A view from the field

Hi guys, Pilgrim here!

We've had lots of guests here over the last month. Teddy tells me that all our guests come from all different parts of the country and they travel by coach, mini bus, car or some even come by train. Apparently they can’t just ride here on a horse, which I think would be the best way to travel!

I think we horses are all very lucky to live here at Calvert Trust Exmoor; we are looked after and loved by all the staff especially me as people can’t resist a quick hug every time they walk past. 

The fields are all getting nice and green with lots of yummy grass, and some of our furry friends are coming out a lot more to enjoy the grass and the sunshine.

Teddy tells me that even though the grass is lovely and green it’s not always good for us horses, as too much grass can cause us all sorts of problems. One of the main problems is a disease called Laminitis that affects our hooves. If we get it, we will get very hot hooves and it's very painful to walk.If we get it we have to live in the stables rather than going out in the field and have special treatment from the vet and farrier. However much we horses love grass we don’t want that!

Luckily here at Calvert Trust Exmoor our grass intake is monitored very closely and If we start eating too much grass we get put into a paddock with less grass. Last week we had a man turn up in a big tractor with a machine behind it driving around are fields, I asked Teddy what he was doing and he explained to me that he was topping the fields, which is where they cut down the docks.

This is good because we don’t like eating docks and if they stay they soon spread and takes over our fields. Because we usually have Sundays off this is when a lot of the jobs get done like field maintenance. I like to help with this as I think it’s very important that I supervise the staff to make sure that they are doing it correctly!

They start by walking around the field checking that all the fences are up and there are no broken fence posts, they also check the water troughs to make sure they are clean. The sunshine is very good at turning water green and slimy which us horses don’t like to drink. So they empty them and clean all the insides, we do drink a lot in this hot weather. Jack also likes to stick his head in the water and blow bubbles out of his noise. I personally don’t like to get my head this wet, but he seems to enjoy it! Jack also likes to do this in his stable making his bedding wet.

There are lots of poisonous plants that grow around the fields so the staff check for these as well.  Us horses don’t know which ones are bad for us as we will eat pretty much anything so we rely on the staff to remove the plants we are not allowed to eat. These are the main plants that are poisonous to us.