Taking care of your pony may be more difficult than you thought. Healthy adult horses typically eat up to 2.5% of their body weight per day when foraging on a pasture. However, many ponies can eat up to 4% of their body weight or more when foraging. Therefore, you must monitor your ponies eating habits more closely. Continue reading for some tips on taking care of your pony. Also, if you are looking for a horse property for sale in Colorado, contact Colorado Horse Property today and speak with one of our horse-person realtors.
Tips on Taking Care of Your Pony
Ponies are very cute and great for kids, but they have a reputation for misbehaving. Depending on where you got your pony and how much training it received beforehand, this behavior is manageable. If your horse is particularly bad, you’ll want to get them training as quick as possible. Even in small equids, bad manors can lead to real safety hazards. It goes without saying that kids love ponies. A pony that snaps, bites, kicks, etc., isn’t cute but is also a danger to small children. So be careful when they’re around untrained ponies. Just because they’re small doesn’t mean they’re not a threat.
Like many animals, bad behavior could be an acting out due to health problem. Therefore, you should rule out sources of pain that might cause bad behaviors. After a check up from the vet, then you can assume it’s just a learned behavior. There are ways to correct bad behavior that owners at any skill level can do. Using techniques such as well-timed positive and negative reinforcement, you can teach you pony good behaviors just like the professionals can with large horses.
