One of the most important things with youngster is health care. So ever since we bred standardbred trotters I have had a certain system with foals to youngsters, this is the period you make the adult horse you will be working with maybe 20 years so better do it properly! So as a breeder ones responsibility is to give the horse a good start. Shortly what I do:
1. All summerfoals pasture is always a clean one - with that I mean that there has not been horses the year before, it is a renewed field. If you just have one pasture and cannot do this, clean the pasture as often as you can to minimize the pressure of parasites from other/adult horses
2. Give the foals enough and often enough medicine against worms, that is by Finnish recommendations every 2 months from the age of 2 months until they are yearlings and even after this more often than adults until they are 3-4 yrs. Specifik information you get from your vet. If they are full of parasites it takes really it tall on the growth and developmend, start at 2 months by 4 months they are already full of them...
3. Check your hay with analyzis so that you know what you give and can plan how much, only the best quality food for foals (and mares) to ensure they get good protein, add proteins if your hay is of poor quality. Give minerals.
4. Take care of the hoofs at least once a month, foals hoofs grow fast, quite often good to check them even more often, like every 3 week in the beginning. This also ensures a healhty growth of their whole leg and straighten the legs. Often just a few strokes with a rasp is enough but it counts.
5. Vaccinate from the age of 6 month, in Finland that is agains horse influensa and tetanus. Vaccinate every horse against tetanus, it is a painful disease for a horse and almost always leads to death! We vaccinate all ponies by the FEI rules.
6. Keep your eyes open! I have always tried to teach equine students that "it is not enough to look at the horse, you have to see". If you see that the horse doesn't look good, for example doesn't fell wintercoat in time, looks as it doesn't quite have muscles and roundness (NOT fat) but looks dry and muscleless, is too fat etc. -> do something! If it doesn't look right, something is wrong and there is always something you can do to better the situation! But don't overdo! Very often one hear for example that the wintercoat doesn't fall off Shetlands, then you have to think why: check teeth, wormning and minerals and give good quality hay/pasture and I'm sure the coat will fall before midsummer, seen it and tried to do something to it and always been successful. Especially something to notice with foals (for example after their first winter), they really should get rid of the coat easy by midsummer, if not, check worms and minerals! Healthy Shetlands start to loose their wintercoat in January gradually, first the longer coat leaving a shorter but still thicker coat for the spring until April-May. and by end of June it should be gone.
It is the same with Shetland ponies in winter, their coat should be shiny and fluffy, then you know the feeding is correct. Long, tacky and dry coat is not normal, check minerals and especially if it is a foal, worms.
7. When starting to work with bits with youngsters, always check their teeth! We have now long-reined our now 3 yr old colts and Dunedain has been a bit annoyed of the bit so one can already guess he had wolfteeth. So yesterday we drove to a Equine clinic and had the wolfteeth removed both from Dunedain and Thorin. Thorin had also three milkteeth loose which the vet removed also.
Thorin still happily unaware of medication to come at the Equine Clinic at Nikula trotting racetrack in Kaustinen :)
Dunedain mediacated to be calm in the operation which is done here already
Thorins teeth being fixed, he is also calmed done with medicines to make it safe for everyone, something vets always do when wolfteeth are taken
Now when we drive the first times with a carriage I'm sure at least that the bits and reins won't hurt them because of bad teeth and that makes it much more safe! And that may happen if there comes sudden moves when driving and you end up taking harder on the reins, then the youngster might be scared of the hurt in the mouth when the bit would hit the wolfteeth and run away and as you now got the carriage it can again lead to the youngster to be even more scared of the carriage also especially the first times. It is so unecessary to give bad experience of first drives if you haven't taken care of the mouth before. I would never drive a horse young or old the first times with a carriage before I knew the teeth are okey! Sadly quite often one hear that people don't care about Shetlands teeth and I've seen teeth with much problems because of that. I even know ponies with malformation in their proper teeth as milktooth had not fell off properly in time and no one had ever checked the mouth. So with 2-4 year old ponies have the vet to check the teeth 1-2 times a year to make sure everything is okey as they change their teeth in that same age as you start to work with them and at least once a year adult ponies. And of course everytime you see that the pony is not eating properly or for example start to spit clumps of hay, that often indicates to peaks/spikes in teeth just as well as that the pony constantly starts being/hanging on one rein.
So always do your part of the cooperation with the pony as good as you can and you will get a happily working pony in return :) That was the basics we do and it has always been the same when we buy a new pony, worming, teeth, vaccination and hoofs checked.
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