The mysterious case of the missing series finale

4 years ago I started a blog series on nutrition for barefoot horses.

Part 1 The Importance of Nutrition for Barefoot Horses

Part 2 The Importance of Digestion for Barefoot Horses

Part 3 The Importance of Circulation for Barefoot Horses

We all know how important it is to get the diet right if we want sound healthy hooves, so it proved to be a pretty popular series, the links are above if you'd like a look. It should have been a 4 part series, but I had a problem…

The first 3 parts were easy, we talked about feeds to avoid, digestion and circulation… All important factors in getting good nutrition to the hooves.

But part 4… what to feed… that article was causing some issues.

It’s not that I never wrote the article. I did. Many times. And each time I deleted it rather than posted it. People kept asking me where part 4 was. ‘I’m working on it’ I’d reply. And I was.

It’s not that I don’t know what to feed - that’s something I give advice about every day.

The crux of the problem is this…

People just want to know what to feed their horse. 

They want someone to tell them how much of what product(s) to put in the bucket. I could do that. I’ve written a few blog posts like that. 

But I’d delete them, rather than post them, because if I posted, I’d get a slew of comments saying 'it’s not that simple'. That their horse has individual needs, that not all horses are the same etc. And the problem is I 100% agree. It’s not that simple. There isn’t 1 solution that suits all horses. So... delete, delete delete

So that leaves me writing a different kind of post. 

One that explains that there is no simple ‘feed X, Y and maybe Z’ answer. That there’s all sorts of different factors to take into account, and there’s many different methods and techniques for management, which will suit different environments, and different horses.

I know I’d be met with a slew of comments telling me I’d made it sound too complicated, and the reader still doesn’t know what to actually feed.

I 100% agree with them too, because while it’s accurate, it’s not making things more simple. It’s just giving someone enough information to understand why they don’t know the answer. It’s not actually helping them get the answer. So I delete that article rather than post it too, because it’s my mission to make things less complicated.

(for realsies… I have an actual mission statement written down and everything saying that I’m going to make things less confusing and help people get healthier horses, with less effort and frustration)

Round and round I go... 

with this stupid, elusive, frustrating part 4 of my otherwise awesome (if I do say so myself) nutrition for barefoot horses series.

Well… then this whole pandemic thing kicked off. And the govt told me to stay at home and wait, and everyone else had to do that too. For years I’ve had people asking me to do a nutrition course, and now I had some time, and lots of other people stuck at home wanted to learn online and… well I started an online Academy last year…and this whole missing nutrition series finale has been bothering me for years…

With all the challenges we’ve faced over the last few weeks, I think it’s a terribly small thing to accept that part 4 is never going to happen… I can’t do it.

What I can, and have done is create a short course. 3 modules, 19 lessons making 2 hours of videos, plus extra resources, with monthly live Q&A sessions and a community discussion group... Aaaand suddenly it’s obvious why I couldn’t make it fit into 1 blog post.

The Healthy Horse: Feeding and Nutrition course is here… Click here to find out more