NATURAL HORSE - Natural Horsemanship Equipment and Equine Relationship Training
TRACKED GRAZINGshowing horses moving on track Tracked grazing is a revolutionary new way of grazing for domestic horses. The method involves horses living outdoors 24/7, on the inner edge of a paddock, which has often been turned into a homemade track by the owner, as can be seen on the photos and diagrams on this page. However there are man variations of this approach so if this is of interest to you there a wide array of ways to implement Tracks. This style of grazing has been around for about 15 years so far and was initially developed to assist with creating a balance between a horse’s grass intake and their 24/7 turnout. Tracked Gazing is being increasingly embraced as a useful tool in order to provide freedom and extra exercise for many horses, who would have previously been locked away in stables and yards and not enjoying their lives to the full due to confinement. Tracking has been found to work so well due to being able to limit a horse’s grass intake in order to combat a wide variety of diseases and ailments often witnessed by owners when their horses have been grazing fulltime on traditional pastures. This is because a lot of grasses are unsuitable for horses due to excessive non-structured carbohydrate (NSC) levels. The added benefits of Tracking, due to a lower intake of NSC’s, has shown to also improve temperament and behaviours seen in so many horses who have previously experienced negative behavioural elevations, that some owners have previously been unable to achieve with their horses when grazing in the old-fashioned way of horses being on 24/7 full time pasture. Some of our herd on our track
Why does this work .... Horses naturally follow trails and tracks in the wild, as that is how they map their home-ranges. So we can implement this natural behaviour for them by setting up an easy and cheap tracked grazing system from anything as small as an 1/2 acre upwards as shown in the diagram above. This encourages your horse to move their feet to eat, which is great for general health plus improves circulation ...along with having the added bonus of developing excellent barefoot hooves too. And it's this natural movement that allows for 24/7 turnout-even for those with grass restrictions like miniatures or horses prone to founder/laminitis. As I am such a skeptic, of course I had to test this out fully to see if it worked before using this method. So I used a digital pedometer attached to my herds halters and monitored this over a week with them on a track and then a week on a free paddock, and guess what-yes it definitely made a difference, and to my pleasant surprise my horses walked on average 5000 more steps per day when on a track compared to a traditional paddock of the same size of area. All this adds upto a lot more mileage over 365 days per year. Plus I could restrict their green grass intake without being cruel and locking them up, which made me (and them) feel better, especially those in danger of developing laminitis/founder etc...
Tracked grazing is so easy to set up as shown above temporary of permanent like shown here
That was 13 years ago and I have never looked back. Plus I have since gone on to become more imaginative with my track, and added gravel, and river stones, crushed lime etc....and placed the water troughs in strategic locations as to encourage even more movement of my herd....putting herbs in pots and hay in our slow-feed hay nets in various locations as to encourage the herd forage for their food as to create more movement..... You can Google for more info on this and we recommend the following for in depth info Paddock Paradise Book by Jaime Jackson

































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