Jamie Jackson Paddock Paradise

Since we have been getting into Pete Ramey's hoof trimming he mentions Jamie Jackson's Paddock Paradise.

Has anyone on here bought his book? I don't know if I want to order it at this point. While I believe in his theory, I have some questions about it.

From the little I have seen, it looks like the horses are fed hay all year long? Is this correct? I have 13 acres of horse pasture and can't see doing this for one. Yes, I think that sectioning off like he suggests will get them going more, I don't think my husband would want to buy hay year round!

Also, in a perfect world........... But, the truth of the matter is, we live in Wis and I feed the horses 3 smaller meals a day. I do the poop at 5 in the morning and feed them. If I follow what looks to be his method I would have to try and trudge around the "paddock paradise" in knee deep snow? All before work? And, again two times later in the day?

Not convenient. I know that it is what it is, and sometimes convenience doesn't have anything to do with it.

Bottom line, have I got this correct? Or, am I missing something?

I would love to try out the paddock paradise idea, but, not sure if it would fit.

At the very least, I think we might try sectioning off the land as he suggests, but not sure if it will be giving as much advantage??

Thanks.

I have never heard of the book and I do Feed my haflinger year round I live in georgia and it is hot most the time so grass grows I just feed all year round. If you only have three horse {well that is what your avatar says} and thriteen acres of pasture land I would not section it off. But I am not expert so you should look in other book about the subject.

I too found the paddock paradise principles to be good in theory but inefficient/inpractical in real life. One it doesn't utilize the land very good and two if you have horses that don't get along your screwed as his whole theory is the "dominant" horse will keep them moving, etc. That may be...but I invest to much money for my dominant horses to beat up on others.

We are just building our new property so this is what we are doing...to kind of do a sort of paddock paradise. We are building two paddocks that are 75'X150' with a 3' divider in the middle for drainage. Then we are building a 75'X75' round pen in front of paddock 2 and connected to that will be a you shaped paddock "paradise" 3 that will be used for sunny day afternoon turnout one at a time. Basically that will have the little gravel pit, etc.

The picture is not to scale or anything...just something I drew up for my husband.

This was the best compromise I could figure out to put the "paradise" theories in to a what I consider safe with no kicking, biting, etc.

Hi,
Great to hear someone else asking these questions - I've asked on various forums & received nothing much yet. I found a good website with examples, discussions, questions, etc; Paddock Paradise Questions, Answers ideas and solutions. This has been very helpful & they are happy to email you. She is also interested in more examples for her website, particularly from people like us who need to compromise. My setup will be on there soon. Jaime Jackson is also apparently starting an official website on it, but that wasn't yet running last time I looked. I forget who said it, but someone said there wasn't much else as far as practical ideas in the book, so I haven't bothered to buy it yet.

I, along with so many others I've spoken to & know of, am in a similar situation to you Horsegma. Our 2 horses & pony live on a 100 acre mainly pasture property of which I pretty much have free rein - there are 6 other horses & nothing else on the property(cept roos, bunnies & wombats). We have a 3 acre & a 4 acre paddock fenced off for ours to rotate, and while they are all too fat, we can't afford the time or money to feed out f/t.

It's great for those who own the land & have good pasture, that they may be able to cut their own hay from the 'unused' centre of the 'paddock paradise', but the 'unimproved' pasture here isn't worth anything & I can't afford a hay contractor if I can't sell some to make my money back.

The other thing is, not being my own property, I can't afford & don't want to do permanent fencing, and have a limited budget for hotwire even, so this greatly limits my possibilities - otherwise I could just do a huge track around 50 acres or so, which would probably provide enough grazing.

So anyway, enough of the negatives, I'm a hoof care practitioner so I especially appreciate the benefits of this system for health & soundness. I'm determined to make it work for me! Hoping 3 of the other horses on the property might be joining ours too, as their owners are also interested. The more horses the better, movementwise. The more owners sharing cost of fencing the better, pocketwise!

My first effort has been one the shape of Hotreddun's paddock 3 diagram, around the outside of the 4 acre paddock. The dam is at the big end, gate & shelter is half way round and the narrow end is open, to allow them to graze the rest of the paddock. The majority of the track is 20' wide, as this was advised as about the maximum width that would still promote them to keep moving. They have to go thru the track to get a drink or shade, but go out to graze. I'm not sure whether they're getting all that much more exercise tho. We will be getting a load of crushed rock next week to put on one section for hoof conditioning, which will help.

Our next try is going to be an entire closed circuit, but with one end of the rectangle track being substantially wider - say 2/3 acre - for grazing. It shouldn't be too difficult to uproot the hotwire fence in order to rotate the section of grazing. If it runs out too quickly tho, we plan to open it up to the centre again, so they will only be locked on the track part time.

So anyway, I hope I've given you some ideas to try & hope you get lots more responses with more ideas for me too! Cheers.

I know of horse farms, who's solitary horses are next to eachother in long, thin paddocks, because this gives them a bit more motivation to race up & down. But generally, horses kept alone will exercise far less than if they were kept socially. They enjoy playing & I personally wouldn't want to disallow them from being horses, no matter how much I chose to spend on their purchase. If you look at it from a health/soundness perspective, you might also find that keeping them in solitary may well be more costly than nicks out of the hide cost you in a show.

Thanks Hotreddun and Loosie,

Loosie, the question and answers helped quite a bit.

Hotredun, your layout looks very practical.

I think the gravel/crushed rock will be one of the best things we can do for our horses.

We plan on getting a load this early spring. When we started to do our own hooves it was late Oct and we decided it was a bit too late in the season to get the stones with the snow coming.

Loosie, when we do this, (as much as we can) we plan on using our electric tape for boundaries. It's easy to pick up and put anyplace we want. It's not hot since it's going to be in the middle, but they still respect that.

I also agree with the single horse moving less. My alpha mare moves very, very little since the boys wouldn't think of moving her! But, the more dominant gelding moves the lesser dominant gelding a lot during the day. While I feel for the one being moved, it's the best thing for him cause otherwise he too would just stand there all day.

You have both answered some of my questions, and confirmed what I believe too. I still have questions, so I am going to continue to look into this. By spring time I hope to have a plan.

You probably already have this equipment...my husband and I are new to the farm world so we are amazed by such things.... But we just found this thing called a "post popper" at Tractor Supply. My husband can move a whole electric paddock in a weekend with that thing. Of course if you have a tractor you could probably do it in a day.

Two horses just got in a fight about a month ago at my trainers. One of them was Olympic potential by breeding, conformation and raw talent. That horse got kicked in the knee and now has a 3 inch scar. We haven't have him x-rayed yet, but seem to be sound. For any buyers looking for an Olympic potential he is now basically ruined. I will ALWAYS have seperate paddocks. They will be close to each other so they can still race down the sides. I would prefer to have them share a fence line in the middle of my design, but we have some huge drainage problems that we have found can be solved with a 3 ft "drain" consisting of a ditch, a irrigation pipe, then filled over with gravel between the paddocks.

Something I do, and yes, I REALLY do this, is take alfalfa cubes and other little treats (apples, etc) and I ride one of the horses out and drop them throughout the pasture. If I dont' ride, I just walk out there and do it. My husband throws them all over, he's got a better arm than I do. Anyways, I use maybe 10lbs of these every few days, for 3 horses spread over 10 acres in all. I never find a missed cube or treat, and it keeps them all hunting for them, and not standing at the gates. I also spread their evening hay all in piles in the pasture (if the wind isn't whipping or raining hard). Takes them longer to eat, and they get more exercise. Plus, less bullying for food. They still get 3 "meals" a day,in stalls, as I have an older horse that takes longer to eat, and one easy keeper that will chase the others away. If I didn't have time, I'd only do 2 meals a day, and feel this is a perfectly satisfactory compromise. THe alfalfa cubes are not sugary junk, but enticing enough to get them searching. THey don't actually get enough of them to make them fat, or have detrimental effects.

Barefoothooves, I'm really envious of the hoof you are holding in your avatar!

That's pretty good thinking about placing cubes around your property. I'm sure the horse you are riding appreciates the "heads up" about where they are being placed! LOL

I know that Pete Ramey says to use your imagination about how to get them going around.

I'll try to incorporate the system somehow, it may not be exactly what he preaches, but, I'm sure there are some things that will come to mind.