Welcome to the show!

Greetings!

Welcome to the blog by an Australian couple who want to breed, keep, train and grow horses in harmony with the Australian environment - and who want to share our successes and failures with anyone who is interested! We are Charles and Nadia, residents and owners of Pine Hill, a 93 acre property in beautiful north east Victoria, where we have a little Australian Stock Horse Stud of the same name, and live with our two kids.

This is pretty much what our place looked like when we moved in nearly three years ago. It is located entirely on a big hill with plenty of granite rock and two little watercourses, both of which only flow when it rains fairly heavily.

It looks nice and green but most of that green is flatweed (also known as false dandelion or cat's ear), which is a weed toxic to horses and causes neurological problems and liver damage. Not good for a horse stud!

There were only a couple of fences on the property, some in excellent condition, some not so much. There are three dams - we call them 'Top', 'Middle' and 'Bottom', somewhat unimaginatively, and of the three, Middle dam is the best for water quality and storage capacity, followed by Top dam and Bottom dam. We will come to Bottom dam later!

The previous owners had not done much to the property in the thiry-odd years they lived here, other than build the house. Even the shed and shearing shed pre-dated the house! The land was overgrazed by goats and cattle, and there was barely a tree on the place. There were two paddocks that looked pretty good and had been 'improved' at some stage (meaning some kind of fertiliser had been applied) and the neighbour had grazed his cattle on those paddocks at various times to help keep the grass down.

We came to this property from one about a quarter of the size on the outskirts of Canberra where we had tried a couple of the techniques and property planning approaches we will discuss in this blog, but the land is much drier in Canberra and far more unforgiving! The rainfall in this part of the world is almost a third more per annum (climate change notwithstanding) and the winters are far less harsh than the Canberra region. Summer here is hot - last summer we had nearly 4 weeks straight of 35+ Celcius without a break which was record-breaking, but that is to be the new normal, and this region is the last to be really negatively affected by climate change; one of the reasons we moved here.

We decided to breed Australian Stock Horses a few months after moving here, mainly because of the versatility of the breed, and the general athleticism and temperament of the horse. We acquired a two-year-old colt from Pipersrun Stock Horses up near Dubbo in 2017, and decided to keep our first born colt (2016 drop) entire after seeing how stunning and quiet he was an a yearling. These two, Pipersrun Captain Thunderbolt (Jack) and Pinehill Cool Constable (Chopper), became our foundations sires.

Jack as a 3 year-old

Jack as a 3 year-old

We also decided to keep our band of mares very small as we want to limit the number of horses the property supports and this gives us a buffer if we don't sell youngstock every year. We now have four mares - two thoroughbred and two Heritage ASH mares - and plan to have two in foal per year. This cycle of breeding every second year seems optimal, as it gives the mares time to replenish their body weight and calcium and other minerals before the next foal.

This blog is also a place where Nadia in particular (the horse person of the couple!) will talk about ethical horse management and training. Nadia has trained with the Australian Equine Behaviour Centre founders Dr Andrew and Mrs Manuela Mclean for her entire riding life (since the age of 8, we believe!) and has benefited enormously from their relentless pursuit of better and more ethical training approaches to horses. There is also a growing body of research looking at the best ways to house, manage, feed, train, breed and grow horses, and this will form part of this blog too. You'll be getting a warts and all blog as we talk about what has and hasn't worked, and all the lessons we've learned along the way!

Our overarching mission has been to rehabilitate our property, but also to find the best and most effective methods to farm our horses in harmony with the Australian environment. We have found a real lack of material out there talking about regrarian/sustainable/environmentally friendly farming for horse people. There's a lot about cows and sheep but nothing much about horses - who we all know are completely different in many ways. Behaviourally, nutritionally and emotionally, horses are just not like other livestock. We also use them and interact with them on a daily basis so just sticking them out in a paddock isn't going to work.

So, come along for the ride and join in on the comments below. Ask questions, share wisdom and give feedback as we go. We aim to post every week on a different topic, project or problem we're having. Stay tuned!