Sustainable Horsekeeping in the West and Southwest
Sustainable in the ecological sense means that we are not using up the earth’s resources faster than they can be replenished. There is a website https://www.footprintnetwork.org/ where you can take a quiz and find out how quickly it takes you, personally, to use up your year’s worth of earth’s resources. Everyone on earth together used up this year’s worth by Aug. 2. That was “Overshoot” day which means that for the rest of the year we are borrowing against future years’ resources! If we keep overshooting then at some point we will not have any future left to borrow from. The other scary thing is that if everyone on earth used resources at the same rate that we do here in the US we would run out of them even more quickly!
As horse owners, especially those of us who live in arid and semi-arid areas, we have to add the negative impact on the environment that our equines have on top of our footprint! Here are just some of the ways that can happen.
Water! The most valuable resource of all. A horse requires a lot of it – for drinking, growing its feed, bathing, etc and belatedly we are realizing that we cannot continue to pump water out of aquifers faster than it can be replenished or depend on ground water which is already over-committed! Cities and agriculture are fighting for the same liquid resource. As the price and availability of water goes up, farmers will be forced to plant more valuable crops than hay or other animal feed in order to pay for the water and still make a profit. Inevitably the cost of a bale of hay will continue to rise as more farmers move away from growing it. Horse owners should be aware that if water should become scarce in their community that livestock, including horses, will be the first to be kicked out. Therefore it is just good PR to do everything that you can to conserve water and show that you are a good neighbor. For some water-saving ideas check out this post. https://www.ecohorsekeeping.com/?p=601&preview=true
CO2 or Carbon Footprint! Horse people also tend to be “people” people. We enjoy getting out and doing our various horse activities in the company of other people. Sometimes just with one or two and sometimes with hundreds of them! If our horses are also our business then these activities are an indispensable part of it. We, unavoidably, transport our horses to these activities in trailers towed by gas-guzzling, carbon dioxide-emitting trucks. Suggestions here. https://www.ecohorsekeeping.com/?p=630&preview=true
Hay and feed. Another unfortunate reality is that horses have a bad habit of eating. More fossil fuel went into the growing, harvesting, packaging, and transporting of that feed and a whole lot of that valuable water! Don’t worry, I don’t have a post for training your horses to quit eating! But we do need to be aware of where our feed comes from and what resources go into it before it goes into our horses.
Waste! Then there is the problem of manure……
These are just some of the issues we need to deal with, there are many more! The challenge for us horse people is to find ways to conserve water, reduce our CO2 emissions, or counter them and make sure that horses have an accepted place in the difficult years ahead. The trail is going to be a rocky one but the more of us that ride it together the smoother it will become. Eco Horsekeeping is dedicated to creating a place where we can share ideas, provide motivation, and answer questions about positive things that we can do and minimize or counter the negative ones that we have to do in order to provide a more sustainable future for us, our children and our horses.
I hope that you will come along for the ride!