Thank you to Jane Badger for this video of a speaker at the World Horse Welfare Conference, 2012. John Grant was raised as a traveller and now works as an RSPCA inspector. He talks about traveller culture and horses, from pride to fly grazing.
Category Archives: Cobs
Whole Heap of Little Horse Links
– the march of the Bronies continues apace – literally. We now have a thriving “military bronies” community, dedicated to adult My Little Pony fans, and a full range of customised guns to accessorise. (Military Times) – a two-year-old cob in West Yorkshire managed to trap himself in an underground pump chamber for five whole …
Blatant Cobbery
THE COB. This is essentially a fancy article. A cob is, compared to other horses, much what a ”concentrated luncheon lozenge’ is to a vol au vent. He must have as much breeding as possible, combined with the power of a carthorse. It is not everyone that is a judge of a cob. An underbred, …
Fly Grazing: Legal Precedent?
Vale of Glamorgan council are moving faster now, perhaps in light of the episode in which forty horses were left to trash Woodland Trust land. Sixty horses dumped on land near Cardiff Airport have been rehomed via charities like Redwings, Horse World and the Bransby Home of Rest for Horses. The BBC reports: … as …
Salvos Across the Equine Gene Pool: a Reader
This is not so much a post as a string of links to some interesting, thought-provoking essays elsewhere and a question: what is “pure blood” and should it matter? Let me explain. Roughly speaking, until the nineteenth century and even the twentieth century, the vast majority of horses and ponies in the West were not …
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Cobsession
“At Harolds Park Farm, Essex (31 July), Vicky Westcott and her ‘hairy pony’ Ad Lib III won both elementaries on over 65% – their personal best scores to date. Vicky said: ‘He’s a 15hh piebald Romany cob with full feathers and a full mane. He thinks he’s very handsome. When we go around the arena …
A Moustache: What the Well-Groomed Stallion is Wearing This Year
A survivor of Spindles Farm, happily esconced at the brilliant Redwings Horse Sanctuary. Not quite as impressive as that sported by Alfie, a Gloucestershire stallion, who featured in Metro this week. Maybe he should have laid off the hair gel?
Ship of Foals
Third horse from the front was the mare. An enormous black and white cob with heavy legs covered in wiry, coarse hair. He remembered loading her up back in Co Kerry and doubting she’d fit in the bay, but if they don’t fit you make them fit and he’d got her on. She’d seemed a placid …
Irresponsible Single Mother or BOGOF?
From the blog of the Olympic equestrian legacy fund, Hoof: A city farm in London is appealing for help after discovering one of its seven riding school ponies is pregnant. Pimms, a five year-old coloured Irish cob was purchased last autumn and has proved to be exceptional – even taking part in a sponsored cross-country …
Keeping Large Numbers of Horses during a Recession
HOW NOT TO DO IT: Some 250 horses have been dumped in Bridgend by owners who, it seems, could not afford to feed nor care for them. There are rumours that some have been killed on the roads already, and a few have died of lung infections or starvation. In the photo on the Daily …
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