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Todays welfare concious animal lovers are increasingly making the choice to buy only free range and organic animal products in a bid to improve living standards for farmed animals. So why then do we not extend these simple privilages to our much loved horses?
    Over the past few decades we have become more aware of the basic needs of domesticated animals and yet many thousands of horses  still live in cramped confined living conditions for much of the year. These stables may be clean and tidy, the horses may be fed and watered regularly, they may even get to step out of their box's for a few hour a day but the fact still remains that horses have evolved over many millions of years to be free range.

Obviously we don't all have 50 acres of wilderness to turn our horses loose on so there will always be a compromise in order to make keeping horses in domestication practical for both the people and the horses involved. Natural Horse Management is an attempt to bridge this gap and to provide sensible information based on facts and hands on experience. If you have a story or piece of information that you'd like to add regarding natural horse management please feel free to send it to : alicia@naturalhorsemanagement.com 

What is Natural Horse Management?

The Horse is an ancient creature, around 60 million years old infact. This makes them an extremely successful creature and is tribute to their increadible ability to survive and adapt
    Since their domestication around 6 thousand years ago we have drastically changed the living and social habits of horses and unfortunatley for some the change is too much.  Practices such as stabeling, shoeing and keeping horses seperatley may be normal for us but for the horse these are totally alien concepts and changes that they haven't evolved to deal with. So as care providers it should be our responsibility to provide what they do need rather than expecting them to conform to what we want. Natural Horse Management is an attempt to identify and provide these needs.

Disclaimer
Please remember; it should be common knowledge that all horses are individuals and what suits one may not suit another so the suggestions made with in these pages are by no means a one size fits all solution. Instead the information layed out here is more to promote thought and encourage positive, thoughtful horsemanship. The object of this information is to reduce stress to the horse not to cause discomfort or encourage neglect so please use your intelligence!