Will A Track System Revolutionize Your Horse Keeping?

This blog is inspired by my recent visit to Larri Davison-Bowes at her track system livery, Horse Haven where my horse Dave (aka Chaps) lived just before he came to me and where Larri has kept up to 22 horses on her 2 miles of track system in the beautiful valley of Yr Afon Aeron (the river Aeron) in hills west of Lampeter. This area is already special to me as my first mare, Penny came from the Aberaeron stud, her registered name was Aberaeron Alwen.

Like many who run a track system, especially as a livery, Larri has the challenge of accommodating a group of horses while fully meeting all of their behavioural needs: social and environmental.

Young horses enjoying contact with each other on the track system at Horse Haven Wales

Horses naturally live in smallish groups in overlapping home ranges that allow them to find shelter from various weather and insects, to find enough grazing and browsing, to find water, and spaces to rest, roll, and rub their bodies to relieve any itches. Captivity, or domesticated living, hasn’t removed these requirements from their behavioural DNA, and so horses will do their best to find a way to meet these needs regardless of their environment.

Ponies from two separate groups meet up on the common where their home ranges overlap

The home ranges often overlap, with either groups meeting and sharing an area, yet usually always maintaining some space between groups through low level threats (staring), avoidance including actively moving away, and/or active repulsion - one party drives the other party away. There must always be an exit route for one or more horses to travel when horse society dictates, and indeed to meet the needs of the flight response to threats other than social ones. Larri’s set up has a number of “road junctions” so that horses can go in different directions should they wish.

Horses at Horse Haven Wales moving along one of the tracks from the main yard

The timeshare arrangement can be a tedious one to maintain!

Two hill pony groups in stand off near a spring on the common

And yet time share they do in order to maximise access to a range of natural resources necessary for a secure and comfortable life.

When setting up a track system, equi-central, or simpler arrangements with fields or paddocks, consideration to not only how many horses, but how many groups those horses naturally divide themselves into is important. If you have more than one group, then you need to think in terms of overlapping home ranges when you cater for those groups. Unless you separate them entirely into exclusive enclosures. Larri’s solution is more than one loafing area: a place with shelter and space for a number of horses to hang out. With more than one exit/entry point. The same applies with water and hay stations. These are multiple and they are spread out. Even her water buffets are spread out around the track, not concentrated in one place.

One of the loafing sheds at Horse Haven Wales

Back in nature, the availability of these resources, most critically water, dictates how large the home range will be. Water is necessary for grass growth and for drinking. Where semi-feral ponies live in the UK, like the ones I studied for my Honours degree project on Gower, grass is abundant compared to more arid, semi-desert areas in the western United States or Australia where Mustangs and Brumbies can be tracked moving for miles to get a drink or fresh grass. Welsh ponies don’t typically travel far, just a few kilometres, as most of their needs are met close at hand.

This means that Larri’s solutions work well. Four main looping tracks, various junctions, places to stop to rest, drink, eat, means that a few sub groups within the overall Horse Haven population have their needs covered.

A recently opened loop at Horse Haven Wales

Larri can open and shut the loops, and also the fields they surround, as per the horses’ requirements. To separate ones with different health needs, to permit grazing after hay making and so on. This adds interest when new areas are made available to access. Reminds me of when I the hill ponies I was studying decided to have a jolly old group canter/buck/gallop, all of them, young and old. They took off in a direction I hadn’t previously seen them move in, yet which they would have known well enough, to arrive at a less visited part of the common with short sweet grass. Whether they caught the scent of the lawn being mown in the garden next to the common, or did it because the stallion who had been keeping them close to the farm on the far side of the hill had been removed at the conclusion of the breeding season, who knows apart from the ponies. They had fun.