Tuesday, September 4, 2007

Horse Records

I'm a big advocate of keeping up to date records of your horse. I consider it an important part of horse ownership. I keep records about Red. Not just medical records but records on what he eats, his dental work, his farrier work and a lot of other information. As well as showing me when things like his next dentist visit must be it also can provide important information to my vet if he suddenly falls ill.

Almost everything about Red is kept in this file. And its readily accesible to anyone in my family. I keep one copy in my personal records, one in the telephone box at our house and one A5 size record in the car. My auntie also has a A4 size copy and a A5 copy for her car. I update it anytime new information comes in and I print it off once a month.

I also include pictures of Red in the file. Pictures of his markings, his brandings, a side on shot and also a head shot. I also ensure someone from my family is standing in one or two of the pictures so that if he gets stolen we can prove he is ours. These photos are updated every 3 months.

I encourage everyone to create a file for their horse(s) if they haven't already done so.

Blogger doesn't support PDF files so I'm unable to post a link to my records here but if you want to see how I do it, you can email me at katieandred@yahoo.co.nz and I'll email you my file and also a template of my file so you can work off that.

Here are also so good links that I found helpful when doing my file:

There are also a few programs that you can purchase off the internet that are desgined especially to help horse owners. I can't reccomend any of these as I prefer to make my own but if you have a huge stable full of horses it might be worth looking into.

So good luck to you and your horses! It really is a good idea to keep up to date records.

Happy Riding.

2 comments:

photogchic said...

Great Post! I vowed to keep track of everything and make that file, but a year has gone by and I still haven't done it. Your post reminds me to get going on it!

kdwhorses said...

Great post! I do keep records on all our horses! I have a notebook that has there papers, vaccinations, farrier, dental, coggins, etc. It is great to have to protect and have with you at all times.