With the eventing season just around the corner, it’s time to make some plans for the season ahead with our team of horses who range from 5 years old's starting out their eventing career at BE90 to our more advanced horses who are competing at intermediate/ 3* and we look forwards to what will hopefully be a successful 2021.

The horses here at Team Roberts Eventing enjoyed some down time late October through to November where they were hacking more regularly, with extra rest days and a period of time out of the arena. It is important that they have time to relax and spend grazing with no added pressure of training and competitions and after a season of eventing and dressage it is an ideal time to let them be horses and have an enjoyable break. Later in December the horse’s workloads started increasing, with hacks becoming more fittening hacks, and going back into the arena starting back on the basic with the aims of the season ahead in mind for each horse. We have been increasing their workload introducing lateral work, pole work and jumping exercises as the weeks have progressed and we were hopeful that lockdown 3 would soon come to an end and we would be on track for the first event of the season. Ideally, we would have been training with our coaches over the winter months and out competing in dressage and show jumping, however we are lucky enough to have some great facilities at home and we have enjoyed jumping the horses and doing canter work at home to progress their training and fitness. We have been monitoring their fitness levels with the Seaver heart rate monitor but when we can, we will have a trip to the gallops and water treadmill with the horses whose fitness levels need to be higher for the more demanding levels. As well as the horses increasing their level of fitness, we run regularly as well as Pilates to focus on core strength.

As their workloads have increased their diets have changed according to each horse. Through the winter the majority of our horses were on Dengie Alfa A-Oil and a reduced amount of the Performance + balancer. The quantities of the Alfa A-oil and Performance + balancer have been gradually increased and those who require extra weight and energy have had Dengie Alpha Beet added into their diet. Our horses have salt and supplements added to their feeds all year round and are fed Ridings Equine Vets Joint support supplement and Gastric supplement. We believe feeding a good quality joint supplement is important for maintaining joint health and soundness in all of our horses. Those who either have history of ulcers or are of a more stressy nature are fed the Gastric supplement which will help prevent recurrence or reduce the risk of ulcers developing. During the eventing season some of our
horses who are competing at a higher level, are also fed Ridings
Equine Vets haemo tonic to give them a boost as it is high in vitamin B. Electrolytes are also added to their feeds prior to and following exercise or
competition where they have worked hard and sweated plenty.

Our horses had a visit from Faith at Equine Physio Services at the end of January and are all feeling on top form. Every horse does daily carrot stretches as recommended by Faith to increase flexibility and core stability. Ellie from ENS Saddles also gave us a visit to check our horses saddles and made any required changes. We are looking
forwards to another pre-season visit from Ellie before the season starts at the beginning of April. All of the horses have had stud holes back in their shoes this week and we are looking forwards to XC schooling at home.

We are excited to get back out training and competing and we hope
to give you an insight into our training with our horses in
preparation for the eventing season along the way. Keep an eye out
on the Ridings Equine Vets social media pages for our updates and please following us at Team Roberts Eventing.