When old is new again: The stories of lessons learned from the past

Dr. Bob Coleman, University of Kentucky equine extension specialist, shares his favorite presentations from the recent ESS meetings.  We talk about a youth horsemanship school with a 50 year history from Texas A&M University. Then we talk a bit about the evolution of the horse to fit a unique digestive niche.

Transcript

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Kris Hiney: Welcome to extension horses, tack box talk series horse stories with a purpose. I'm your host, Dr. Kris Hiney, with Oklahoma State University, and today we have one of our favorite returning guests to talk about some of the highlights they had at our recent Equine Science symposium. So welcome back Dr. Bob Coleman.

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Bob Coleman: How are you, Dr. Hiney? I'm doing fantastic. We just finished up our state 4-H horse show. So Now, I'm in the office and trying to sort through the the wreckage

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Kris Hiney: state 4-H or so such a wonderful time, especially when it's over. absolutely, absolutely. It went really. Well. But I think that's a nice segue, because you are actually going to be talking about a program. that was highlighted, that works to develop youth riders in a unique way. So tell us a little bit about this presentation.

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Bob Coleman: Yeah, this is the one that was from Texas A. And M. University. It talks about their summer horsemanship program, and one of the things that really struck me about. It is when they started out in it and reminded us that it heard about this a while back

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Bob Coleman: that it's been goineg for 50 years.

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Bob Coleman: And today we hear a lot of things about oh, we have to be innovative, and we have to do some things differently. And and sometimes I think we forget to remember that

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Bob Coleman: the basics are really important. And that's what this program has always done. And I think the authors did a great job of sort of reminding us of what they had done, and

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Bob Coleman: and particularly The one thing that really hit me first was how they target the youth to come, and they reflect on the fact that they come from all different levels and all

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Bob Coleman: different times or lengths of experience. You know, when you think about it that we could have people come to our extension programs and our education activities that could be very brand new.

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Bob Coleman: And there could be same people in the room that have multiple years of experience. And how do we.

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Bob Coleman: Tailor Our education

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Bob Coleman: delivery in a manner that we can touch all of those particular audiences. And I think that's been, you know, a really strong part of this particular program. the other thing that I I think we sometimes forget about

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Bob Coleman: and depending on who you're out against is, I like the fact that it is undergraduate students from Texas A and M's program that are delivering the program and delivering the educational material. Because sometimes you see this happen that the audience will interact with the

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Bob Coleman: person that's giving the material. If there is some level of

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Bob Coleman: acceptance and engagement, and so oftentimes I think that some of the youths find it a little easier to deal with people that are closer to their own age.

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Bob Coleman: and maybe don't get the feeling that they're being lectured to by mom, dad or grandpa. And I I think that makes a difference. And so when you look at it, you know, the experience was anywhere from

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Bob Coleman: less than a year to more than 10 years. I did think that was interesting. Their average age was 15. So if you're 15 and you've been doing this for more than 10 years, you were pretty young when you started. But that's pretty common for horse people. It's like I've been doing this my whole life. Well.

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Bob Coleman: maybe not quite that long, but And I guess the other thing is, I thought their results were really strong, and

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Bob Coleman: one of the ones that really hit home is one of the the strongest

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Bob Coleman: areas where they learned a few or more things was safety.

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Bob Coleman: And again, in the in our industry

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Bob Coleman: we have to be careful, and I think it happens to all of us. I know I have been guilty of this, that sometimes you get a little complacent, and maybe don't think about doing things in the safest.

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Bob Coleman: best way possible for you and the horse. So I thought that was really good. But when you looked at the results everybody learned something. and in the responses as to did you learn a few things, or more than a few things was really high? I mean.

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Bob Coleman: you know, the lowest one was, I think, about 82% of the people said they learned something. Well, that happened to be a simple lead change. So maybe

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Bob Coleman: most people or percentage already do that, whereas, particularly those that have been riding for a number of years, they may have already accomplished that skill, but for the rest, you know you looked at it. It was sort of given in, you know, pressure and release the safety of.

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Bob Coleman: you know, basic moving the horse around, getting them to respond to the pressure of your leg. Those sorts of things even one that I I know, and you probably seen it at 4 H. I mean, I have. I've seen it in other activity levels, too, that loping on the correct lead. what a novel concept! But

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Bob Coleman: but when you think about it, and and we can kind of sort of go. Well, of coures, you should know that you watch a lot of people as they're learning that could be really difficult

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Bob Coleman: to appreciate, particularly if you're trying to get it through. Feel and not doing the the cheaters way, and looking down to see which legs coming out first right, and as a youth rider, the ability to control your hands and legs independently. and think about all the parts of the horse working at at the same time those are hard, and that takes a while to develop that skill

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Bob Coleman: at the areas that they were working on, that I think that you know, it really comes down to it that we all need to make sure that we have a good, solid, basic foundation

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Bob Coleman: about our horse knowledge. And that's what they stressed with this. And I think it's really something that 50 years and I remember hearing

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Bob Coleman: colleagues that had gone to Texas A. And M. Years ago we would probably know some of them. We won't mention names, because that will date us. But

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Bob Coleman: you know they they talked about B. F. Yates's concept for this, and and why it was important, and why things were done the same year, or the same thing year after year, because

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Bob Coleman: you still had to make sure that you touched all of the people and got the basics. And and I think it's exciting to see that this is continued, and it has such a strong program and a strong impact on the Youth horse people in Texas, we should all take a look at it and say, Hmm!

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Bob Coleman: This is a good thing. We should see if we can model this to a certain extent wherever we are.

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Kris Hiney: Yeah. And I'm a I can probably share a little bit, because I'm I'm a little bit more familiar with the program since I did my master's degree at A&M. And I had some of my fellow grad students actually, did the summer horsemanship program. So it's pretty pretty unique because they take undergrads or sometimes graduate students, and they train them for a to entire semester. So they ride together, and what they're training them on

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Kris Hiney: is how to teach the curriculum. So this is again, it's very youth centric. So they really do focus on all the important things like you said with you, like basic body control and speed control and stride control. Like all of the things that are the the fundamentals of horsemanship, but then they teach them how to teach it in a really fun, engaging way.

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Kris Hiney: and then they have all these games that essentially employ the use of those skills. So because anybody that works with kids knows that if you can have some games that come out of it where there's some competition, then that really works well to cement. Okay, we work on that skill. And then this is how we're actually going to employ it. So it is really a a fun fun way to teach kids in this very

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thoughtful,

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Kris Hiney: progressive manner, to to capture those fundamentals and then build on them over the time that they have the kids with them.

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Bob Coleman: Well in for the instructors. What a what a great basis for them.

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Bob Coleman: you know. Now, their basic skills are really well cemented. Plus.

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Bob Coleman: you know.

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Bob Coleman: we're we've always been told that there one of the best ways to really learn a skill or a piece of information is to

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Bob Coleman: go and teach it. And so not only are we teaching some

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Bob Coleman: young riders some better things. But

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Bob Coleman: It's pretty exciting, and what what the instructors are getting out of this, and

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Bob Coleman: where there they go on to become trainers or

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Bob Coleman: lesson givers, or whatever. My guess is that they become much better teachers.

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Kris Hiney: Oh, absolutely. And the ability for these kids to maintain their enthusiasm. So we actually hosted one the past 2 years here at Osu. So the the the aggies do get out of Texas sometimes and come up to still water to visit us. They do.

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Kris Hiney: Yeah, such a good job with maintaining their energy level. The instructors, like my days, are past me. I think of being able to do that peak intensity of funness for that long of a period of time.

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Kris Hiney: cause. Yeah, I used to do all of those youth camps as well. and it takes a lot, so I would always say, You know my hands are or my hat is off to these young ladies that have done such a great job of of doing these horsemanship programs over the years.

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Bob Coleman: It's good. And and I think we can celebrate that. Not everything has to be innovative. Sometimes we can be a little old school.

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Bob Coleman: and just follow along with what

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Bob Coleman: has been done and what works and and see. Maybe the innovation is, how can I make this work where I live? And

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Bob Coleman: and you're right trying to to

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Bob Coleman: have enthusiasm and and like you, I do the odd horse camp, and I'm fortunate. I only usually have to go for about a half a day.

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Bob Coleman: And you know, after 8 sessions of the same thing over that part of a day. I'm pretty much done

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Bob Coleman: time time to go home, because

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Bob Coleman: those kids wear you out they do, but that's off the they folks at A and M. For maintaining a really good program and giving us lots

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Bob Coleman: to think about as to what we could do, and the learning experience of Equine Science Society.

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All right. Now, you wanted to. talk about another presentation. that was one of our featured speakers.

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Kris Hiney: that we actually had somebody that wasn't specifically a horse person but dealt with

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Kris Hiney: evolution, and how animals adapt to different environments. So tell us a little bit about what they taught us, and I can even give you the title here the Iquid equid sorry, equid, nutritional physiology and behavior an evolutionary perspective.

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Bob Coleman: I thought Dr. Close, who was certainly had an energy level, that

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Bob Coleman: kept us all going. He was there.

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Bob Coleman: you know, via zoom, which can certainly be a challenge trying to be energetic when you don't actually get to see your audience. Very well. but I thought he did a great job of bringing this whole bit of information about how the horses evolved

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Bob Coleman: and how some of the things have happened relative to the digestive physiology which we really need to think about. in relation to how we feed our horses today that you know things have changed. You know the fact that the horse is a hind gut for mentor and that

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Bob Coleman: how rapidly

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Bob Coleman: food material goes through the gastrointestinal tract. was a good reminder of that. That. I think a lot of times, you know, we we get caught up in sort of the day to day and what we've always done.

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Bob Coleman: And maybe some of this, we learned some of this we appreciated, but I thought it was a really good

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Bob Coleman: presentation again to remind us of a lot of those basic things such as, yes, horses will eat a wide variety of things, but length of time going through the gastrointestinal track. I mean, we're spending a lot of time now in current research, looking at the microbiome and and all those sorts of things. So I thought, those people that are studying that part of

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Bob Coleman: the digestive physiology of the horse. This was a great reminder of

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Bob Coleman: how things actually work. You know the fact that things go through fairly quickly, and we have You know the microbiome is through up the horses gastrointestinal track, but every spot has a slightly different level of

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Bob Coleman: involvement in in importance, and I just thought that it was

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Bob Coleman: really good, that we looked at sort of the history and the evolution of the horse. How things have changed, and how do we adapt and and utilize this information. When we're feeding horses in such a wide variety of environments.

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Bob Coleman: You know, we've got horses out on pasture. We've got horses on pasture in Kentucky that might be pretty lush and and maybe lack diversity. And then where you live, Dr. Hiney, we've got horses on that Oklahoma pasture or town in South Texas that you know there's quite a variety of of grasses that they eat and and levels of maturity. And yet horses seem to survive

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Bob Coleman: and thrive despite what we might look at and say, oh, that's not a very good environment for them. They need to be in the barn, and they need to have other things provided to them. And

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Bob Coleman: in reality, maybe if we step back and let.

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Bob Coleman: and we've heard this more times, and maybe we should have. But let's maybe let horses be horses a time or 2 and see how things work. Granted, we still have to consider that, you know they they have a job to do, and sometimes those jobs put them in an environment that

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Bob Coleman: might not be well.

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Bob Coleman: The wild horse would have lived under, or some of these evolutionary horses that were talked about in this presentation. But they still think that that understanding the basics of digestive physiology, and how the horse came to be, what it is, really can be something that

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Bob Coleman: we need to think about and

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Bob Coleman: maybe take some time and and put it into practice. we remembering our lessons. So I I thought it was really good. It that's kind of short. But you know there's there's a lot of things and if people would

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Bob Coleman: never get a chance to

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Bob Coleman: to read that paper and certainly understand what Dr. Close talked about, it was really eye-opening, and had a great reminder to those of us that have maybe thought about this

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Bob Coleman: information. But it's been a while since we have. So you know, they grew up on an all forage diet. And

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Bob Coleman: oh. but when we think about that, some of those all forage diets were so diverse

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Bob Coleman: and probably a much higher quality of what was consumed than what we maybe normally think of now. And it's because the horse was selecting the parts

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Bob Coleman: of the plant that it wanted to eat, and I can remember from a previous ESS. Many years ago, and it was a paper that came from Texas A. And M. Where they talked about some of the changes in grazing preferences, and how horses grazed on a rotational system where they selected different parts of the plant, which

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Bob Coleman: I think we're so used to just watching them, and we think they start at the top and go to the ground. And that's not true. and Dr. Close reminded us that you know they do kind of pick and choose, and

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Bob Coleman: when given the chance, maybe they do a pretty good job of finding enough calories and the right kind of feed to to get the job done. So I thought it was just an interesting and very informative, very engaging presentation.

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Bob Coleman: that he was certainly entertaining. He had great slides and kept us thinking all the way through.

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Kris Hiney: Yeah, he did. I think it's worth mentioning that he cleared up some of the misconceptions. I think people used to think that digesta remained in the horses tract longer than it does

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Kris Hiney: and it, and it really doesn't there a a high throughput

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Kris Hiney: machine? And so I know I even teach with with my undergraduate classes. So you know, ask the question, who do you think is a better digest, or a horse, or a cow? And the cows by far are better at it right? Because things simply stick around in there a little bit longer and they get 2 goes at it. So that's why horses do have to have higher quality.

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Kris Hiney: Then, when we think about you know how many people say horse a versus cow, hay? There's a reason that that

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Kris Hiney: we can feed cattle sometimes on some things that we would shun in the horse world.

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Bob Coleman: Well, that's right. And and I think that's a good point. And it was a great reminder of the fact that yeah. cattle ruminate. They they do get the second kick at the cat, whereas the horse doesn't.

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Bob Coleman: I mean it goes through. And and again, I remember from

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Bob Coleman: past the ENPS meetings where we talked about how fast things go through the track.

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Bob Coleman: it's really quite amazing that

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Bob Coleman: you know what I think you're right. We we think it's going to stick around for a long time. But

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Bob Coleman: again, when you watch horses that are out grazing and they may be grazing with cattle

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Bob Coleman: at this in the same pasture, and there's the you know the cattle are over there

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Bob Coleman: laying down working on what they just ate, whereas the horse is out there

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Bob Coleman: gather a new stuff to eat, and

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Bob Coleman: I think, putting that when he put it in perspective that way, it was like this really does make some sense as to why we need to do what we need to do. So you know the comparisons and the evolution. I thought, we're really very educational, and and really got people thinking about things. So there was a a great talk. If there was a a disappointment in it

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Bob Coleman: quite a really wished he would have been there, because I think he'd be a fascinating person to meet.

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Kris Hiney: Yeah, yeah, yeah, he was from Switzerland. So it was a pretty He couldn't get to Texas for that particular presentation. No, I couldn't, but he could've brought could have brought chocolate, you know, and that would have made everybody happy. It would, it would. So I I also thought one of the neat things that he talked about. So one

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Kris Hiney: one advantage the horse has, because pretty much they're at a disadvantage to cows, you know. Cows get to 2 twice, and they get to digest everything that they ruminated, and what the microbes produce where it's in the wrong spot, and a horse so like there's a lot of things that are going against the horse.

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Kris Hiney: But what he did say that was really interesting was how their teeth work.

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Kris Hiney: so we always think about. You know how horses teeth actually fit together. They, their outer or their upper jaw overlaps their lower jaw. And he talked about that. The horse is a unique species, because they're actually able to graze and chew at the same time, whereas other animals had to like lose their upper front teeth, or or can't do that, so a horse can take new food in

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Kris Hiney: while he's chewing just because of the architecture of their jaw.

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Bob Coleman: Yeah, it. You mean a lot of things that we don't think about

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Bob Coleman: that, you know. Wow! Isn't this a pretty interesting critter that we get to deal with every day? And that was, I appreciated that he reminded us of that. And and you're right. I mean.

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Bob Coleman:  the fact that that what they can and how they can graze is really

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Bob Coleman: kind of fascinating, that yeah, they're tun it, but they're and they're biting it off close to the soil surface. And you know all that reminds us, or should remind us of how we have to manage them because of what they can do.

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Kris Hiney: Yeah. And that's where I think some of our you know what what was old is new again, right? So we were trying to emphasize more practices that are sustainable and grazing and doing that inner species. Grazing idea is actually one of those so that we can use that to our advantage.

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Bob Coleman: I I guess. using old information to become innovative today. Hmm! What a concept!

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Bob Coleman: I know. It makes you sound good, though right? I mean, we hear about innovation all the time. But I think sometimes innovation is taking the information and just using it in a practical and sustainable way. I like your word sustainable, because I think that's

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Bob Coleman: that's where we need to go.

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Bob Coleman: So it was a good conference

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Kris Hiney: it was. It was fun. It was always fine to get to see everybody in person. So anything else going on in Kentucky that we need to know about, or any fun projects you're up to to share a new knowledge.

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Bob Coleman: not just yet, but we got some things that are on the horizon. So trying trying to keep up with the my extension colleagues through extension horses and and trying to be

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Bob Coleman: as innovative as all of you are with, with with all the information and putting it into a new form new for me. Maybe not so much for the rest of you, but trying to create some small, you know 5 min videos of just some basic thing going back to the basics and and looking at some of that. So hopefully, we'll get those finished over the summer, and be able to share that with extension horses. Awesome.

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Kris Hiney: All right. Well, thanks for visiting with me again today. We always appreciate it when you. I don't know if we can say stop by when you click the link. it's how we do things right.

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Bob Coleman: Yeah, stop by would be fun, wouldn't it?

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Bob Coleman: you're right, that face to face, but at least we have an opportunity to chat in

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Bob Coleman: share some knowledge and and

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Kris Hiney: move things forward. It's always fun, you bet. All right. Well, thanks again. And that has been another episode of our tack box talk horse stories with the purpose.