Pasture boarding

["mike and laurie hilyard" <PFmorabs@toast.net>]

Hi Karla -

If the best thing for the inside of a human is the outside of a horse (I'm paraphrasing - Winston Churchill, I think), the best thing for the inside of a horse is the outside of a barn.  Horses were born to eat grass - you shouldn't have a colic or founder problem unless you move him during the peak growing season (in Michigan, May and early June).  If he's a stall weaver, he's unlikely to stand still long enough to get in trouble anyway.  My gelding was raced as a youngster, and when I went to pick him up, he was weaving in the stall.  Now he's on 3 acres with a run in barn, and since he can take off whenever he feels like it, I've never seen him weave at home.  There are grazing muzzles, too, which only allow a small amount of grass in at a time.  I've seen them in the Stateline catalog.  Susan Garlinghouse will have to tackle the supplement question, but since fresh grass is what they were designed to eat, most horses don't need much more, unless there is a deficiency of some obscure mineral in your area.  (Selenium, where I live; my horses get 1/2 tsp a day of the feed additive from the local elevator.  Costs me less than a buck a pound.  I also give VitaPlus, because I'm not sure of the vitamin content of my hay.  Cost me considerably more than a buck a pound!)  When I lived in Texas and boarded my horses, I did a lot of looking to find pasture board, but thought it was much better than stalls.  Good luck!