BlindLove - Cart Horses Report - July 2023
BlindLove in South Africa is one of the partner groups with AAA is able to support with the help of our amazing donors. Following is BlindLove’s report on cart horses in Thaba’nchu Free State Province for July 2023.
During the month of July our team from Agripreneur farmers Institute held 4 outreach clinics and 1 veterinery outreach clinic with the CCS vet Dr Arno.
Outreach days were: 7th July, 15th July, 22nd July, 26th July (veterinery outreach), 29th July.
A total of 45 horses were seen this month.
All horses that attend these outreach clinics get an overall body condition score in order to monitor them. Any minor injuries and wounds get treated on the spot, and the horses all get treated for internal and external parasites. Being winter however we do see a decline in ticks and flies. Hooves are also checked.
The team continues to address welfare issues with the owners. This month focusing on how a thin, lame, sick or injured horses not only poses as a welfare concern but also has an extreme adverse effect on the earning capasity of the family it supports and thus contributes to the cycle of poverty many owners find themselves trapped in.
At one of the outreaches, Itumeleng Modise (who is the Animal Scientist from the Agripreneur Farmers Institute team) talked to the owners about animal nutrition and how they could properly plant feed for their horses.
Owners expressed interest in learning more about this as an option for providing better quality nutrition for their animals.
We were also very excited to hear that the Agripreneur Farmers Institute had this month officially received their full accreditation with the Department of Agriculture which means all their courses and workshops relating to Mixed farming systems, plant production, animal production, pest control and agri services is now fully accredited as an education and training provider in the Agricultural sector. We are glad to have them on our team!
We were also pleased to see owners were taking initiative and calling the CCS vets out themselves to come and visit and treat their horses. Some of these owners live further out of town and have large numbers of horses, making it impossible for the owners to bring them all into town.
We managed to raise additonal funds for another 20 bags of milled lucerne to be distributed amongst the horses during July. Harsh winter month means almost no grazing for these hard working horses, so feed is greatly aprreciated by the owners and their horses!
We have almost hit our target of sewing up batch of 20 harnesses. Michael our groom handstitched 10, and the brothers with the small sewing business in town are almost done sewing up the next 10.
We have made a couple of adjustments like adding a second neck strap, more padding on the first neckstrap and then just a single loin strap. Over the 6 month period we have managed to sew up 24 complete full harness sets. The total funds allocated wer R9000, which means our harnesses work out to R 375 each which is almost exactly what we had hoped for. The harnesses will be sent out in early August.
