Galcantray Clydesdales

25/02/2021

Can you spare a minute to help Beverley Walker?

Can you spare a minute to help Beverley Walker?

2326 signatures are still needed! Make it illegal to feed other peoples horses

25/02/2021

Petition: Make feeding horses/ponies and livestock a specific criminal offence

Petition: Make feeding horses/ponies and livestock a specific criminal offence

A lot of owned animals including horses and ponies have special diets or are prone to illnesses caused by the wrong food.

13/02/2021

Aberdeen-Angus Cattle Society

The Scottish Farmer Aberdeen-Angus Stirling Bull Sale Preview📖

Low cost, low input systems are the ultimate goals in any farming operation and Nairn based Aberdeen-Angus herd owned by David & Beverly Walker, believe they have achieved both in their Galcantray herd.

Make sure to pick up a Scottish Farmer today to find out more about the operations at Galcantray...

10/02/2021

Anne MacPherson Photography

Anne MacPherson Photography

Video number three for Galcantray Aberdeen Angus !
Mister Bond is also entered for United Auctions - Livestock Auctioneers Stirling sale next weekend.
Contact David Walker and Callum Innes for more details :-)

10/02/2021

Anne MacPherson Photography

Anne MacPherson Photography

Galcantray Poseidon V251, second of three videos for Galcantray Aberdeen Angus.
Bulls entered for United Auctions - Livestock Auctioneers sale in Stirling next weekend.
Please contact David Walker and Callum Innes for details :-)

10/02/2021

Anne MacPherson Photography

Anne MacPherson Photography

The first of three videos from yesterday's visit to Galcantray Aberdeen Angus.

These bulls are entered for United Auctions - Livestock Auctioneers Stirling sale next weekend.
For more information contact David Walker or Callum Innes.

10/02/2021

Anne MacPherson Photography

A local photoshoot for me today at Galcantray :-)
These are the three Aberdeen Angus bulls that Galcantray Aberdeen Angus have forward for Stirling next weekend.
Videos to follow!

25/01/2021

Galcantray Clydesdales

24/01/2021

We start them young here at Galcantray Clydesdales!!!

24/01/2021

Galcantray Clydesdales

24/01/2021

Galcantray Clydesdales

20/01/2021

The white stuff is back! 🌨❄

18/01/2021

18/01/2021

08/01/2021

‘Saving the greatest horse’: Clydesdale stars in television documentary

Please feel free to add any comments, I have, I didn't tag anyone, i didn't want to involve anyone...

The BBC production Clydesdale: Saving the Greatest Horse based on Scotland’s native Clydesdale horses will be shown on BBC Scotland

24/12/2020

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from our herd to yours!

Not quite the year any of us had planned however, we hope to make up for some of that in 2021!

Hope you all enjoy a very happy and healthy festive season from all at Galcantray Clydesdales 🎄

10/12/2020

Royal Highland Show 2021 will go ahead

Some good news for Thursday!

It has been the question on many people’s lips in recent months but this week Royal Highland Show organisers announced the event will go ahead in 2021.

10/12/2020

Simply Beautiful

Merry Christmas 🎅

Sooo Cute 😁😉

08/12/2020

⭐ Winter Sale ⭐

Galcantray Clydesdales are having a sale on the US Nibble Nets!

For a limited time we will be selling these VAT free which is an awesome 20% off!

If you're looking for the perfect Christmas gift for that horsey person who has everything then look no further! 🎁

PM for further details

07/12/2020

Pegasus Jewellery Ltd

Brilliant! 🎄

06/12/2020

Equine Veterinary & Dental Services Pty. Ltd. (EVDS)

For the second time in a fortnight this week, our gastroscopy service at EVDS has proved that not every horse with symptoms of gastric ulcers should simply be treated without evidence through scoping.

This horse an 8 yo stock horse gelding , had a dull rough coat, 9 ribs showing , would seem hungry but then stand for 5 hours without eating grass.
He also didn’t want to eat his carrots and was girthy.

The option to just treat him properly for gastric ulcers was considered and would cost upwards of $600 for 4-8 weeks of treatment.

But the better option of scoping him was chosen and revealed that he did not have ANY ulcers - in the pylorus or non glandular stomach - but he had a gastric impaction !

Gastric impaction is diagnosed as a hard ball of feed that should have passed after a suitable period of fasting. This horse had the standard pre-scoping protocol of fasting for 18 hrs and no water for 6 hrs. His stomach should have been close to empty!

Gastric impactions can last weeks to months and cause symptoms similar to stomach ulcers.

Causative factors include gulping/rushing of feed, feeds that swell, teeth problems, and stalky hay/straw being fed.

This horse had 3 of those factors, plus was only been fed once daily in a paddock with little grass.

Treatment of these involves administering large volumes of diet coke and water , over several hours to days, and rescoping until the hard ball has dissolved and passed.

This horse received 4.75 ltrs of diet coke over 3 tubings and 4 hours and that did the trick.

He was scoped again yesterday to check his pylorus and non glandular stomach and all was good. No impaction.

The reason diet coke works is that is has a pH of 2.6 from the phosphoric and carbonic acid, so the acid, along with the bubbles, help to penetrate and break up the cellulose fibre impaction.

Regular coke has far too much sugar and could cause the horse to get laminitis.

There were NO ill effects from the diet coke or the scoping and fasting procedure.

Even within a week, this horse’s coat, body condition and energy levels have improved a lot. 👍
He has continued to gain weight and be very healthy in the 3 wks following the treatment.

If you have found this post interesting and would like to see more like it, PLEASE LIKE our page. 🙏

02/12/2020

Old Irish Tellybox

Old Irish Tellybox

Budweiser Christmas Advert 1987. The Clydesdale horses, an image of Christmas from the golden age of television advertising.
Many of you will remember this nostalgic tune.

Drink Responsibly - Drink Tea

01/12/2020

UK Premiere on BBC Scotland — Saving the Greatest Horse

UK Premiere on BBC Scotland — Saving the Greatest Horse

The Clydesdale horse, famed for its white feathered feet and for hauling Budweiser beer – is in danger of dying out. These giant and iconic horses are on the verge of what many call the “vortex of extinction” in the very place where they were first bred – Scotland. The horse was once so valu...

22/11/2020

The Equine Documentalist

Are your horses feet causing back issues?

Studies have shown us that lameness affects the back due to the horses compensatory mechanisms.

Pfau (2020) discussed how horses uses biomechanics and musculoskeletal adaptions in order to firstly reduce the forces on a lame limb but at the same time protect the other limbs from overuse, highlighting the back as a link between the fronts and hinds. A “stiff” back enabled the horse to make use of these adaptive mechanisms.

Spinal stiffening was also suggested by Hobbs et al. In horses that had high low hooves in front as a mechanism for maintaining straight movement with the help of contra lateral hind limb compensations. A recent article of mine discussed the feet as the beginning and end of a closed kinetic chain and we can see here how this is used by the horse.

These adaptive mechanisms are good in the short term as they enable painful limbs/feet to be protected. But if these adaptive movements become long term due to chronic pain then secondary issues can ensue.
It is also important to appreciate that adaptive movements become engrained over long periods and do not always correct themselves with the abolition of the primary pain (Rombach 2020), secondary issues could become the new primary and cycles can be created.
Rehabilitation becomes essential to return the horse to their natural movement and postural patterns.

To repeat the theme of many of my posts. The feet and body are inextricably linked, if you’re dealing with back pain, could the feet be playing a part? If you are having morphological issues of the feet, is the back playing a role? And maybe the whole cycle is being created by something else completely.

For further reading follow the trail starting from these links..
.

https://www.theequinedocumentalist.com/post/bio-tensegrity-and-farriery-the-foreword
.

https://www.theequinedocumentalist.com/post/the-hoof-the-beginning-and-end-of-the-kinetic-chain

11/11/2020

Moray Coast Vet Group

💜 Purple Poppy 💜

These poppies pay tribute to animals lost in service, and to those who serve us today.

Animals like horses, dogs and pigeons were often drafted into the war effort, and those that wear the purple poppy feel their service should be recognised. In particular, many horses were killed or injured in World War One.

#LestWeForget

07/11/2020

Had an excellent day at today's foal show held at Howe Equestrian Centre, thank you very much to the Black family for hosting such a great show! Well done to all of today's prize winners 🏆 I think I speak for everyone when I say a great day was had by all! So great to be back at a show and can't wait for the next one 😁

27/10/2020

Clydesdale: Saving the Greatest Horse

Clydesdale: Saving the Greatest Horse

Coming soon to the documentary Channel: https://bit.ly/35HKgJI

20/10/2020

Newly weaned colt foal for sale, good with farrier, good to load, easy handled. He went to his first show on Saturday, and he was 2nd in his class. PM for more details

10/10/2020

On the big jobs this weekend ❤

Just a girl and her horse...the term gentle giants was made for Clydesdales! 😍

Happy Saturday everyone!!

30/09/2020

Suffolk Show (Official)

It is with great sadness we would like to announce that the next Suffolk Show will take place in 2022 not 2021 as originally hoped.
Please read the full statement on our website www.suffolkshow.co.uk.
We will be communicating with all our exhibitors, sponsors, competitors, contractors and volunteers to discuss arrangements going forward.
We will now focus on making our 2022 Show a celebration to be proud of!

24/09/2020

Sporthorse Apothecary

FAILED VETTING ??? Flexion Tests???
100% worth a read!

You’ve decided to sell your horse and the potential buyer has sent a veterinarian to your stables to perform a pre-purchase exam. Or, you’re the buyer, and you’re excited to complete your purchase. As you stand, beaming with satisfaction, the veterinarian picks up the horse’s left front leg. Bending it at the fetlock, he or she holds it in the air for 60 seconds or so, releases the limb, and asks that the horse be immediately jogged down the drive. In astonishment, you watch as the horse that you’ve known – or hoped – to be sound moves off with an obvious bob of the head. He’s most decidedly lame after the test.

What happened?
What does it mean?

What you have witnessed is a phenomenon not necessarily of the veterinarian’s creation, but something that can sometimes occur following a procedure called a forelimb flexion test. In a forelimb flexion test, various joints and soft tissue structures of the lower limb are stretched and/or compressed for a brief period of time by bending the limb. Afterward, the horse is immediately trotted off and observed for signs of lameness.

Simple, really. But it gets messy.

Forelimb flexion tests were described in Swedish veterinary literature as early as 1923. And, since then, they’ve become something of an integral part of the evaluation of the lame horse. But not only that, forelimb flexion tests are generally routinely included in prepurchase evaluations of horses intended for sale.

The test is not unlike what you might experience if someone asked you to sit in a crouch for sixty seconds and then run right off. Usually – and especially if you’ve never had knee problems – you can run off just fine, particularly after a couple of steps. If you’ve never had a problem, chances are that you’re fine, no matter what happens in those first couple of steps. But very occasionally, that stiffness and soreness that you might feel could signal a problem (such as a bad knee).

This test used to make me nuts, and to some extent, it still does. That’s because I’m often not to sure what to make of the state of things when a horse takes some bad steps after a flexion test. I mean, I know I might not pass such a test. So who’s to say that every horse should?

Because of that question, back in 1997, I did I study. It’s still timely. In my study, I looked at fifty horses (100 legs) of various breeds, ages, sex, and occupation. The owners were gracious enough to let me explore my curiosity about forelimb flexion tests. The horses were from my practice, an included a wide variety of pleasure and performance horses – including some world class jumping horses – but overall, they were a representative sampling of all of the horses that were in my practice.

Here’s what I found.

I found that forelimb flexion tests couldn’t tell me anything about the future of a sound horse. I could make every single horse lame with a hard enough flexion test, with the exception of one particularly annoying Arabian gelding who was always trying to bite me (no Arabian jokes, please).
Horses that had “something” on their X-rays weren’t any more likely to be lame after a “normal” flexion test than horses that had “clean” X-rays.
Horses that had positive “normal” flexion tests weren’t any more likely to be lame 60 days out, either (those horses that were lame mostly had things like hoof abscesses, which nobody could have predicted anyway).
If you follow a groups of horses for 60 days, there’s a decent chance that a few of them might experience an episode of lameness. Who knew?
So what did I conclude? Well, I said – right there in front of an entire meeting of the American Association of Equine Practitioners – that I didn’t think that it was a good idea to rely on forelimb flexion tests to make a diagnosis of some current or future problem without some other supporting sign. I said I didn’t think that they were very sensitive, or that they were very specific. And I said that I didn’t think it was a good idea to turn a horse down base solely on a response to a forelimb flexion test, either.

Which caused a bit of a kerfuffle.

What’s the Bottom Line?

If you’re a seller, I don’t think that you need to be overly concerned if your otherwise sound horse takes a few lame steps after a forelimb flexion test. There are just too many variables.

For example:
Older horses are more likely to be positive to flexion that are younger horses
The longer you hold a limb in flexion, the more likely the horse is to take a few lame steps afterwards
Men tend to flex more firmly than do women
The same horse may have different responses to flexion tests on different days
If you’re a buyer, don’t be too eager to walk away from a horse that you otherwise like just because he takes a few lame steps after a flexion test. You have to consider a lot of other factors, such as whether you like the horse, or whether he does what you want him to do, or if he’s a colour that you like...

You just can’t consider the forelimb flexion test in a vaccum. It has to interpreted in light of clinical findings such as fluid in the joint, reduced limb or joint flexibility, pain to palpation, or clinical lameness in the limb that demonstrates the positive response. If you see abnormal X-rays findings (such as osteoarthritis) in a limb that has a positive response to a flexion test, that may add some significance, and particularly if there is concurrent clinical lameness. However, to keep things confusing, my study also found that many radiographic abnormalities occur in clinically sound horses. Remember, you have to ride the horse – you can’t ride the radiographs. Horses can and do perform well for a variety of riding endeavors even when they do not perform well on a forelimb flexion test.

As for a positive response to a forelimb flexion test, it may just be that everything is OK, but the horse doesn’t like his leg bent up!

Thanks to Dr. David Ramey for the info! here’s a link to the original article: https://www.doctorramey.com/flex-test/

10/09/2020

Mysterious Stories

Mysterious Stories

9 Largest Living Horse Breeds In The World!

09/09/2020

Clydesdale: Saving the Greatest Horse

Clydesdale: Saving the Greatest Horse

Saving the Greatest Horse is a documentary film about graphic designer Janice Kirkpatrick and her quest to save the Clydesdale horse from extinction in their native country of Scotland.

01/09/2020

21 Queens Avenue, Haddington, East Lothian, EH41 3BJ

21 Queens Avenue, Haddington, East Lothian, EH41 3BJ

This significantly upgraded and extended end terraced villa is particularly pleasantly located within a tree lined street minutes from the centre of the town. Offering generous living space over two levels the house has a lovely bright and stylish interior, a large drive offering good off road parki...

26/08/2020

Heavy Horse Herald

Heavy Horse Herald

Sadly we have to report that Lanark, Biggar and Peebles Foal Show, due to be held in October, has been cancelled due to current government restrictions and legislation. We shall continue to keep you all updated as and when we hear news of others.