Sick bay has horses happy
Horses at Riding for the Disabled will be happier following the construction of a horse sick bay.
The sick bay means horses do not need to be transported in horse floats to visit the vet and for check-ups.
Riding for the Disabled volunteer Julie Down said the organisation’s volunteers had been raising the $15,000 required to build the bay for the past year.
The horse sick bay includes an undercover crush that means vets can treat the animals away from the sun.
“We had a crush already, so we built the sickbay around that,” Mrs Down said.
In the past, volunteers spent days transporting the horses in floats to the vet for annual check-ups.
“Now the vet can come down here and do six horses in a morning, then come back the next morning to do the rest,” she said.
The sick bay also includes a stable.
“It was finished at a really good time because some of our horses need to be locked up at this time of the year to stop them eating too much green grass, ” Mrs Down said.
Many of the organisation’s 14 horses were retired trotters or old horses that had been donated.
Mrs Down said the older horses could not handle eating big amounts of green grass before getting sick.
Riding for the Disabled volunteers held a sausage sizzle and sold a tonne of seed potatoes as part of the fundraising effort.
“Our volunteers did a lot of work to raise the money and there were nice contributions from a few people,” she said.
