Stephan Schwab

Fine horses need good housing conditions or else they will become sick easily. Therefore we have built a temporary stable inside the corral of our friend Carlos where the two Peruvian mares are staying temporarily.

The stable is a simple shed with metal roof. It’s made in a way that we can disassemble it quickly and move it elsewhere on our trailer.

For now this will serve us for a while as horse shelter. Later on this segment and another of equal size will become an outdoor workshop on the farm.

Diadema and Topacio got fresh water and swazy hay and as you can see in the picture they are both happily feeding themselves.

However we noticed some interesting behavior and hopefully this will not turn out to be trouble. The smaller Topacio (on the right) is kind of afraid of the larger Diadema. The larger one doesn’t like the smaller Topacio next to her when feeding. So Topacio quickly shys away and waits for Diadema to finish – and she does so with some submissive body expression. We observed that before and therefore put hay left and right of the water tank so that both mares can feed at the same time without pulling rank on eachother.

For the real stable this means that we have to build boxes with doors for each horse. Other issues might arise and it appears that one needs a way to keep horses separate from eachother for while. I think for cold blooded horses that’s not really necessary – I’ve never seen that anywhere here in Panama – but for hot blooded horses it’s probably a good idea.

Maybe some fellow horseman can comment on that. I’d appreciate that.

Earlier this week our fine Peruvian mares started to show loss of hair and a strange pattern on their bodies. Diadama is more affected than Topacio. Here is how this looks like on the head

and lower body

The quality of these pictures is not very good. They were taken with the internal camera of a BlackBerry phone.

But you can clearly see how the hair is missing. They both try to rub and scratch. Either on some object or – and I find that quite interesting – helping eachother.

After they were transported to their new temporary home in Bajo del Rio, which is about 30 km from the place they used to live but with cooler nights, they got horse food instead of the grass they could feed on before. Either the change in microclimate or the horse food causes that allergy. We have now stopped giving them industrial horse food and provided Swazy hay. To stop the effects of the allergy they are given injections for five days. We are now at day 3 and the spread of the visual effect on their bodies has stopped. They liked the Swazy hay and are now staying mostly in the corral where that food and fresh water is provided to them.

Over the next few days we will erect our new portable horse stable right there in the corral. The idea is to provide them good shelter, food and water supply in a controlled environment. Animals are much more fragile to environment changes than humans.

What would a farm be without good horses. Last weekend we picked up two fine Peruavian gaited horses. They provide a smooth ride without all the up and down bouncing known from regular horses. You can go faster without all that suffering. The following pictures are from Criadero Correa in Punta Barco.

Topacio and Diadema are both mares. Diadema is the taller one. We’ll have them close us for a while so that we can see and ride them daily before they get transferred to the farm. Our infrastructure there isn’t yet ready for them but soon will.

Enjoy the pictures. No more words today.