How making small changes could benefit your horse, the environment and your bank balance
Making small changes to the way equestrian land and property are managed could benefit the environment, horse welfare – and owners’ bank balances.
This is the message emerging across the industry as riders who keep horses on livery as well as those who have their own facilities are urged to consider more sustainable practices.
Ruth Griffin of sustainability consultants White Griffin, which works extensively in the horse world, told H&H she thinks the word “sustainability” has been “lost in translation over years of people politicising it, or activists making it unsavoury, or scientists making it confusing”.
“I’m super-passionate about this: it is not confusing,” she said. “This is just, how do we change the way we do things so we can keep doing them? That’s really all it is. And the great news is for horse owners – with one exception, transportation – we have all the solutions.
“We just need to do them. We just need to tool ourselves up and educate ourselves a bit and then we can do it, we can be resilient, we can save money, we can protect horse welfare and ultimately protect the environment, because it’s all there. We’ve just got to do it.”
One of those helping people take action is Sian Constantine of Hoof & Habitat, which educates on sustainable keeping of horses.
“What I’m trying to do is improve horse welfare while improving the environment,” Ms Constantine told H&H. “They’re highly synergistic; horses evolved to graze in diverse ecosystems and when stocking density and management are appropriate, both horses and land benefit. From a welfare perspective, this creates a more species-appropriate environment, viewed through the five domains model, and it improves forage quality and nutritional diversity by bringing pasture nearer what horses would naturally forage from.”
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Ms Constantine explained that greater plant diversity benefits horses and the land.
A mix of species improves soil structure and ground cover, reducing bare patches and often increasing nutritional value. Having different root depths helps stabilise and protect the soil, so grazing is more resilient to extreme weather. Increased plant diversity supports greater diversity of soil organisms, improving water storage and nutrient cycling, which supports healthier pasture.
“Healthier soil is better able to cope with heavy rain and drought, while protecting forage quality,” she said. “And it benefits the wider environment, as biologically active soils can store more water and more carbon.
“Over time, improved soil and pasture health can reduce reliance on inputs such as herbicides, pesticides, repeated overseeding, mechanical aeration and remedial groundworks, potentially saving time and money.”
Ecological consultant Laura Hobbs founded Switch Equine to support horse welfare-based land regeneration.
“I’ve been working with a lot of farmers to maximise the value of their land and its economic value, but make something that’s actually useful for them as well,” she told H&H. “We can still produce food, still meet the fundamental aims of what they want that land for, but also deliver multiple benefits.
“I’ve always had horses as well, and I got a bit frustrated, having my own horse on a livery yard and seeing it wasn’t meeting what we could be doing from an environmental point of view, and not serving his needs either, so we bought a smallholding, to show you can do things differently.
“I’ve got a background in evolution, behavioral biology and done a lot of training, such as Sue Dyson’s pain recognition research and in nutrition, so I’m trying to bring that all together to show we can manage our horses in a better way that improves the environment and is fundamental to improving our horses’ lives as well.”
Money is tight but Ms Hobbs stressed that sustainability can help here too.
“It’ll save you money,” she said. “When we manage in a better way, we create land that will be resilient.
“A lot of people are really struggling with the cost of hay, not having any hay. But our neighbours say our grass is looking really good. That’s because we’ve changed management so we can have better quality, more productive land, and it’s more resilient to that drought. That means we can have higher hay yields, more forage; we can feed our horses from our own land.”
Ms Hobbs said soil is a living organism, which has to be nurtured.
“Studies have shown that on average, for every 1% increase in soil organic matter, in soil biological activity, we can store an additional 20,000 gallons of water per acre,” she said.
“That’s a massive number. That means water’s stored in the soil, so we can be more resilient to flooding and drought. And it affects communities too; if we change our management, we could save the village down the road from being flooded every winter.”
She said the key in keeping land resilient is not overgrazing it, which is not about space or numbers but about giving it time to recover. If horses return to bite off the same tuft of grass before it has regrown, the plant will use all nutrients for growth, leading to shallower roots, a negative impact on the soil and a “downward spiral” overall.
Ms Hobbs has four horses on five acres. She separates this into smaller areas and moves the horses frequently, so each part has time to fully recover.
“Getting started is the hard part,” she said. “But once you get started and into this sort of system, you get that upward spiral; land starts recovering so much quicker, so you can get back on and graze it sooner. If you’re constrained on land, have a sacrificial area, a track system or yard to put horses on, so we can rest that land when we need to, we can be a bit more adaptive and flexible.
“Just splitting the field and letting it have longer to recover will go a long way.”
Changing mindsets
Ms Hobbs knows it is harder for livery clients, but said she believes many yard owners are starting to change their thinking, and that the first step is to have the conversation, with which Ms Dancer agrees, although she has heard from many yard owners who want to make changes but are unsure whether clients will agree.
“The livery yard owners wanting to make a change and the liveries wanting things to be different may not be at the same yards but I think that the common problem is just a fear of talking about it, a fear of saying anything to do with the environment,” she said.
“People might complain you’re woke or might make fun of you or a lot of the time, people think they don’t know enough about the environment to talk about it, so they shouldn’t say anything at all,” she continued. “But the minute you start talking to people about what good environmental practice looks like, they say, ‘That makes sense,’ or, ‘I do that already,’ or, ‘I could do that.’
“We’ve got to start talking in everyday language. And the most important part of that sentence is we’ve got to start talking.”
Ms Dancer also agrees that money need not be a barrier, and the right changes can help. Investing in a rainwater harvesting system would be expensive but saves on water bills in the long run. But if such a system is too expensive, just diverting gutters into butts for soaking hay or washing can make big savings.
“My mantra is, if sustainability is costing you money, you’re not doing it properly,” she said. “Sustainability should be about being less wasteful, more resilient and resourceful.
“Teach your team not to leave the tap running or leave the lights on; not to be wasteful. I’ve worked with businesses that have saved tens of thousands without spending a penny, just by changing your mindset.
Harnessing the change
“My biggest concern is that the way climate is changing, the soil is degrading, it’s getting more difficult to grow crops; we need to embed resilience into everything we do. And that’s about working with the climate we’re now getting.
“If we’re going to get warmer, wetter winters, let’s gather that rainwater and use it. If we’re going to get hotter, dry summers, if you can put solar in and harness the changes, it will make us more resilient, and save us money in the long run.
“It’s about not being influenced by external factors, and being able to manage your own yard and your own estate in a way that works for you. It’s about recognising that things are changing, and will change, and we have to create practices that will make us resilient to that.
“For such a long time, we’ve always just had whatever we want, when we want, and that’s not what the future looks like now. The smartest people are going to look at the situation, prepare for it and slowly make changes. If you do it now, start putting the rainwater harvesting in, change systems and processes, start saving money, in five years’ time, you will be very grateful.
“You’ll have created a business that works for you, and when others are struggling and won’t be able to keep horses. It is that serious, you won’t be able to get what you need.
“I think that’s the mindset everyone needs to be in – not survival mode from one day to the next, but what can I do in the long term that will mean that I can continue to have horses. That’s what sustainability is.”
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You may also be interested in:
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Equestrians must act as ‘guardians of the landscape’ to reduce environmental impact
‘It’s our responsibility’: how equestrian professionals are striving to be more environmentally sustainable
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Eleanor is an experienced journalist who spent over eight years working for local and national newspapers before joining H&H as news editor in March 2016. Passionate about equine welfare and exposing the truth, Eleanor has reported on all aspects of the industry, from Brexit to anti-bullying campaigns, and from dressage rules to mules. Her sport of choice is showjumping, in which she competes her own horses, and she also enjoys reporting at local jumping shows through to international championships.