Small Acreage Horse Keeping

It's been a while since I posted about my 'Paddock Paradise'. The system is working really well , especially in view of our very dry Winter here in SE Queensland. Last year my paddocks looked pretty sad during Winter, short grass that just disintegrated when you walked over it.

This year... I have loads of grass with good length which is providing a near solid ground cover. It is somewhat brownish, but it is holding up without much discintegation. The yards are still looking good as well. The grass is short in there, but it is there holding the soil together and preventing erosion. I am thinking though to make the yards a bit bigger, increasing the size from 8mx8m to 8mx12m to allow me to have horses in there all day if needed, plus I want to put an area in there specific for feeding, using concrete pavers to create a 'clean' feeding area. My guys seem to delight in eating off the ground, regularly emptying their feed bins onto the grass. I tried to stop it by using fixed bins, but though it stops them tipping the bins the feed still finds it's way onto the ground.

I am now also thinking of building another set of yards which I eventually want to cover and enclose turning them into large stables, to which I want to attach day yards.

It's still all in the 'thinking about' stage... so watch this space.

I will go out tomorrow and take some photos of the track as it is now.

Cheers

Well, my paddock paradise is pretty much finished and the horseswill be introduced into it tomorrow morning. They are still at theneighbour?s paddcok and I am looking forward to see how they react tothe new layout of their paddock.

Here is  a slideshow of the track and the layout of the paddock.

It will be interesting to see how it will evolve. I still have toput in some feed stations for salt/mineral licks, maybe one for kelpand decide where I will finally put the automatic waterer which isgravity fed from the rainewater tank, the gray one in the pictures.

I am looking forward to your comments.

I got my book a few days ago and started reading immediately andwow. I am loaded with ideas and have been working on my paddockparadise for past two days and I am now waiting for some tread-in poststo finish off my track.

I am quite stunned at how much track I can have on just 1.75 acres,which also has a 20m x 40m arena, a  13.5m (44?) round yard and 3 yardsof 8m x 8m. A rough measure of the track had me smiling broadly as itis roughly 300m long and if I do add the driveway and walk ways to itsurrounding in the house yard I get another 300m which is covered inroad base and will do a wonderful job of giving my horses a trim. Iwill have to take photos soon and put them to this post.

The ground at my place is rather varied naturally, sandy, gravellyand somewhat rocky areas. I do have a dam we dug last year and thehorses love to go have a play in. The grass around my place is mainlynative, though I have oversown some low oxalate tropical grasses. Thiswill be an occasional diversion from the track for them to have a treat.

Well? once I have my extra posts and have finished the track ? itwill be interesting to see how the horses react. I will put my plan topaper and post it on here as well; at the moment it?s all still in myhead, so stay tuned.

Cheers

One of my biggest problems is that I really don?t have enough room to house 3 horses with about 1.75 acresof space for them on our 2.5 acre block. When I enquired at council inregards to the regulations about having horses on your semi rural (akaperi-urban) block I was told that having 1 horse per acre isacceptable. Now that is one acre of pasture, not meaning a one acreblock. So you can see, I actually have a bit of a dilemma? 3 horses oneffectively 1.75 acres of pasture. Ooops? I am severly overstocked here.

I am very lucky to have incredible neighbours who allow me to havethe horse eat down their grass, and if I add up all those acres aswell, I have about 20 acres at my disposal? how is that? Soundsfantastic right? I appreciate that I can put the horses around theneighbourhood, but I really want to have them close at home.

I?ve heard of Jaime Jackson?s book ?Paddock Paradise? quite a whileago, and it had me intrigued, though I ordered the book only a coupleof days ago. I wasn?t sure if it is really what I wanted so I did a lotof research and I am converted. I am going to create a Paddock Paradisefor my horses, as it doesn?t matter how big or small your property is,you can create a paddock paradise.

While I am waiting for my new book to read, I have been doing someresearch on the net and here are some links that you might like to havea look with me:

Paddock Paradise

Paddock Paradise Wiki

Paddock Paradise in Wales, UK

I am pretty inspired and am going to draw a plan of the property soI can have an idea how I will lay out my track, where to put feedingstations and where to have watering points. What types of surfaces Iwill install etc.  It will be quite some work but well worth it if Ican keep my horses at home permanently.