soupy & salty beetpulp works. We heartily recommend this wintertime tactic to keep horses from colicing. You will be amazed how much water the beetpulp can absorb, and once it's absorbed, go ahead and add more water. Kind Regards, Carol Naveta Rivoire Beaver Dam Farm Fjords II, Ltd. Phone: 902-386-2304 Fax: 902-386-2149 URL: www.beaverdamfarm.com E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Raised by the Sea in Health and Tranquility" The FjordHorse List archives can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw
