You Think You Know Horses But!

One thing I have learned quite quickly living in Egypt is that I took a lot of things for granted back home!

I have had horses all my life and have worked in some amazing places and have never had to worry about feed or medical care as it was always to hand.

Since buying the horses in Egypt 5yrs ago I began to realize very quickly that I was going to have to learn from the ground up as nothing seems to work the same!!

My first issue was with the feed back home we had access to things like course mix (pre-mixed feed) beet pulp (shredded sugar beet) and hay, but here you can’t find most of it and the hay is so expensive that you just can’t afford it! So this is when you have to go back to the drawing board firstly seeing what you can get and then trying to make a good nutritional feed from what you have. Now on the face of it, this may sound simple!

Trust me it’s not!!

I‘m still learning and modifying the feeds on a monthly basis and trying to keep weight on these horses without over feeding and keeping it balanced has been a real challenge.

We decided a long time ago that rescue horses where what we wanted to be able to give these poor animals a fresh start and to know a loving hand before they head for the rainbow bridge but with that comes a whole new set of challenges as these horses are already under weight with health issues as well as trust issues and it is amazing how long the road to recovery can take in some circumstance these poor animals never recover fully but being able to rest and live a quite life is all the therapy they need.

Now I’m not saying Egyptians are bad people that treat their animals poorly not at all what I am saying is there is a lack of education and understanding that leads to these poor animals ending up in the state there in so for us trying to lead by example is the best way forward and if we can save one animal at a time or educate the youth coming up we are already making a difference.

For now though we have 6 amazing horses that even after 40yrs of horsemanship I am still learning from growing my knowledge and understanding of this amazing breed of horse.