Horse care

A pleasant place to exercise the horses.

The stable rises with the day in any season: a little later in the Winter, very early in the Summer. Guillaume Macaire’s first headache is “the making of the list”. Adapting the horse to the rider and vice versa. Adapting each pair to each lot according to the work to be made. Adapting to the newcomers, to the evolution of each one, its progress and keeping the targets in mind. Each rider is responsible for his horse: he feeds him, waters him and grooms him. Philippe Robert, head lad, always keeps an eye on what is going on around the stables.

When the horse is saddled up, the rider takes him in hand to a paddock where all the horses of the same lot gather.
All the riders get on their horses backs for the first “warm up”, always done in slow trot or hack.

Guillaume Macaire was the first French trainer to buy a “walker” and to understand from the very start the interest of this “machine” which is, in no case, an economy of staff.

The principle of the walker is simple: the horses are exercised muscularly and mentally without direct constraint of the man.
The horse will be able to recover after a race or warm up before work without a rider on its back: no weight,
no contact of the rider’s hand on the mouth.
The exerciser is used daily for various purposes:
A horse who needs to warm his back up without carrying the rider’s weight.
A tensed horse that needs to relax a little before he can provide the required concentration on the track.
A horse who cannot carry a saddle ( sore withers), and that still needs to be exercised.

The fitness weight is an unvaluable indicator of the horse’s health and fitness while he is in training. Horses are weighed regularly, but especially before and after the races in order to find out precisely their form and if they can or not resume training.

In any preoccupation with a hygiene of life, food plays an important part: in fact for the race horse
it is of primary importance.
The horse is a herbivorous nomad with athletic requirements that force him to adapt to the sedentary mode.
It is important to respect “Mother Nature” to the maximum. Most of our horses are on wood shaving beddings.
They all get as much hay in their racks as they want, this prevents from excessive boredom and makes sure they get the bulk for good digestion.
The water buckets are permanently filled with clean water. They are cleaned every morning by the exercise riders
who check that the horses have drunk normally.
Our horses are also fed oats and a food complement distributed in the morning.
In the evening they get a full bucket of mash, a mixture of cooked barley, oats and bran.
The horses get their “hot soup” even when they go to the races, where pressure-cookers ensure semi minute cooking!