Return to the Winter Paddock

It’s seven months since April Fool’s Day and we’re almost at Bonfire Night. It seems no time at all since we moved the horses onto the summer paddocks. Now it’s back to the winter paddock, the 7 acre field we call the ‘hilly paddock’, until the spring. The horses do sense the change in the seasons and when we took off their head collars they galloped up the hill, stopped and had a good roll.

We like to rug our horses up and overwinter them outdoors. Otto has his shoes taken off and he is turned away until early spring. They get plenty of exercise grazing up and down the hilly paddock. There is natural shelter from the woods and a natural source of water from the Medwyn. The soil is sandy and usually free draining which means they’re usually not knee deep in mud all winter.

However, this summer has been a bit of a wash out and our fields are very wet with areas of standing water in the summer paddocks that have never had the chance to dry out. With a wet winter forecast, it’s hard to know how much more water the ground can take. So with the wet summer, little, late and erratic grass growth we’ll have to see how they get on this year.