As promised my wee story of my experiences with Pat Coleby’s books. My sister Karen Agnew of Millicent SA sent me the Pat Coleby Natural Horse Care book, as she had been using Pats remedies and soil care with on going success & she decided I would benefit. We have a 10 acre lifestyle & block 300m above sea level on the Otage Peninsula – hungry ground, a lot of wind and pretty high rainfall. We have had ongoing problems with mud fever in various horses over the 10 years we have been here and tried every remedy we could get our hands on with varying success. When my latest filly was born with 4 white stockings everyone said “mudfever”. Reading Pats book was like a lift coming on and I started to follow her feeding regimes. I have found a need to tweak them for local conditions and to introduce the horses to the seaweed meal and copper I have to add it gradually in their feeds until they get used to the taste. What I have found that works here is 2/3 oat chaff (we are so green I don’t feed Lucerne) 1/3 bran, ½ tablespoon Sulphur, 15 gram dolomite and up to ½ teaspoon copper, dissolved in very hot water. This is given twice a day with adlib seaweed meal-using up to 1/3 litre per day-usually when it’s cold and wet. If the weather is so bad there is flooding I put the seaweed meal in the feed up to 120gm per day if a horse has bad mud fever.
I was lucky enough to practice on a horse that arrived with very bad mudfever-swollen leg, big crusty scabs like muesli all over the leg. Within 10days on the above diet the scabs started to come off and within a fortnight 2 small areas were left. The horse was moved to another property and the seaweed meal was reduced to 30 gm per day and the mudfever started to recur. I suggested she up to 90-120gm, again everything has subsided. Very few people can leave the meal out for their animals so we have to feed it, but I find it easy to tweak the recipe. My farrier is now getting his clients to ring me up for help, as you’ve guessed it neither of my horses have mud fever.
My filly was also prone to proud flesh for the simplest cut and since she was put on the new diet this doesn’t happen any longer, she is also a lot calmer.
I am changing the way we fertilise the soil and its proving a bit of an uphill battle as the local philosophy is bung some super on and 2 tonne of lime to the acres! However I must be doing something right as I had the opportunity to have a top class photographer from USA Rob Hess to take photos of my horses. I had an hours notice to clip, trim and brush them. They are in such good condition that we have got photos so good they could grace a calendar, or indeed a cover of Pats next book!
I now am fully confident for the first time in what I’m feeding my animals and am so grateful that Pat has shared her hard work and probably put up with a lot of dismissal people who just don’t understand.
Several of my horsy contacts are buying the book and some of the most skeptical are coming round to the thinking behind it.
Instead of “mudfever” being in the soil prefer to think that the mineral balance or imbalance allows the fungus to survive and as the horses are what they eat it will allow the mudfever to gain a foothold. We have also tried the foot rot recipe for sheep and have noticed a high improvement over our old zinc based remedy – or indeed the antibiotic injections, and of course it’s much cheaper!!
Thanks for putting me on the mailing list.
Received the DVD yesterday and thoroughly enjoyed it. The quality is fantastic and the content is perfect. Only one complaint and that is “I would like more.” I find all this so interesting and exciting.
I have fallen in love with Pat Coleby. What a most wonderfully amazing and inspiring woman, I can see why you are passionate about capturing the essence of the woman. Her commitment to changing farming practices is reflective to me of (a) vision of educating a critical mass of humanity to make a difference.