Yards with no winter turnout - a thing of the past?

[Fyra]

I'm currently in the process of moving my horse from a yard with no winter turnout to one with turnout, purely from a welfare view. When I was looking I'd come across posts of other people looking, and noticed that without fail everyone specified that some sort of winter turnout option was a must. There also seems to be no viewings on my current yard and lots of empty stables despite some local yard closures happening.

It's got me wondering though if this is the same across the UK? Has the horsey world generally made a big shift to winter turnout being a must, or is this because of the circles I'm in?

I would never entertain keeping a horse on a yard with no winter turnout, so i would hope it's a dying practice!

Horse ownership is reducing and I would like to think welfare standards are increasing.

I know of one yard that doesn’t, but they do a good job of ensuring they get a daily play in pairs in the menage/lots of enrichment in stables. Wouldn’t be for me but they manage it better than most yards I’ve seen.

I think most people don’t see winter turnout as a nice to have any more but an absolute essential from a welfare point of view

I know of one yard that doesn’t, but they do a good job of ensuring they get a daily play in pairs in the menage/lots of enrichment in stables. Wouldn’t be for me but they manage it better than most yards I’ve seen.

I think most people don’t see winter turnout as a nice to have any more but an absolute essential from a welfare point of view

Competition yards here have no turnout but those horses are exercised every day and put on the horse walker regularly. Even their summer turnout is limited.

There are plenty of yards where 'winter turnout' is a knee deep mud trash paddock. We're on clay, you need a lot of land if they're out all day in the winter.

I have a small livery yard and purposely keep numbers low to ensure that we have daily turnout (6am-4pm) over winter. Our fields have very good drainage, so even when wet, they never get so muddy that you'd lose your wellies 😀In the 15 years that we've been open, there have maybe been a handful of days where they have had to stay in, due to the ice making it too dangerous to turn them out. 24/7 turnout in the summer 😀

I’ve owned horses continually since 1979 and I’ve always insured that my horses get out everyday of the year unless they are medically unable to do so . I think they had one day in after the hurricane in 1987 whilst we made safe and a couple of very snowy years around the same time they had the odd day in . I’ve left one full livery place because they moved to half a day turnout . Where our remaining pony lives she is out from 7-3 in the winter .

I hope so. We eventually bought our own place because we were on a yard that had no winter turn out (although they did get to play in the menage for an hour or so a day) and every yard locally seemed to be the same (this was in Bath). One competition yard offered no turnout AT ALL and charged like a wounded bull! It really isn't a nice to have, horses want out even when the weather is bad. My lot have 10 acres of winter turnout on sandy soil so no mud and they never beg to come in. They have lots of natural shelter and we have stables with access to a hardstanding corral in foul weather but they rarely come in. As far as I am aware, our old yard still doesn't offer winter turnout.

I live in a very wet part of the south west, no yards round here have reliable daily winter turnout.
Most places will lure you in by saying they do, then there's weeks at a time where you're not allowed to turn out because the paddocks are too wet.
Not to mention no grass and not being allowed to put hay out so mine won't stay out happily anyway.

The yard I'm at now has all weather turn out pens and you get a 2hr slot per day which is much better than what most offer.

I'd definitely like to see a movement towards more viable turnout in winter.

Unusual around me, places tend to have a surfaced pen. Clay, very wet area
years ago around the 2000 years I remember not having turnout from October - March. That was a fucking LONG year

I'm going to slightly disagree and say I'd say if anything now it's more common to have very limited or poor quality winter turnout than ever. Back when I was young, admittedly a long time ago now, grazing was far more plentiful and cheap so it simply made economic sense for an average or leisure rider to keep their horses on grass 24/7, even if your livery yard didn't have enough turnout it was usually easy enough and not especially expensive to rent extra grazing from local farmers or land-owners, and the cost and trouble of doing so was a lot less than the cost of bedding, hay and mucking out (or paying someone else to do so) during the winter. When I was a child my ponies lived out unrigged and unclipped on neighbours' fields 24/7/365, the grazing was plentiful enough it could be well rotated and rested so they barely even needed supplemental hay except in truly dire weather and we had nothing like the issues with mud you see on today's vastly overgrazed fields. And this wasn't unusual at all, pretty much everyone I knew with 'pet'/leisure horses did the same - whereas now that's virtually unheard of outside of specific retirement set-ups and most people stable their horses at least some of the time because there just isn't enough good quality land for the number of horses we're trying to keep on it...

It's true that I think back then we had very little appreciation of the importance of turnout for horses' wellbeing, it was standard practice back then that hunters, racehorses and competition horses would live fully in with little to no turnout during the season (although they would then usually have 24/7 turnout in their off season/holidays), whereas in the UK at least most working horses do at least have access to round pen or arena turnout daily even if not proper turnout, so I suppose things have improved in that regard, most people probably would say turnout is important for their horses but I don't think the average amount of daily turnout horses actually get is going up, down if anything I'd say

At the other end of the extreme though there are now track liveries where horses are out 24/7 all year round. These didn’t exist not so long ago.
Even where livery yards do have turnout it is often individual on tiny squares where they can’t exhibit normal horse behaviour.

Scotland has just made it a requirement for horses to have turnout and freedom of movement. So all horses should have some form of turnout at least daily. Ridden work etc doesn’t count.

It’s an interesting subject. I think that owners are far more interested in horse welfare and turn out than they used to be but I think the jury is out as to whether that translates in to horses actually living healthier and happier lives tbh?

Even though they have more turn out in theory, which obviously is essential, I still see a lot of horses that are fat, under-exercised and frustrated and can’t quite work out why that is?

I hope I dont cause offence bc they all differ but some are definitely living on tracks that get horribly poached in winter and have too many horses on them and too many feed stations en route with.many small loafing areas.

I know I am old fashioned but a lot of horses imho have all of the amenities but don’t do enough work, the prevailing thinking being that horses don’t care if they are not ridden.

To that I say some don’t and some really do but imho all of them benefit from having some sort of “job” and daily exercise bearing in mind that a wild or semi-feral horse will walk on average 20 to 30 miles a day.

So I’d say sufficient turn out is the minimum requirement honestly but please hack them out very regularly too! Not for just physical exercise but a horse enjoys exploring beyond it’s own patch of grass even when it’s field comprises two or three acres or more. Ride them out, drive them, lead them, whatever it takes, the average horse thrives on movement plain and simple.

I agree with all of this. I do definitely think obesity amongst horses has risen over the last 50 -75 years alongside the same in humans despite knowledge and awareness of welfare issues being probably higher than ever. I think it's partially to do with as I said in my post the decline in availability of grazing so that too many horses are now kept on too little land is a big factor. Also I think increased ulcer awareness leads to people quite rightly prioritizing ad lib forage, plus a lot of people want to feed a balancer and supplements but you then need to give at least a small hard feed of chaff or something to put them, again all the range of powders and supplements we have today never used to be a thing at all. But if they're stood in a stable overnight all rugged up and cosy eating 24/7 they won't burn off anywhere near the calories they would if they were browsing a field for short/poor quality winter grass and burning energy just to keep warm...

And although I agree with your plea re hacking, again things ain't what they used to be there, as kids we could hack for hours on quiet country lanes and bridlepaths rarely ever encountering any cars or other pedestrians / road users and it was generally acceptable to send kids off all days on their ponies unsupervised. Nowadays in most parts of the country you'll need to use busy roads with drivers with little horse-sense to get to bridleways at all and then there'll likely be a lot of dog-walkers, bikers, scooters etc there with you so it's not as relaxing or safe all round as it used to be. If you're nervous or inexperienced its certainly not as easy as it once was to just head off on a long hack. And expectations have changed concurrently - this summer we were lucky enough that as part of a complex deal with yard owner a neighbouring farmer lent us a big field to ride in - it was a total novelty for the kids (and many adults) to have an open space like that to bomb around in and explore, and loads of people just didn't know what to do with themselves - there was a lot of twittering and judgement about people e.g. spending an hour going around the field or cantering in the field (TBF with the summer we've had ground was rock hard and the weather sweltering so I was cautious myself about too much fast work) - the people who thought a one hour walk/trot hack was way too much work would have lost their minds about how much we used to do as kids but I do think so many of us leisure riders have gotten into a habit of doing a couple of 20-30 min sessions in the school a couple of times a week and then wonder why our horses are fat!

Totally agree on all points! I do the same with chaff and a balancer for a horse that lives on air otherwise.

I forgot to mention over-rugging! Don’t get me started on that! 🥴😃. I much prefer to feed hay to keep a horse warm from the inside but it depends on their work load and clip.

And yes, very sadly, the bridle path situation, despite valiant efforts on behalf of a few very devoted volunteers, is getting worse and worse. As is the dog, bike, ignorant driver issue. It really is dicey out there!

This is why I really like track systems for 24 7 turnout. They are becoming increasingly more popular. When managed well can be absolutely beautiful as well as enriching.

I agree more people are insisting on winter turnout, which round here has led to yards telling people they have turnout, and they do in summer, then come winter, messages go out to now existing/established liveries saying 'to protect the fields we are moving to every other day/every 3rd day/2 hours a day each' etc. so people are left in situations they would never have agreed to.

We really do have all year round turnout, but TBF despite me being massively on the side of the more turnout the better, our mare still isn't really used to it as she came from a competition yard where as PP said they were exercised and put on walker but very little turnout. I sometimes feel like a primary school teacher sending reluctant 6yos out to play in the grim weather. She has agreed to enjoy overnight turnout this summer though which we were pleased about!

I do think there are other ways of looking at the problem though. Turnout to me is as close as most of us can get to allowing natural herd behaviour, walking and grazing, social etc. but still quite a long way from wild herd behaviour where they have masses of space to roam freely and much more mixed ground and pasture etc. but I do think in some circumstances people can do a good job at meeting those needs under more restricted turnout situations. Like the example above where there are outdoor sand paddocks with forage provided, and social and enrichment provision, I think that's acceptable. In most of Europe horses are not turned out in the way that we think of it. They use sand paddocks in groups of 4-6 or whatever. I'm not saying it's great, but it's better than nothing.

The ones that really bother me are the owners who say 'I'm not turning out today it's a bit cold/wet/muddy/warm/flies/don't want them to get dirty' etc.Grrrrrr