I have been a horse girl my whole life.
Horses have been an integral part of my growth as a human.
When I began to really get an understanding of permaculture and fall in love with the potential of design, it seemed to me that my love of horses and my new found passion were at odds. In wild environments equines move up to 35 miles a day. The landscapes we tend to find them in are open, often harsh, and do not resemble the abundance of the polyculture landscapes that typically represent a mature site designed using permaculture. Many places we find horses naturally like the Scottish Highlands, the Mongolian Steppe, or the North American West are vast and open with rough grasses and water sources that are few and far between. Permaculture designed landscapes on the other hand are pulled back to human scale, favor a polyculture (many plant species and families), and are perennial in nature. In the semi arid high desert prairie I live in the combination of horses with a polyculture felt out of reach, especially without the ownership of a few hundred acres of land.
This was a conundrum that weighed on me. How could I use permaculture design to improve the land and provide my horses with something more than a life spent standing around waiting for their next meal? I pushed on in my permaculture education. I knew there had to be some way that my ponies could fit into design as a beneficial element rather than a detriment, that a solution could be found that included them and supported their nature…honoring the the horseness of the horse.
I continued down the permaculture path and in tandem continued to learn about natural horse keeping. The two topics were related but I still couldn’t figure out how to connect them in my context of high altitude, dry climate and small acreage…then one day I found a book. I was shopping at one of the the locally owned bookstores that buys and sells used books and I discovered a title by author and farrier Jaime Jackson called The Natural Horse: Lessons from the Wild for Domestic Horse Care. The title intrigued me. I flipped through the pages, read and few passages and then put the book back on the shelf, I was just browsing after all. A few weeks later I decided that I should buy that book. By then the bookstore had sold the copy I had been looking at so I turned to the internet. Naturally, as internet searches do, I not only found The Natural Horse, I also found the book Paddock Paradise: A Guide to Natural Horse Boarding. Huh. I bought it and waited impatiently for it to come. Turns out that 121 quick reading pages would be the key to successfully incorporating horses into a permaculture design that is good for the ponies, good for the land and good for my heart.
The concept of Paddock Paradise is the conclusion Mr. Jackson came to after following and observing wild horse herds, then observing wild captive horses deteriorate in holding facilities, as well as horses in other contexts. He recognized that movement is the natural way of the horse. For many hundreds of years we have housed horses in environments that are counter to their true nature. Stalls are the worst we can do, equivalent to solitary confinement. Equines are relegated to standing still in a boredom box, some for 24 hours a day. Some begin to display behaviors like cribbing or swaying as a way to cope, others just resign to their fate… they are never truly happy in this context. Health declines, feet get soft, there is higher potential for ulcers and colic.
Not all horses are stuffed in stalls, some get land to live out their lives. Jackson spent some time on a 20,000 acre ranch where the owner rescued many horses. He noticed that the horses in this environment had many of the same hoof and body condition issues as those that spent their days in holding pens or stalls. His observations led him to recognize that the horses were just standing around, even though they had large open pastures to roam. These horses had everything they needed dropped right in front of them and spent most of their time parked. Through these observations the Paddock Paradise concept was conceived.
Paddock Paradise solves horse problems.
The Paddock Paradise design concept recognizes the biological need for a horse to move to be healthy (this isn’t the only thing that creates health but is a large part of equine well being). Following their nature ponies seek food and water, require companions and interesting things to look at and play with. When horses have their needs met they are in better physical condition, better mental condition, and are far less prone to hoof issues, colic, and metabolic problems.
Horses are uniquely hard on a landscape, wanting to have mouthfuls of food 22 hours a day and constantly seeking blades of grass. They lack the digestive tract of ruminants who eat a meal then spend time relaxing and digesting what they’ve eaten. Horses are perpetually hungry. Paddock Paradise turns the dry lot concept into a track that gets horses moving rather than standing, allowing the area inside of the track to be reclaimed for grazing. Food and water placements promote more natural equine behaviors like seeking their next bite. Enrichment can also be included. Things like rocks and logs to navigate, bits of things to pick up and carry around; some horses are similar to dogs with their play and will happily carry around a bucket, or section of hose, or anything else that isn’t tied down and we can promote that in a safe manner, even going as far as to provide ‘toys’ designed just for them. Well designed track layouts can also create a natural fire break as animals living on the track eat down vegetation, especially in low rainfall climates like ours.
Here in the semi arid high desert West Paddock Paradise is a tool for helping us to maintain better pastures for grazing. Unless we have a large number of acres we are bringing in hay and possibly other supplementary feed. On properties that are not technically large enough to support the number of equines living there, a track allows the inner paddocks to be managed for pasture growth. This concept can (but doesn’t always) decrease the amount of area needed to be maintained as dry lot, and increase the amount of area that can be managed pasture. Not only is there opportunity for better grazing management with this system but there are opportunities within the paddocks.
When we design well we can stack the functions of our paddocks to increase soil health as well as take advantage of all our land has to offer. Well timed chickens run in paddocks spread manure, eat fly and other larvae, break up crust formations that impede water infiltration, eat weeds, including seeds (many of which don’t survive the digestion process of a chicken), and add extra fertility to the landscape through their manure.
Permaculture is a verb. It is a process of design that uses principles to drive decision making. Good permaculture design uses these principles again and again throughout the design. Using a Paddock Paradise system as a tool in permaculture design makes sense.
