Autumn is definitely just around the corner (actually here, although I refuse to acknowledge it). It’s actually my favourite season but one that I find the hardest to manage in terms of the horses diet and weights.
The grass is short and sugary from all the rain, sunshine and heat and they move onto new winter paddocks in October, with lush untouched grass. Their training reduces in intensity so they don’t need as much hard feed either. I usually feed more hard feed over the Spring/Summer months due to the training load and more fibre/forage over the Autumn winter. I use Feed XL to make sure they’re having a balanced diet so around now I start the slow reduction of mix or cubes, icrease the fibre beet & sugar beet alongside switching to a lo-cal balancer, that essentially just has less protein than my usual balancer. I love the full feed bin feeling and the prepping for winter.
Roo in his rehab and 6 weeks of walking has put on a bit of weight, on literally the bare minimum to hit his daily requirements. So I’m hoping that he continues to improve and we can get a bit more work in as we switch to the winter fields. I’m finding it a little harder to motivate myself with rehab at the end of a season. A bit of me wants to just wait until next year and let him sit in a field over autumn and some of winter, but it needs to be done and once he gets to a certain fitness level I will give him, and me, some time off over winter.
I look forward to the year where all the horses have a good season, a scheduled autumn break and come into work at the end of December…..haha! I can dream! I always found having 10 weeks off proper training so good for my future motivation, Tissy would have October, November and a couple of weeks in December off. I would still go on the odd hack here or there but not riding very much always gave me the bug and drive back for the season ahead.
The last few years I’ve been in a perpetual cycle of train, rehab, train, rehab and it would be nice to schedule the rest and plan when I want to put the work in but that’s horses for you! Tissy was a unicorn who only missed one Plan A season her entire life!
Beth Endurance 