Posted: 9th April 2024 | Back to news feed
Happy horses contributing to the future of the equine industry
Robyn Cherry Equestrian Director at Bishop Burton College
Students are our priority in an educational environment and we ensure they leave equipped with the skills, knowledge and understanding to become successful equine professionals. The horses they work with as they learn therefore need to be kept in the best possible way. In fact, the welfare and happiness of the horses is of paramount importance. If we don’t have content, well cared for and loved horses - they can’t do their jobs to ensure that our students get the very best out of their experience with us.
Social licensing – the term given to society’s acceptance of equestrian sport - has opened up the equine industry to real scrutiny, which in the context of openness and transparency is a real positive for institutions delivering equestrian qualifications and programmes like Bishop Burton College. Social licensing is shining a light on horse welfare and demonstrating that colleges like Bishop Burton are far from treating their animals like machines. There is a perception within the equine sector that colleges don’t take great care of their horses; that they live insideall the time, are never turned out, stand for long periods, are ridden in circles all day and treated as numbers not individuals. This is an incorrect assumption and our practices at Bishop Burton are the complete opposite.
Welfare at the heart of college life for our horses
Ensuring our horses feel safe and secure starts from the moment they join us. Our horses come to us with varying backgrounds from a range of different homes; so, when a horse joins us, we take time to integrate them into the college lifestyle, which for many may be a completely new environment. We, therefore, take great care to ensure that they become acclimatised and comfortable with their new surroundings.
Colorado, who came to us from the RSPCA with a background of driving work, is a perfect example of this principle at work. We spent time with her to ensure she was comfortable with groundwork, lunging and long reining; and from a riding perspective she needed to become acclimatised to the hustle and bustle of spending time with the students.
Space to work, rest and play
The other key element for our horses is striking the right balance between work, rest and most importantly play! For all the horses their stable is their relaxation space – where they can have peace and quiet and alone time. We are very particular about their stables - with all the horses enjoying lovely deep beds to allow for fully recumbent REM sleep. They also all eat their forage from the floor, with unrestricted access wherever possible.
When they are working in the context of students getting to grips with things like bandaging, clipping, braiding and grooming or seeing the farrier, they relocate to our Equine Practical Unit. This is a fantastically useful and flexible space that is safe for the horses and under cover, out of the weather. Alongside their interactions with students, the horses are hacked out regularly by staff. So, they get to enjoy a gallop on our hacking track, strengthening up in straight lines and build up their muscles on the hills across our gorgeous parkland; all of which helps with their mental health.
Finally, allowing horses to be horses is vitally important in my mind. Our horses are out a lot – every day without fail. They need time away from their boxes, just being horses. Scratching each other, galloping around, being silly, having a roll, getting filthy. That’s part of being a horse – they need to have fun.
Top facilities ensuring healthy horses – and riders
The horses also benefit hugely from the incredible facilities we have on campus including our equine spa, solarium and water treadmill. Access to this fantastic equipment means we can potentially keep them fit and healthy a lot longer. They are all quite spoilt getting plenty of time in the spa or on the treadmill and in winter they get to stand under the solarium. Chunky, one of our more mature horses and renowned Bishop Burton favourite absolutely loves the solarium!
Horse welfare doesn’t start and end with the horse. The impact of our fitness as riders on our horses can’t be underestimated. I am a bit crooked – I’m a horse person, we’ve all been trodden on, fallen off and sustained injuries – and I really notice when I’ve not been keeping up with the gym, with physio and with massage, because my horses start to go crooked themselves. I start to impact them; I see muscle wastage on one side. So, it’s important we look after our riders to take care of our horses. If we’re fostering the next generation of riders and great equestrians for the industry it’s important, they know they need to take care of their bodies. To support students with this, in addition to our 40-piece commercial gym, we also have an equine-specific rider fitness and performance suite. Students here have access to interval training and Horatio and Bertie our amazing mechanical horses for equine-specific exercise.
Expert staff
Our staff have lessons every Wednesday, so they’re riding the horses and can experience what the students are feeling and help bring the horses on. They also ride college horses alongside students in sessions. This demonstrates for students how our horses can work when a real expert is on board and enables staff to keep up to date with what our students are doing in sessions.
I love that our students can see staff riding. When I was learning and first starting out on my journey with horses, I would have loved to have seen the people I respected riding without them knowing I was watching. It’s brilliant because it demonstrates all our staff are experts at what they do, and they’ve all got very different specialisms.
Regardless of whether horses are used for leisure, sport or breeding purposes, accountability for their welfare rests firmly on the shoulders of those who ride, own, train, breed and take care of them. As a college equine team, we have a duty to ensure that our students understand just how important horse wellbeing is and the responsibilities involved. Introducing them to and familiarising them with the holistic approach we take to ensuring our horses are happy, instils in them the best practice they will take forward in the future. It’s a privilege to be involved in helping to foster, develop and nurture the next generation of the equestrian workforce, confident that horses will continue to be well cared for in their capable hands.
To discover more about Bishop Burton College and their equine courses please visit https://www.bishopburton.ac.uk/college/study/subjects/equine
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