Q&A with Stuart Myers: Equiculture

When we emigrated from the UK to Australia 23 years ago, as soon as possible we bought our own land for our horses and realised that the land appeared much more fragile than we were used to in the UK. We have since realised that most land anywhere horses are kept is often under stress but some areas are better able to cope with it than others.

We soon realised if we were to give our horses a positive environment to live in, with good pasture we needed to change our practices. This led to us reading and researching different land management theories and trying things out for ourselves. It’s safe to say we made several mistakes along the way. The one defining ‘lightbulb’ moment was when we realised that many of the things we were doing went against what nature, and just as importantly the horse was trying to do.

For example the horses often hang around gateways waiting to be brought in to be fed. Gateways are often bare/dusty/muddy because of this hanging around behaviour. By leaving the gate open and allowing the horses to bring themselves back in, all this erosion around the gateway goes away and there is less work for us to do. You cannot have healthy horses without healthy pasture, and you can’t have healthy pasture without healthy soil. The more we learnt the more we realised everything was connected and by improving one thing it leads to numerous other benefits.

This lead us to writing a book which in turn lead us to running presentations around the world, which in turn gave us more knowledge which lead to us writing more books….and as they say, the rest is history.

2.) What are the basic concepts behind ‘equiculture’ and the ‘equi-central system’?

I guess Equiculture, which is a word we made up over 20 years ago, is best served up by our acronym H.O.R.S.E. Horse Ownership, Responsible, Sustainable, Ethical.

The Equicentral system is a horse and land  management system we have developed over the years which uses the natural and domesticated behaviour of horses, combined with good land management practices, to create a healthy and sustainable environment for your horses and your property.

In so many ways, as I said earlier, healthy land =healthy pasture=healthy horses. We encourage keeping horses together so their basic needs are met, the so called 3 F’s, Forage Friendships and Freedom.

Everything about horsekeeping is about compromise but we believe that the Equicentral System offers the best combination of compromises that benefits not only the horse but has huge benefits for the land and the environment and saves the owner time, money and effort.

4.) In your opinion, what are some of the most environmentally-damaging horse keeping practices which people may not be aware of?

We talk about owners becoming ‘Grass Farmers’, that is starting to learn about what is happening in their pasture and trying to create a healthy ‘grass farm’ which turns into a real win-win win scenario for the horses the land and the owner. Learning to rest and rotate their pasture is one simple thing that can be done and the best investment they can make on a property is to have somewhere, an all weather surface that the horses can be on when the conditions in the pasture would lead to more degradation.

6.) What types of topics do you cover in your workshops?

The workshop is a full day crammed with information. People often attend several times as there is so much to take in. We cover many topics such as horse characteristics including grazing and dunging behavior, the digestive system of the horse, pasture management and improvement, grass characteristics and its relationship with the horse, grazing systems, manure management, dung beetles, water management, trees bushes and weeds on a horse property, current research into equine obesity and its prevention and finally bringing it all together with an explanation of the Equicentral System itself.

7.) Anything else you’d like to add?