An Equine Conversation

Welcome to An Equine Conversation, a podcast brought to you by Abbey’s Run Equestrian.

This podcast aims to help you, the horse owner, improve your knowledge by giving you access to top quality information that will help you be the best horse owner you can be so that you can give your horses the best life possible.

Through An Equine Conversation, I’ll share my expertise with you along with helping you connect to and hear from some amazing experts in their own fields – because while I have a lot of knowledge, I am by no means the expert in all of the things. We’ll also be talking with horse owners about their journey with their animals.

We’ll explore ways our horses can be physically and mentally healthier through topics around training, horse-health, enrichment, emergency preparedness, history, our own mental wellbeing and physical health and more. We’ll be giving you practical actions you can implement with your horses and information to explore, consider and further investigate.

These podcast episodes are absolutely designed to be thought-provoking and they may bring you some ideas, approaches or information that you haven’t come across previously.

Thank you to Matthew Bliss for podcast production & consultation. If you'd like him to help with your podcast, get in touch by email at business@mbpod.com

Sarah Nickels 10/25/23 Sarah Nickels 10/25/23

S3 E4: Crib-biting: a game changing study - with Dr Michaela Hempen

It was a few years back now when I first heard about Dr Michaela Hempen’s Masters Research on Crib-biting, which, for those uninitiated, is a stereotypic behaviour that horses can develop. I heard about the research and then had the good fortune to see some of the timeline film of the project thanks to Alexandra Kurland.

There is not much now, after so long in the horse world that really captures my attention strongly, but wow, Michaela’s research blew my mind – it still does. I was captivated watching the footage, absolutely glued to the screen to see it all in as much detail as I could take in.

I think the findings from Michaela’s work are absolutely game-changing in terms of how we view, understand and then manage crib-biting in horses. I am so moved by Michaela and the broader teams work in this space and the implications it has for the welfare of cribbing horses. I look forward to further research happening on crib-biting & other equine stereotypies.

Since I heard about this research, anyone mentions crib-biting and I vomit excitement about Michaela’s research all over them… so I was itching to have Michaela come and speak with me to share this with you, our An Equine Conversation listeners so I could point people to this conversation instead of trying to explain the research and findings myself.

There is so much to talk about & this is a long episode… but we still ran out of time & need to talk again.