Horses

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We have lots of horses on the Wild Atlantic Way in Ireland and many more in Ballyyahoo.

This horse is one of my favourites. He is really friendly and always comes over to the gate to say hello.

I like his white face and white feathered socks and I love the way his hair falls over his eyes.

He always stands close to the fence post – almost as if he is peeping around it.

You can see in the background that there are lots of fields behind him.

This is a lucky horse because he has loads of space to roam around and loads of grass to eat and sadly not all horses are so lucky.

SPOTTED HORSES

There are all different kinds of horses around Ballyyahoo. This lovely group of spotted horses live in a field quite near Biddy’s beach.

Like most animals in Ballyyahoo they get moved around from field to field.

It all depends on the time of year and how much grass there is for them to eat.

Grass gets scarcer in the winter as the weather gets worse and grass stops growing.

Last year there was a fodder crisis here in Ireland because spring came very late and so the grass was very late to grow.

Adults were disappointed because their plants were very late growing as well.

But it was a much bigger problem for the farmers because there was nothing left on the fields for the animals to graze.

The farmers of Ballyyahoo had to move the horses and cattle around from field to field – looking for grass and sometimes they had to bring in silage.

Silage is like grass that’s been kind of pickled and stored in these great big black bales you see below.

Silage has a very strong smell. Some people don’t mind it but I usually hold my nose when I pass it by.

One day I was on the way down to Biddy’s beach when one of the spotted horses came quite close to the gate. It was the closest one of them ever came to me.

It was great to be able to get this close because I was able to get a picture to show you.

I like all the horses around Ballyyahoo but I do think this one is very special.

You don’t see all that many spotted horses around and they all tend to be very shy.

These two black and white horses below aren’t so shy. They come right up to the wire fence.

I love their long manes and feathered legs. I have heard that if a horse wanted to it could jump over a wire fence, or a gate but I’ve never seen it happen – not yet anyway!