An unsoundness is any condition that interferes or is apt to interfere with the function and performance of the horse.  A blemish is unattractive but does not interfere with a horse's performance.  Often times unsoundnesses are cause by a conformation fault and tend to be a consistent problem throughout the horse's life.  Please look up pictures of these faults.  You will have a good chance of having to ID these from pictures.

Parrot Mouth (Unsoundness):  When a horse's top jaw is overshot.  It is inherited.  It can interfere with wearing bits comfortably and eating properly. 

Capped Elbow/Hock (Blemish):  A fluid filling or thickening of the skin at a given point (elbow or hock).  Usually due to bumping of the hocks or rubbing of the elbow while horse is laying down. 

Fistulous Withers (Unsoundness):  This is an inflammation of the withers.  It must be treated immediately.  It can be caused from ill fitting tack or trauma to the area.  It can get infected, and the swelling can errupt.  It can be straw colored to begin with in color, then it will turn white.

Poll Evil (Unsoundness):  When the poll becomes inflamed, infected, or swollen.  This is usually due to some form of trauma to the head.  The area will be tender, and you will not be able to work with the horse until it is treated and healed.

Sesmoiditis (unsoundness):  Inflammation of the two sesamoid bones at back of fetlock joint.  Often times happens when a horse has a sloping pastern, causing the ligaments and tendons to rub more across the bones.  Also more intensive sports such as racing, hunting and jumping can cause sesmoiditis.  Best treatment is rest.  If due to poor conformation, you may want to look into corrective shoeing to avoid it.

Cracked Hoof/Dry Hoof (Unsoundness):  Dry hooves are when the hoof starts to chip away.  This is due to exposed to dry conditions.  It can lead to cracked hoof, where a crack forms in the the hoof running from top to bottom.  Cracked hoof can also form from trauma to the area.  Dry hoof can be treated by putting oil on it.

Thursday Team Problem

1.  Your pregnant mare is about to give birth.  She was fed fescue during the third trimester.  Describe how this will affect her, and what steps you need to take to ensure a live foal. 

Hint:  If you need to be aware of when she will give birth, you may want to look for signs.  What are those signs?  Don't just give the bare minimum answer.  Really get the root of the issue.

2.  Your mare has gone into the 1st phase of labor.  Describe the 3 phases and what must happen in each.  What kinds of difficulties may occur, and what should you do to correct them?

Thursday Practice

We started off practice reviewing tack parts by looking at real saddles.  So if you just want to go back through and review the parts...you got this!

Hoof Structure

Please make sure you know the structure of the hoof.  You may have to identify the different parts.

What happened in practice today....

We took the review test.  Here is a copy.  The second link is the answers.  Try to take the test first, then look. 

Review Test 1
Test Key

So the few discussion points we reviewed from Friday's blog:

Energy Deficiencies:  Reduction in overall health and performance abilities.  You can also over feed both.  Overfeeding these can lead to excess fat.  It is wasteful.  Horses can develop stress from too much energy and protein. 

Protein deficiencies in young horses can hurt the growth pattern.  Protein is vital for for sustaining growth.  They can become incredibly unhealthy if they lack enough protein during this stage.  Mature horses do not need as much.  You see more problems with hair and hoof and tissues....all things that continue to grow even after the body is mature. 

Saddle parts:

English Saddle
Western Saddle

Print off or draw a copy of the above saddles.  Some parts will be on both....some won't.  Grab some crayons and Color the parts of the saddle according to what I call out below.

Red:  The Seat (both)
Green:  Cantle (Both)
Purple: Horn
Pink:  Panel
Brown:  Pommel (both)
Black: Stirrup (Both)
Blue: Knee Roll
Orange: Skirt
Light Blue:  Gullet
yellow:  Cinch Strap
Gray:  Stirrup leather
Light green:  Flap
Light purple: Twist
Red polka dots:  Fender
Tan:  Stirrup Keeper
Green Stripes:  Latigo and Latigo holder
Purple stars:  Flank Billet

Check your answers here with Western Saddle and English Saddle

I cannot figure out at this time how to post my horse color review, since it is a powerpoint.  Just read through the website from the last post again.

We did a run through of some health problems.  Each person researched two topics and shared their findings.

Alice talked about colic:  It's an abdominal pain caused by intestinal parasites, twisted intestines.  Must be treated quickly. Founder (Laminitis) caused by too much carb intake causes bacterial imbalance.  Must be treated immediately.  Treat by coating intestinal tract with mineral oil.  There comes a point when it is no longer treatable.

Ricky: Thrush is a bacterial infection in the frog of the foot.  Symptoms include black smelly material and degradation of bar.  Caused by infected soil and poor hoof health care.  Topical antibiotic.  Equine infectious Anemia is a virus.  High Temperature, depression, stiffness/weakness, anemia, jaundice, loss of condition and weight with good appetite.  Result is death.  No treatment.  Prevention is Coggins Testing.

Sammy:  Heaves is horse asthma.  There is no real cure but you can cope with it by using non dusty feed and trying to stay away from dusty environments.  Tetanus is deadly is in most cases.  Muscles stiffen. Treat by antibiotics and antitoxins.  Horses must be protected by light and sound because it causes nervousness.  Caused by clostridium tetani found in soil and feces.  Gets into cuts. 

We kinda started feeds and feeding.  Go ahead and scroll down to the powerpoints and look through the information about the different feeds and what they offer. 

Feeds and Feeding Lesson Plan

Grab Bag Mania

So here's my plan for tomorrow, so that you all come prepared to practice.

1. We will take a 25 question test reviewing everything we have talked about between Thursday and the Blog.
2. I will go over the blog to make sure there are no questions.
3. We will do a little saddle part ID activity.
4. We will do a quick color review.
5. We will talk about feed and feeding horses.
6. You all will do a quick presentation of an assigned health problem.

Today on the blog I will give you some random questions to look up. As I look through tests I see random questions here and there. Because the topic is so random and brief, I don't want to do a whole lesson about it. So instead you can look it up. I will post the answers tomorrow. I will also post a copy of the test on here tomorrow as well as everything else we do.

1. What Phylum to horses belong to?
2. How many pairs of chromosomes do horses have? Ponies?
3. What is a female donkey?
4. What is a cross between a jennet and a stallion?
5. Which side do you always mount a horse on?
6. When is a horse in the prime of its life?

Also find this information. When you are checking a horse's general health you must perform a TPR. This is vet shorthand for total physical response. In this you must find the horse's heartrate, breath rate, and temperature. Can you find out what the average TPR of a healthy horse is for each of those measurements?

Hope your break is starting off awesome!

Horse Nutrition...

As a review from yesterday I challenge you to make flashcards for the following terms. See how many you can do without looking them up.


foal, stallion, stud, mare, dam, sire, pony, hand, gelding


Read through this site on horse colors. I will quiz you on it on Tuesday. There are more colors than we discussed since Sammy was falling asleep.


http://www.equusite.com/articles/basics/basicsColors.shtml


Since I am sick and quite possibly dying (yes...I'm being melodramatic), I thought I'd post what were going to talk about today on here. I'm going to try to add stuff regularly thoughout the next couple weeks, so that you can get more than just what we are learning in our meetings. Please try to follow me on here, because this information will be invaluable to the contest.


So today's topic is going to be Horse Nutrition!!!! YAY FOOD! Which will lead into horse feeds and feeding and all that good stuff so your horse doesn't die, and you don't get arrested for animal abuse.


To really understand horse nutrition you should first understand the digestive system.


Please read through this quick bulletin from the Ohio Extension:


http://ohioline.osu.edu/b762/b762_5.html


One point I really want you to take away is the horse has a unique cecum for a non-ruminant or monogastric. Cows eat grass effectively, because they have the super awesome stomach of a ruminant. Well, horses are monogastric, but they also eat grass. Why can't we eat grass too? Well we can, but it tastes disgusting...seriously try it. Horses have an enlarged cecum. We do not. Sometimes they are referred to as pseudoruminants for this exact reason. The cecum (as you read) acts similarly to a ruminant's multi compartment stomach. That's pretty neat!



Quiz time:


What does it mean when we say horses are herbivores?


How many teeth do horses have (male vs. female)?


What two things help break down food in the stomach?


If a feed change occurs how long does it take for the microbes in the cecum to change to be able to properly digest the new feed?


Answers:


Eats forages instead of meat.


Females= 36 teeth
Males=40 teeth


Pepsin & Hydrochloric Acid


appx 3 weeks


The main feed ingrediates that horses need are going to be carbohydrates, fats, protein, minerals, vitamins and water. Carbohydrates, fats, and proteins are what is necessary for a horse to generate energy. Carbs are the main energy source. No Atkins Diet for horses. Horses will gain these from grains and roughages. This includes pasture grasses.


Nutrients are neceesary to maintain body weight and support digstive/metabolic functions. Additional nutrients will be required for growth, work, reproduction and lactation. That is why feed will change based on what the horse is used for. A pregnant mare will receive different nutrients than a horse that does cross country jumping.


Most horses receive their feed in two different parts. They get roughage (hay or pasture) and concentrates (grains and supplements).


Answer the following question to the best of your ability based off of what you already know. We will discuss on Tuesday. What can nutritional deficiencies lead to?


Side note: After 3 years horses become lactose intolerant. If you give a mature horse milk it will get diarrhea.


Fat is often used to increase performance and maintain body condition. It should be included in a performance horse diet. We do not know the ideal amount yet, so trainers often have to play around with the amount to add on a daily basis.


Look up and define the following terms thare used to measure energy: Digestible energy, metabolizable energy, net energy and total digestible nutrients.


Proteins are amino acids. Research has shown that proteins high in lysine (an amino acid) achieved the greatest growth. Mature horses do not need as much protein as young horses, because their growth process has slowed. Feed indicates protein as crude protein. This does not acurately portray what is being taken in by the horse, and digestible protein must be estimated.


What do you think the effects of protein deficiencies are in young horses? Mature horses?


Minerals are important to energy transfer as well as various functions of the body. They are categorized as macrominerals (necessary in large amounts) and microminerals (necessary in small amounts). Just because you need less does not make it any less important.


Macronutrients (probably will see a question about this): Calcium (Ca), Phosphorous (P), Potassium (K), Sodium (Na), Chloride (Cl), Magnesium (Mg), and Sulfer (S).


Microminerals: Copper (Cu), Iodine (I), Iron (Fe), Selenium (Se), Cobalt (Co), Manganese (Mn), Fluoride (F), Zinc (Zn).


Check out what they do here http://www.pet-health-advisor.com/horsenutritionminerals.html


Here's a good straight forward article about vitamins for horses.


http://www.ehow.com/info_7823824_vitamins-horse.html


Water!!! You should definitely know this little tid bit. Horses need about 10-12 gallons of water daily. Hard work and hot weather require more. Impaction happens when horses don't get enough. If you rode your horse you should cool them down or only give small amounts of water before drinking their fill. Also watch out for dehydration.

Judging Hunter Under Saddle

We have discussed on multiple times how to judge a Hunter Under Saddle class in our practices. Take a moment and write down 5 things you want to look for in a Hunter Under Saddle class.

Once you've done that view the youtube videos below and place the class accordingly. For those of you who missed practice, this is one of the classes we placed today.

Horse 1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30i91IUW7B0

Horse 2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zm3UlaamHm4

Horse 3:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evmn4Xxscfk

Horse 4:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VZHWHgUb60

Leg Conformation

It's is so easy to identify leg faults and ideal leg structure when it is in a perfectly drawn picture with a horse standing squared. However, when you enter that ring to judge real horses it gets a bit confusing. So today we are going to look at some real pictures of horse legs and identify what is going on down there. I have included the ideal pictures to help but try to do as much on your own. I will post the answers in the comments section.





Here we go....

1. What is happening in this horse's front legs???



2. The following two pictures are often mistaken for the same thing. These are two distinctly different confirmation faults. What are they, and how do they differ?




3.What two things are happening here?



4. What would this horse be marked down for?



Sorry guys...we'll touch back on legs later, but I am running out of time in my planning period. So as your final challenge you must determine which of the following horses has the most ideal legs!

How to Judge Arabians In Hand

So you are going to be judging an Arabian In Hand Class. What are you going to be looking for?

The first thing you look at in Arabians is always going to be their type. What is an Arabian type? Write down the first thing that comes to mind in Arabian type before scrolling down.



The Arabian type should be very refined all around. They have a broad forehead with wideset eyes that tapers to a small refine muzzle with flaring nostrils. They distinctly have a dish in their forhead. They have small refined bodies with a very short back. They have an arching neck and a high set tail.



So after we establish type we look at balance, structure and muscle. These are lean, refined horses. We are not looking to the muscle structure of a quarter horse.

Look at the two pictures below and tell me which one is more of an Arabian type and why? Feel free to leave in the comments section.




Now judge a arabian in hand class below.

Quarter Horse Class of 3

You will be judging this class of three quarter horses. Please design reasons for this class. Remember that quarter horses focus on type and muscling...MUSCLING!!!!

Post your placings and your reasons before reading mine.