Reading Time: 3 minutes Treating horses like pets restricts healthy movement and activity, critical social interaction in a herd, leads to unnatural feeding strategies and practices and can seriously impact a horse's health and well-being.
Your horse is not your pet
Horses have different care, handling and housing needs compared to other companion species like dogs or cats
Doerksen Brothers named Alberta’s 2024 Outstanding Young Farmers
Gem-area operation practices regenerative agriculture, has strong direct-to-consumer brand
Reading Time: 3 minutes Doerksen Brothers are the 2024 Alberta Oustanding Young Farmers winners.
Schoepp: For sale signs of the times
Should farms consider ecological diversity as a risk management tool?
Reading Time: 3 minutes It’s spring and the time of year that farmland often changes hands. The “for sale” sign signals an end to trial and triumph and always invites curious conversations. This spring, there is an increase of sales in certain sectors. Sales driven by land stress and owners’ inability to financially weather another storm. Tree fruits and […] Read more
Max your horsepower: proper fuel for your horse requires proper carbs
Not all carbohydrates are created equal when it comes to feeding horses
Reading Time: 3 minutes Modern horse feeding advice frequently recommends adding concentrated feeds to pasture or hay diets. This is often considered essential to meet caloric needs for performance or to ensure sufficient intake of vitamins and minerals. There is growing evidence that paints a different picture. Grain-heavy processed diets may contribute to various digestive and metabolic disorders, including […] Read more
Uterine amputations a routine occurrence in calving season
Cows can still be lost, but these days its a rarity
Reading Time: 3 minutes Most uterine prolapses are uneventful for an experienced veterinarian, and the owner ends up with a lively cow that breeds again without missing a beat. Producers will often ship these cows, but any veterinarian will tell you this isn’t a heritable trait and should not reoccur. If the cow rebreeds, there is no greater likelihood […] Read more
Schoepp: Wider conversation needed on climate cause
Agriculture has a role to play, but so does society at large
Reading Time: 3 minutes It’s tough being a farmer today and it is easy to be fixed on sky watching, that proverbial hope of rain or snow and even perhaps a wee bit of wind. Even as the farmer watches, there are political and social expectations that we, the keepers of the land, do something to change the course […] Read more
Heading off neck pain in horses
Improper handling and headgear can set the stage for neck problems
Reading Time: 3 minutes Neck pain in horses, particularly at the base of the neck, is getting more attention from equestrians and veterinarians, probably because we have better diagnostic imaging tools to diagnose problems. The horse world now has access to improved radiographic techniques, ultrasonography, nuclear scintigraphy and, the most notable contributor, MRI technology. The latter allows us to […] Read more
The importance of pairing up at calving
A little extra effort to foster mothering can pay big dividends
Reading Time: 3 minutes Glacier FarmMedia – Calving season always comes with anticipation about the incoming calf crop, and great cow-calf managers have tips that help them save more calves and improve productivity . For the spring calver, great observation skills combined with the ability to go the extra mile will generally be rewarded. It pays to check for […] Read more
Treating arthritis in your horse
Treatments for degenerative joint disease can take a whole-horse approach
Reading Time: 3 minutes The current trend in the horse world when it comes to degenerative joint disease or arthritis is to focus on five main treatment categories, all directly targeting the afflicted joint. This works for the immediate joint problem, but often overlooks or discounts the holistic nature of the illness. Understanding the elements underpinning this multi-factored system […] Read more
Schoepp: Telling the farm story
The tourism sector can offer agriculture some lessons on connections
Reading Time: 3 minutes I was thrilled to attend a premier tourism conference in January and I certainly felt at home because tourism loves Canadian agriculture; so much so that the conference theme of regeneration was based on the agricultural model. Regenerative tourism digs deep into the concept of leaving a community better than before you visited – not […] Read more
Cyber-Savvy Farmer
