switch equine smallholding

I spent my whole life on livery yards, I honestly thought there was no way I could go it alone .. until my ecological knowledge and understanding of regenerative agriculture grew. I couldn’t understand why we are seeing such a shift in farmers across the country (and worldwide), but not in how we keep our horses? Nature conservation organisations frequently use horses to help with their management of key wildlife sites, so why are our livery yards so disconnected from both of these movements? 

This spurred us to search for our own land, where we could show that horses don’t have to destroy everything they look at, and where we don’t need to comprise the welfare of our horses. We found a 5 acre plot near the Wales/Cheshire border that we thought would be perfect for our plans. The grassland wasn’t as ‘trashed’ as most equestrian properties (somehow despite the 12 horses they were grazing!), in fact it already had a pretty good level of species diversity, and plenty of hills and points of interest for our ponies!

We got a doggie pedometer that we used on the horses to track their movements, we found that in a ‘traditional’ field setting they only moved on average 3 miles a day, once we set up our first grass track system, this increased to an average of 9 miles a day, sometimes up to 14 miles. We also monitored the horses weights, with weight tapes, and faecal egg counts (FEC) regularly. The horses maintained, or even lost, some weight and their FEC tapered off to show a reduced worm burden. 

It’s great to see that once they got used to their new way of living they became great at self-regulating their intake, and often take themselves off even a fresh field. A great start! The track we set up also worked to create ‘laneways’ to our fields, where we could apply a rough Equicentral System, or that is, rotationally graze the fields. We worked on the good recommendations from Equiculture, to graze above beer bottle height, and take them off once at beer bottle depth (approx. 5cm – in reality we’ve actually taken them off before this).

We applied for planning permission for an arena (30 x 15m) and holding yard (15m x 15m), and after a hard slog it was approved. We have now installed said arena and are nearly finished with our holding yard. To ensure the drainage works for the holding yard, we have dug ditches and created a new pond, another haven for wildlife. From here we will re-build our track (approx. 3m x 300m) and ultimately plan to replace our electric fencing with living hedges, such as willow or hazel (which the horses love). We have taken baseline soil carbon measurements, have recorded dung beetle activity and are still actively recording the health of our ponies.

Outside of the horsey side of our land, we are also doing what we can to integrate sustainability into our everyday life. We have solar panels on our roof and installed a heat pump as the first major works when we moved in. We have repurposed a disused bit of land to create our own little allotment to grow as much veg as we can, and are building on this year on year, adding more beds and greenhouse to the mix. We are using the horse manure to create good quality compost for beds, and are playing around with compost tea ideas to improve the veg yield and as natural a pesticides if we need them.

Fields are divided into 12 small paddocks where horses graze for approximately 1 week at a time before 3 months rest (grazing either 24 or 12 hours a day, with free access to the track during  this time and being isolated to the track of the remaining 12 hours, depending on grass growth and horse needs). Inputs have been eliminated on the land, with fields muck spread (with composted horse manure) and harrowed before resting and topping as required.  Fields are already showing an enhancement in species diversity, both flora and fauna, with a number of new species observed including common spotted orchid, badgers, foxes, hares, kestrels and barn owls. Our ultimate aim is to enhance diversity of fields towards lowland meadow classification, and with a species diversity on average of 9-10 species per m2 in 2 years, we believe this is definitely achievable! (Got to aim high right? ?)

Fences are proposed to be replaced with living fences, such as willow and hazel, or native species hedgerows, once the system is fully established. Current external hedgerows have been gap filled and are proposed to be laid to bring into better management. One boundary has already been laid and showing good enhancement in condition (moderate to good in line with the Defra Statutory Biodiversity Metric – see below). Some trees will be allowed to become established once hedges are laid. A 30 x 15m all-weather riding arena has been installed, alongside a new holding yard (approx. 15x15m). Drainage ditches were created along field boundaries which lead to a new pond, to improve drainage through the land. A small area of the fields (approximately 200m2) was also given over to our new allotment area for vegetable beds and greenhouse.

Application within the Metric provided a baseline biodiversity unit score of 6.00 area (that’s most habitat like grassland/woodland) units and 2.84 hedgerow units. Post intervention assessments show a unit score of 16.18 area units and 10.62 hedgerow units, a 169.60% and 273.82% uplift respectively (see table below). We used a precautionary approach when applying the metric (trying to be that ‘positive realist’ again!) so with further time/intervention it is possible to increase further. It is also indicative that significant gains could be achieved if similar interventions were applied at scale – for instance on a large livery, racing or polo yard.