KB Equine

26/07/2026

A fantastic weekend at Willinga Park for Team SE! 👏

A huge congratulations to the wonderful team, Susan Elekessy, and her beautiful homebred performance horses, Huey & Scarlett. 🫶

I’m so proud to be a small part of your journey, helping keep these horses feeling and performing at their best with regular bodywork. 💙

Thank you for trusting KB EQUINE to be part of your team. 👌🐴

25/07/2026

I feel a bit like a broken record saying this, but we are once again seeing a lot of horses with colic, many through overheating from having rugs left on!
Just because it’s a bit cool at night does not mean that horses need rugs left on all day.
If you are unable to remove rugs every day, it is always best to just leave them off altogether.
I have never seen a horse freeze to death, but I see them overheat and suffer injuries from rugs every week.

21/07/2026

21/07/2026

Just a thought — we probably shouldn’t expect horses to spend 16 hours every day in one single feeding posture. 💭

In free-ranging horses living in a natural environment, feeding involves continual changes in:

• neck angle
• limb position
• body orientation
• roaming
• reaching
• turning
• grazing on slopes and varied terrain

We often fixate on the groundwork/ridden work, however do we really give enough attention to how our horse eats for the rest of their day?

The way in which our horse eats adds to their daily “postural load”, it influences how their tissues are recruited, and it really does deserve as much attention as their exercise.

So, haynets?

A study comparing horses eating from the ground, hay racks and elevated hay nets found that higher feeding positions consistently altered head and neck posture. Horses fed from elevated systems spent significantly more time with their neck held above wither height and showed greater head twisting while grasping forage (Hernadez Garbati, 2025).

Looking at the morphology, neck posture was affected by feeding position… but crucially, the mandibular angle was significantly wider when horses were fed on the ground.

In a study by Zebish et al. (2014), hyperflexion of the neck in ridden horses led to changes in the width of the mandibular angle as a welfare stress factor. It was associated with an increase in neck circumference and in the thickness of the jaw muscle, with a consequent compression of the larynx, thus reducing air exchange and producing higher flow resistance. From this, research has extrapolated the data and drawn attention to the fact that high haynets could affect the jaw joint over time, in addition to the functionality of the horses breathing, back and neck posture (Hernandez Garbati, 2025). Even though a lower hay net promoted a better back posture than a high haynet, it was not sufficient to maintain a neck posture and mandibular angle similar to that obtained from horses fed from the floor.

However — we do need to look beyond the haynets, and consider varying feeding postures to mimic their natural environment as much as possible.

21/07/2026

21/07/2026

A bit of exciting news…

I’m incredibly honoured to have been named a Finalist for the ETAA Equine Therapist of the Year Award. 🐴🏆

To be recognised by the ETAA is something I’m really proud of, and it’s a huge milestone for both myself and KB EQUINE.

I just wanted to say a genuine thank you to everyone who has supported me and my business over the years. Whether you’ve trusted me with your horse, recommended me to others, followed along on social media or simply encouraged me along the way, I truly appreciate it more than you know.

I’m also so grateful to my family and friends for their support behind the scenes, and to every horse that has challenged me to keep learning and improving.

No matter what happens from here, I’m incredibly thankful to be a finalist and excited to represent KB EQUINE.

Thank you all for being part of the journey. It really does mean the world to me. 🤍

On Friday we will be announcing the recipients of the first of our ETAA Annual Awards. This has been an extremely exciting time for the Equine Therapies Association of Australia and its members. We love nothing more than to see amazing equine therapists be recognised for their outstanding work, but even better is to see a community of professionals get around each other and celebrate each other's success. While we can only award one person from each category, every single one of the award finalists deserve to be congratulated!