Our approach to raising horses
Good training begins with the foal
Eyton Sport Horses establishes the basis of trust by rearing and handling young horses correctly, which prepares them for subsequent work with a rider. Education begins as a foal.
Young foals are gently introduced to people. Foal training sessions are short and focused. We use professional equine behaviourists for all our young horse training.
Once a foal shows confidence in being around people and having a person handle them, the halter can be introduced.
There’s no rush at this stage. Young foals are not handled every day. We introduce handling gradually in short sessions once or twice a week.
A haltered foal can be given the occasional short leading lesson following mum (a two person job), be groomed for the first time using a rubber curry comb or soft brush, and have the concept of standing at a tie ring introduced. Once all of that is going well, we will start to pick up feet.
We don’t do anything more than this with a foal before weaning.
At weaning, we will focus on educating the foal to lead nicely and taking short, building up to medium, walks without mum around. We will also teach the foal to stand patiently for assessment for stub book registration and do a bit more training with feet.
More than anything else, we believe in a gentle approach that uses training techniques backed by equitation science.
Foals are left to be foals in the paddock as much as possible. Handling sessions are short and structured.
Let young horses be horses
Post weaning, a young horse that has had a good foundation introduced as a foal can be turned out to be a horse and grow. We favour large paddock and/or hill turnout for young horses. The horses should be free to move and develop natural strength and balance over different terrains and inclines.
Our yearlings are bought in for short handling sessions about once every three weeks at first, with the handling and education increasing as the horse approaches two years old. We focus on teaching our horses to be calm and confident while being led in a halter and bridle, which will help prepare them for future in-hand show classes and instil manners for getting safely from point A to B.
At every age, from foal onwards, we place an emphasis on giving our horses confidence in having their feet handled to ensure our horses are safe for the farrier.
Our rising two-year olds continue to have quality turnout time for play and development.
At two, we start to introduce foundation horsemanship skills such as introducing obstacles (on-line), float training and exposure to lots of different sights and sounds.